Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty

by Christabel R. Coleridge

He had had no time to think of himself, though there was much in his life which required consideration; he felt how severe the strain upon him had been, when he found himself once more in the dear old home, with his father’s loving eyes scanning his face, and noting the traces on it of anxiety and fatigue.

There was Amethyst and his chance of winning her. She had never been out of his thoughts, but it went against every generous instinct to seek her the moment that he left her old lover’s side, when poor Lucian’s long heart-ache had been betrayed in every unconscious murmur of the beloved name. The unselfish good wishes which had been meant to set him free from all such scruples only intensified them. And yet he had said too much to say no more, and, without his father’s concurrence, he was hardly in a position to say anything.

He murmured an inquiry as to where she was, and if his aunt ever heard from her, and soon had told his father all there was to tell.

Mr Riddell sighed, and shook his head. He had guessed it all before, and he did not quite see his way through it.

“My dear boy,” he said, “whatever I can do to forward your happiness you may regard as done. What else can I wish for? But, if you’ll take advice, give her a little time. She isn’t thinking of you just now, Syl. She needs to be left a little to herself, to find herself out. She knows how you have been occupied, and I am sure she is ready for no sudden definite appeal from you, which is all that is at present in your power. We will not lose sight of her for you.”

Sylvester acquiesced, yet utter silence was impossible to him. He could ask nothing from her just then, but he must let her know that he continued to give her all himself. He wrote some verses, veiled under the familiar disguise of Amelot to Iris, and sent them, unsigned and undated, to the address which he soon caused his aunt to give him. But it was a little like posting them to the rainbow’s end.

If he could not woo her, he might make himself worthy of her. When he went back to Oxford, he took up his work there with the determination to make it more real. He would in no way stand aside from the struggle of life to which he had urged her. The outward changes in his life were slight, but, nevertheless, it was pervaded by a new and more earnest spirit. The lads who had come to his help in his extremity were no longer strangers to him, and men began to say that Riddell would gain influence in the place.

Mrs Leigh had written encouraging accounts of Lucian. The London doctors had recommended the winter abroad as the best cure for the injured lungs, and had not forbidden a hope that the serious internal injuries resulting from the strain might be surmounted by Lucian’s hitherto unbroken health and strength. At least, so the mother interpreted their verdict, and it was decided that they were to go by sea to the Mediterranean, and finally to settle at Bordighera, a place Mrs Leigh knew and liked, and where she hoped Sylvester would join them at Christmas, and find his friend much nearer recovery than when they parted.

Sylvester hoped that so it might be, and made all necessary arrangements for spending part of his winter vacation abroad, all the more willingly, because he knew that the Haredales were somewhere among the towns of the Riviera. So it came to pass that one day, just after Christmas, Lucian lay on a couch under the verandah of one of the prettiest villas of Bordighera, wrapped up and propped with pillows, and listened, with a half-smile, to his mother’s assurances to the newly-arrived Sylvester, of how much good the climate was doing him, and how much better he was than he had been in London.

“Let Syl stay and talk to me, mother,” he said, “and you go and get your drive; he’ll take care of me. Perhaps we’ll go by and by for a drive in the pony carriage. Then I can show him the place.”