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Chapter Eight
The Earthly Paradise

Lucian Leigh’s side of the story did not meet with so favourable a reception. Like Lady Haredale, Mrs Leigh had not taken warning in time, and, while she was thinking of cautioning her son against the penniless beauty, he stood before her with the tale of his successful wooing, quite unprepared for the displeasure with which she received it.

He was entirely independent of her, and she had no power to prevent him from marrying whom he would; and when she comprehended that the offer had been made and accepted, her consternation was great.

“Lucian! In three weeks! One of those Haredales! Nothing could have grieved me more.”

“I don’t think you can mean that, mother,” said Lucian.

“You don’t know what you are doing.”

Lucian said nothing. The fewness of his words always made it difficult to argue with him. He made no protestations of passionate love, but he did not yield an inch, and only said at last —

“But I’m booked now, mother. I have proposed to her.”

“Will you not at least give in to a delay? Have you no regard to my wishes?”

“Yes,” said Lucian, “I wish you liked it. But I think I ought to settle it for myself. Anyway I have settled it.”

“And have you no misgivings?”

“No,” said Lucian, with a light in his handsome face never seen there before.

Mrs Leigh felt as if she might as well argue with a statue. She went to bed in distress and uncertainty, and, early the next morning sent over a message to the Rectory, begging Mr Riddell to come and see her at once. He was an old friend, and his office made her feel it right to consult him besides; and she was a woman who liked sympathy, and always talked freely of her troubles and anxieties.

He came before breakfast was over at Ashfield, and Mrs Leigh, rising, with an eager squeeze of his hand, dismissed her little girls and their governess, and said tearfully —

“My dear Rector, you know everything I would say. I shall leave you with this foolish boy to persuade him, if possible – ”

“I can go, mother, if you want to tell the Rector all your objections,” said Lucian. “Anyway I don’t see why you should go away. I have proposed to Miss Haredale, and she has accepted me. The thing is done.”

Lucian turned scarlet as he spoke, and embarrassment gave a certain coldness to his tone. Mr Riddell recognised that he would be hard to move.

“My dear boy,” he said, as Mrs Leigh, in spite of her son’s words, left them alone together, “I think I am sorry that you have been so hasty. Three weeks is a very short time.”

“It’s quite long enough,” said Lucian.

“Yes, she is a beautiful girl, Lucian, and as guileless – as – as Psyche herself; and brought up by a good woman. But she is only eighteen, and no man can say what she will grow up to. There will be a very great deal of her, Lucian. She is a great prize. She is rarely beautiful, and she has brains, and is highly strung. She will expect a great deal of life. She does not know at all, yet, what she will need. She has all her growing and her living to do in the future.”

“So have I,” said Lucian. “But one knows very well what one will come to.”

“Yes, my dear Lucian, that is the very thing. But no one can know what Amethyst Haredale will come to. It’s a very serious thing to marry a girl who comes of so doubtful a stock. And, my dear boy, I am certain that her mother is not a good woman.”

“Of course,” said Lucian, “I know all about her people. I shall take her right away from them. She has never been with Lady Haredale.”

“Your mind is quite made up?”

“Of course,” said Lucian. “It’s quite easy for me to marry early, and I don’t see why I should not. My mother will get used to it.”

Lucian still uttered no expressions of enthusiastic love. He hardly attempted to defend Amethyst. His fair, beautifully formed face was quite still and impassive. He had made up his mind and so had Amethyst, and, with her by his side, he meant to begin at once to lead the life to which he believed himself called; to live on his estate, look after his tenants, keep up his shooting, attend to public business, and set a good example in his own neighbourhood. As he said himself, he knew exactly what he was going to grow to, and he never doubted that his wife would grow in the same direction as himself.

He was a thoroughly good fellow; but Mr Riddell wondered whether he was quite the mate for the lovely child, in whose face a thousand possibilities were written, and whose nature was all in bud. The Rector was, however, a man who could recognise the inevitable. He saw that the engagement must be, and could only hope that the quick-springing love between the pair was warm enough to fuse these two natures into one. At least, they were still in a soft and malleable stage of existence. He set himself, therefore, not to talk over the young man, but to endeavour to reconcile Mrs Leigh to her son’s choice; and, what was perhaps equally hard, to the fact of his early marriage, and separation from her family circle.

Lucian set off for Cleverley Hall, looking and feeling much as if he had been about to walk up to a cannon’s mouth. He was an odd mixture of self-confidence and unreadiness, and, though he felt perfectly sure that he was a right choice for Amethyst, he had no words in which to convey as much to her father.

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.

 
“Thine ageless walls are bonded
With amethysts unpriced…”
 

“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.

Chapter Nine
Tony

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.

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.”

“Oh, my dear child,” said Lady Haredale, “of course Tony was only in play.”

“Yes, but Una wasn’t. And lately he has been trying to get her out of it. That’s why she has been so miserable; only she didn’t want Amethyst to know.”

“It’s quite absurd,” said Lady Haredale, “those things should never go too far. It’s quite Una’s fault. I shall have to bring her out, when you are married, Amethyst, to put it out of her head. As if Tony cared for a chit like her!”

Victoria made an indescribable grimace, while Amethyst was speechless. Tory’s cynical plain-speaking, and her mothers light response, turned her quite cold with horror.

“Mother, you will never let that man come here again?” she exclaimed, at length. “If he could behave so – ”

“Oh, my dear child,” said Lady Haredale, “it was only play. – Poor little Una will soon forget it again. It’s just a little sentiment, that’s all.”

Amethyst turned with a start, as Lucian, for once taking her by surprise, came out of the house all eager and joyous.

“Oh, dear Lucian,” said Lady Haredale, “we are quite upset! Such a sudden piece of news.”

“There is something the matter!” said Lucian, with an anxious look at Amethyst, whose face was still scared and startled, even in the midst of his greeting.

“Oh no!” said Lady Haredale. “But our dear old friend Major Fowler is going to be married. The girls are all in tears, he is such a loss, we can’t imagine ourselves without him. I think we’ve all had a share in him, we don’t like to give him up to an heiress. I don’t know what we shall do.”

Amethyst made no contradiction, but she looked at her mother with tragical eyes, hardly controlling tears of she knew not what strange distress.

“What does it mean?” said Lucian, as Lady Haredale turned away. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t ask,” said Amethyst. “Oh, Lucian, it’s like heaven to see you, and know that I belong to you, – but – but – ”

“You don’t belong to any one else; keep yourself quite separate. You’re mine, mine only,” said Lucian in the short, masterful tone peculiar to him.

“I hate that fellow,” he continued, as he drew her away into the cypress walk; “he’s a bad sort.”

“But now he is going to be married, we shall not see anything more of him,” said Amethyst.

“Have nothing to do with him. You haven’t seen very much of him, have you?”

“Why, I have seen a good deal of him. He has been here so much; but – Lucian, I don’t think I notice any one now-a-days. I’m always thinking of you.”

Lucian looked down at her with eyes which, light in colour and steadfast in expression, had a peculiar unfaltering clearness, pure as crystal, but a little hard. He was rarely tender in word or look, he showed his love for Amethyst by taking possession of her.

“No one else has any right to you,” he said firmly; and, as he took her in his arms, she forgot everything that troubled her, in his kiss.