Chapter Two
In the Shade

Two days later, Miss Haredale came back from her visit to Cleverley, and reached her pretty cottage at Silverfold with a sad heart and many misgivings.

How gay the garden was, with its spring flowers, how successful her hyacinths and tulips, how comfortable her little drawing-room as she sat down by the fire! There would be no more little floral triumphs for her now, the cheerful home would be beyond her means, and her peaceful, useful life in it must be given up.

And Amethyst, who had been at her school during her aunt’s absence, had still to be told of what had happened, of the new life in store for her. How could the fond aunt bring herself to tell her darling that their life together must end?

A rapid footfall came along the garden and across the hall, and Amethyst burst into the room.

“Auntie, auntie! The list has come from Cambridge. – And what do you think?”

As she dropped on her knees on the rug at her aunt’s feet, waving a pamphlet before her eyes, Miss Haredale looked at her, but in a preoccupied, inattentive way.

“What list, my dear?”

“What list, auntie! Why, the Cambridge Examination list, of course. And I’m in it! And I have a class – a second class; and, auntie – I’m ‘distinguished in literature.’ There! Oh the relief to one’s mind! Did you ever know anything so delightful?”

“It won’t make any difference, my dear, I’m afraid, to the trouble that has come upon us,” said Miss Haredale, too deeply disturbed even to think of how she was dashing a pleasure, which seemed to her to bear little more relation to the realities of life than if Amethyst had shown her a new doll.

“What is the matter?” said the girl, startled. “Is anything wrong? Father – or mother?”

“No, my dear. But – but I have fallen into great misfortune; I would not tell you while there seemed a chance of its being a mistake. I hope I shall be enabled to bear it, – but it is more than I can face now.”

“What – what, auntie?” cried Amethyst, pressing close to her aunt’s knees and seizing the trembling hands clasped on them.

It took some talking and explaining before Amethyst could be made to comprehend the situation; but when she did understand how entirely the circumstances of their two lives were altered, her young soft face assumed a resolute expression. She stood up by the fireplace, and once more took the examination list in her hand.

“Auntie,” she said, “it is very sad, of course, but it would have been much worse yesterday. Now, I don’t think you need be anxious about me, at any rate. I am worth something now. I shall go to Miss Halliday; I think she will let me have Miss Hayne’s situation at Saint Etheldred’s. At least, I know that a girl, with so good a certificate as this, can always get employment. So, dear auntie, I can do for myself, and help you perhaps a little too.”

“Be a school-teacher?” exclaimed Miss Haredale, in horror. “You, at your age! with your family, and your appearance! – Perfectly impossible.”

“I could begin as a student-teacher, if I’m too young,” said Amethyst coolly. “And it would be no disgrace to a princess to earn her living, if she was poor. And, as for looks, – it’s a great advantage, auntie, to be rather nice-looking. It makes the girls like one.”

“My dear, don’t talk of it,” said her aunt. “You have a right to the advantages and opportunities of other girls, and you must have them. Besides, it is settled otherwise.”

“Of course,” said Amethyst, “I should have liked the balls and everything very much. But I hope you don’t think, dear auntie, that I’m such a selfish girl as to think of that when you are in trouble. Besides, if we can’t afford them, it would be wrong of course to go in for them. I like teaching, I shouldn’t be dull. There would be garden-parties in the holidays. My cream muslin will do all this summer. And as for opportunities – if you mean about marrying – I’m sure, auntie, I’ve heard you say, over and over again, that if they are to come, they will come, wherever one may be. And if not – why, I can be quite happy as I am.”

As the girl spoke, in her fresh cool young voice, Miss Haredale felt that her line of education had been very successful since Amethyst could think thus, and also that it was incumbent on Amethyst’s guardians to think otherwise.

She did not much enjoy, nor greatly value beauty. She had deep reasons for distrusting the kind of beauty which Amethyst inherited. But she was perfectly aware that her young niece was beautiful, and that, whatever Amethyst might think at eighteen, the matter would look very different to her at eight and twenty.

“My dear,” she said, “it can’t be. Your parents would never consent, and you don’t know what you are talking of. There’s only one right thing to do. As I can no longer do my duty by you, or give you proper advantages, I – I – must give you up, and let you go home. Indeed, I have agreed to do so.”

Miss Haredale turned her face away in the struggle to control her tears, so that she did not see the look that was not sorrow on Amethyst’s face. But in another moment the girl’s arms were round her neck.

“No – no, auntie,” she said, “that would not be right at all. You often say how poor my father is for his position, and how he let me go because there were so many girls to provide for. It wouldn’t be at all right for me to go back on his hands now, and to leave you in your trouble. I won’t do it, auntie.”

“My dear,” said Miss Haredale, “you will be a great deal more on his hands if you don’t get a chance of settling yourself. If only I knew better – if only I thought that all was as it should be! You are a dear good affectionate child, and I’ve kept you too innocent and ignorant. But you will be a good girl, Amethyst, wherever you may be. I am sure I could trust you.”

“Oh yes, auntie, I think you could,” said Amethyst, simply. “But I should be helped to be good if I went on at Saint Etheldred’s.”

“I will talk to you presently,” said Miss Haredale, after a tearful pause. “Run away, my darling, and leave me to compose myself.”

Amethyst, with the despised list in her hand, went away into her own bedroom, and sat down by the window to think on her own account. She had been taken from her home at seven years old, and since then, her intercourse with it had been confined to short visits on either side, and even these had ceased of late years, as Lord and Lady Haredale had lived much on the continent. She knew that her father’s affairs were involved, that the heir, her half-brother, was in debt, and, as Miss Haredale put it, “not satisfactory, poor dear boy.” She knew also that her half-sister, Lady Clyste, lived abroad apart from her husband, and that her own younger sisters had travelled about and lived very unsettled lives. But what all these things implied, she did not know at all. She thought her little-known mother the loveliest and sweetest person she had ever seen, and when she heard that her family were going to settle down for a time at a smaller place belonging to them not far from London, she had been full of hope of closer intercourse.

And now, the thought of going into society with her mother was full of dazzle and charm. She had had a very happy life. Her home with her aunt had been made bright by many little pleasures, and varied by all the interests of her education. The Saint Etheldred’s of which she had spoken was a girls’ school in the neighbourhood of Silverfold, founded and carried on with a view to uniting the best modern education with strict religious principles. Amethyst and a few other girls attended as day scholars. She had been thoroughly well taught; her nature was susceptible to the best influences of the place, and she was popular and influential with her school-fellows.

By far the prettiest girl in the school, among the cleverest, and the only one with any prestige of rank, she had grown up with a considerable amount of self-confidence. She did not feel herself ignorant of life, nor was she of the exclusive high-toned life in which she had been reared. She had helped to manage younger girls, she had been a very important person at Saint Etheldred’s, and she honestly believed herself capable of taking her aunt’s burden on her shoulders and of carrying it successfully. She also thought herself capable of cheerfully sacrificing the gaieties of the great world for this dear aunt’s sake. She felt quite convinced that work was a nobler thing than pleasure, and that a Saint Etheldred’s teacher would be happier than an idle young lady. She did not give in to her aunt’s arguments. She was not so young and foolish as auntie supposed. She felt quite grown-up, surely she looked so. She turned to the looking-glass to settle the point.

She saw a tall girl, slender and graceful, holding her long neck and small head with an air of dignity and distinction; which, nevertheless, harmonised perfectly with the simplicity and modesty of her expression. “Grown-up,” in her own sense she might be, but she had the innocent look of a creature on whom the world’s breath had never blown; and though there was power in the smooth white brow, and spiritual capacity in the dark grey eyes, there was not a line of experience on the delicate face; the full red lips lay in a peaceful curve, and over the whole face there was a bloom and softness that had never known the wear and tear of ill-health, or ill feelings.

“I don’t look like a child,” she said to herself, “and I know so much more of the world than the girls who are always shut up in school, and never see a newspaper or read a novel. I should be fit for a teacher, I might go home for one season and be presented, if mother likes, and then come back and help auntie. I should like to know my sisters. It strikes me I do know very little about them all. Yes, I should like to go home.”

Amethyst’s eyes filled with tears, as a sudden yearning for the home circle from which she had been shut out possessed her. The affections of a child taken out of its natural place cannot flow in one smooth unbroken stream, and Amethyst felt that there was a contention within her. Her heart went out to the unknown home, and though she went down-stairs again, prepared to urge her scheme of self-help upon her aunt, it was already with a conscious sense of self-conquest that she did so.

Miss Haredale stopped the girl’s arguments at once.

“No, my child, my mind is made up, and your parents’ too. What you propose is perfectly out of the question. But, remember, you may always come back to me, I will always make some sort of home for you if you really need it, and you will try to be a good girl; for – for I don’t like all I hear of fashionable life. There will be great deal of gaiety and frivolity.”

“But mother will tell me what is right,” said Amethyst. “I can always ask her, and I’ll always do what she thinks best.”

“Oh, my dear child,” cried Miss Haredale, with agitation inexplicable to Amethyst, “no earthly guide is always enough.”

“Of course I know that,” said Amethyst, simply, and with surprise. “But I can’t go away from that other guidance, you know, auntie. That is the same everywhere. If one really wishes to know what is right, there is never any doubt about it. There is always a way out of a puzzle at school; and of course things there are sometimes puzzling.”

The words were spoken in the most matter-of-course way, as by one who believed herself to have found by experience the truth of what she had been constantly taught, and who did not suppose that any one else could doubt it.

Miss Haredale said nothing; but whether rightly or wrongly, she never gave Amethyst a clearer warning, or more definite advice than this.