Christabel Coleridge - Amethyst - The Story of a Beauty

“Well, my dear Annabel, very glad to see you. You don’t often give me a chance of entertaining you. Come and have some luncheon; one can’t talk business on an empty stomach.”

“You’re very good, Haredale. I wish my errand was a pleasanter one; but – ”

“Well, we’ll hear all about it directly. Champagne? Ladies always like champagne, so I provided some for you. – It’s very good, it won’t disagree with you.”

Miss Annabel Haredale did not like champagne in the middle of the day, and thought that it was sure to disagree with her; but she smiled at her brother and took it like a martyr.

The scene was a rather shabbily appointed set of rooms in Duke Street, Saint James’s; in one of which an elegant little luncheon was laid for two. The actors were a lady and gentleman, both some years past fifty, both tall, with large well-marked features, and reddish hair touched with grey. Both were unmistakably people of family and position, and to this air of his breeding the lady added that of personal worth. She looked like a good though not a clever woman; her brother, Lord Haredale, unfortunately, did not look like a good man. Their eyes, however, met with kindness, hers openly anxious, and his furtively so.

“And so you have given up the Twickenham villa and settled at Cleverley?” she said, after some surface conversation.

“Well, yes, – must economise, you know, and the old Admiral’s lease of the Hall being out, it seemed convenient. My lady doesn’t like it much; but she can leave the little girls down there, if she comes up to meet you and take out Amethyst. Of course she wants to present her; but it’s confoundedly inconvenient this year.”

“It is about Amethyst that I wish to speak to you,” said Miss Haredale, strenuously refusing more champagne, and showing unmistakably her desire to proceed to business.

“What! you haven’t found a chance already of settling her?”

“Oh no, no! she has seen no one. She has never been away from school. But, Haredale, a great misfortune has befallen me; so that I can no longer do by her as I could wish. I am a poor woman now, and it is for you to decide what you think right about her.”

“Why! Deuce take it, have you been making ducks and drakes with your money?”

“No, but Farrant has done it for me. His brothers’ bank has failed, the investments he advised have proved worthless. I shall hardly have 150 pounds a year left – I have turned it over in my mind in every possible way – ”

Lord Haredale had always felt that, however unlucky he might be himself, it was his sister’s duty to the family to keep her few thousands safe; they had held a satisfactory place in his mind. He swore at the family lawyer for giving her bad advice, and confounded her folly in not looking more closely after her own affairs.

“I’m infernally sorry for you, Annabel,” he said, when he had cooled down a little. “As you know, what with Charles’s cursed extravagance, to say nothing of my lady’s, I have nothing at command.”

“I never supposed, for one moment, that you would have, Haredale,” said his sister, emphatically. “Nor am I reduced to beggary. I can lessen my expenses. But if I do so, what can I do for Amethyst? Her life would be cut down to the narrowest limits. I could not possibly introduce her in London, which seems to me essential, in her position – all I had saved for the purpose is gone. I cannot tell you what it would cost me to resign the charge which I undertook. But of course you must decide for her as you think best.”

“It’s deuced bad luck,” said Lord Haredale. “You see, I got my lady down to Cleverley, on the plea that she could come up for two or three weeks when you had Amethyst in town. But as to a London house, and bringing the girl out ourselves, it’s impossible.”

“In that case, she might wait another year; we might manage to keep her at school a year longer?” said Miss Haredale, anxiously.

“Ay, but you see,” said Lord Haredale, “her mother tells me she’s going to be a beauty.”

“Yes, she is,” said Miss Haredale, dejectedly.

“That alters the question. She might make a good match. You know my lady won’t be jealous of her, and keep her back. That never was her way. She treated Blanche like a sister – dressed her up to the nines on every occasion – though she wasn’t her own child.”

“If I thought that Blanche’s story – ” began Miss Haredale, vehemently.

“Blanche was a fool,” said Lord Haredale, “she was born so. Perhaps Amethyst ain’t.”

“Amethyst is a good, high-minded girl, with plenty of sense. But she’s as innocent as a child, and how do I know how she may turn out? Oh, Haredale, I came to tell you my trouble, and to offer her back, because I had promised that she should be brought out this year, and I felt that it was due to the family. I do care for the old name, Haredale, but I believe I am a worldly-minded woman. Let her grow a bit older, and then we shall see. Down with me, she’ll be as fresh as a rose at twenty.”

“Una will be coming on by that time; her mother wanted to bring her out now, the girls are getting too big to be about as children. No, if we’re to have Amethyst on our hands, which of course is uncommon bad luck, we’d better take her at her best. Cleverley’s not a bad neighbourhood – we could bring her out first in the country. I know her mother means to have her with her somehow this year. It won’t do to let her be permanently on our hands, now you haven’t the same prospect for her. You must see that, though how the deuce my lady will manage to get her frocks – ”

“I’ll keep her, Haredale,” cried Miss Haredale, starting up. “I’ll keep her, somehow. A London season and a fashionable marriage is not the end of existence. She shall not have to go through the misery of difficulties about dress and other things, which I knew only too well I did not know what I was doing in coming here. Don’t expose her to all those shifts and contrivances?”

“You’re upset, Anna,” said Lord Haredale, “and no wonder! – By Jove! there’s nothing so upsetting as losing money, especially when you’ve had nothing to show for it!”

“Can you wonder,” said Miss Haredale, struggling with her feelings, “can you wonder that I shrink from exposing the child to – to so many temptations?”

“There’s nothing to hurt her,” said Lord Haredale easily. “She’ll never come in Blanche’s way; and Charles, curse him, never comes home at all. She’ll be with people quite of your own sort at Cleverley. Of course we’re quite aware of all you’ve done for her, I shouldn’t think of taking her away from you, in any other case. But come down and talk the matter over with my lady. Capital train at 4:30. Come for a couple of nights and see for yourself. You’ll find it all right enough for her. Come and see.”

“Well, I shall at least hear what her mother thinks,” said Miss Haredale, doubtfully; for in truth the mother was the chief subject of anxiety in her anxious mind. When eleven years before she had taken her niece to live with her, her object had been to make Amethyst’s girlhood as unlike as possible to her own.

Thirty years or so ago, Annabel Haredale had been a fine distinguished-looking girl, popular in the fast and reckless set which frequented the family place, Haredale, in the last days of her father’s life. Lord Haredale and his sons were racing men, and not at all particular as to which of their acquaintances they introduced to the family circle. All the men Annabel knew were fast and dissipated, and all the ladies of her set tolerated, and even liked, fastness and dissipation. She had very little education, and all her religion consisted of an occasional attendance at Haredale church in a gallery with arm-chairs and a fire; where she and her visitors laughed and talked at intervals, and quizzed the natives. She was, however, a kind and warm-hearted girl, affectionate to her unworthy relatives, and she did her best, according to her lights, to keep matters straight at Haredale, and to preserve her own self-respect. She had many admirers, but no chance of marriage offered itself which she felt herself able to accept. The family circumstances did not improve when the old Lord Haredale died. His eldest son was equally deep in debt, and had less strength of character and constitution to carry off his vices. Annabel withdrew herself and her fortune, and, freed from the family surroundings, she came across people of a different stamp; another education began for her, she fell under religious influences, made good friends, and settled down happily into a pleasant and useful life at Silverfold, a pretty village not far from London.