You are here
قراءة كتاب Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty
new-comers, that she set out on the next day to call on Lady Haredale. Within the wrought-iron gates of Cleverley Hall, a short straight drive led up to the house, defended by high cypress hedges, cut at intervals into turrets and pinnacles, troublesome to keep in order, and sombre and peculiar in effect. Miss Riddell wondered what the fashionable family would think of them. She was shown into a long drawing-room, where a tall slim figure rose to receive her, and three tall children started up from various parts of the room.
Lady Haredale was girlishly slight and graceful. She seemed to have given her daughters their delicate outlines and pale soft colouring, neither dark nor fair; but as Miss Riddell watched the manner and expression of the four, it seemed to her that the mother’s was much the simpler, and less affected; while she looked almost as youthful, and much more capable of enjoyment than her daughters. She was dressed in a shabby but becoming velvet gown, which told no tale of extravagance or of undue fashion.
“You know, Miss Riddell,” she said presently, in a sweet cheerful voice, “we are supposed to come here to be economical. This is our retreat. These children are getting too big to be dragged about on the continent. Aren’t they great girls? I have had them always with me. Now we ought to shut them up in the school-room.”
“Have they a governess?” asked Miss Riddell.
“Why—not at present. You see there wasn’t money enough both for education and frocks—and I’m afraid I chose frocks,” said Lady Haredale, with a voice and smile that almost made Miss Riddell feel that frocks were preferable to education.
“They have some time before them,” she said.
“Poor little penniless things,” said Lady Haredale, with a light laugh. “They haven’t any time to waste. This creature—come here, Una—is really fifteen.”
“I hope we shall soon be good friends,” said Miss Riddell, kindly.
“Oh, thanks, you’re very good, I’m sure,” said Una, with a cool level stare out of her big eyes and an indifferent drawl in her voice.
“They want some friends,” said Lady Haredale. “But this is not my eldest. There’s Amethyst. Her aunt has brought her up, and kept her always at school. But now we’re going to have her back. She’s a very pretty child it seems to me.”
“Is she coming to you soon?” asked Miss Riddell.
“After Easter. At her school they don’t like going out in Lent,” said Lady Haredale, opening her eyes, and speaking as if keeping Lent was a Japanese custom recently introduced. “She’s been so well brought up by good Miss Haredale. But now she is eighteen, and it’s time to take her out. The fact is, her aunt has had money losses—the last person among us who deserved them—but none of us ever have any money! She has been down here, poor woman, with Lord Haredale, to settle about it all.”
“She feels parting with her niece, no doubt.”
“Oh yes, dreadfully. But of course we shall let Amethyst go to her constantly. I’m so grateful to her for bringing her up. I hope the child will rub along with us comfortably. We shall have a few people staying with us soon; and while we are down here we must get these children taught something—they can do nothing but gabble a little French and German. Amethyst is finished, she has passed one of these new examinations. I hardly know what they are—but we left all that to her aunt, of course,” concluded Lady Haredale, with a slight tone of apology. “And I think she’s too pretty to be a blue.”
“I hope she will find Cleverley pleasant,” said Miss Riddell as she rose to take leave.
“I’m sure she will,” said Lady Haredale sweetly and cordially, as she shook hands with her guest. “Of course we shall do our best to enjoy ourselves while we are in retreat. Though I don’t mind confessing to you that I detest the country.”
“She looks innocent enough,” thought Miss Riddell as she walked away. “Silly I should say—but a real beauty.”
“That woman’s more frumpish than Aunt Annabel,” said one of the girls as the door closed behind the visitor.
“Just her style, dear good creature,” said Lady Haredale. “But they’re the Cheshire Riddells, you know, my dear—quite people to be civil to.”
Chapter Four.
The Home Circle.
Lady Haredale was naturally gifted with peculiarly even, cheerful spirits. She had a great capacity for enjoyment, though she had troubles enough to break down a better woman. She had married at seventeen a man much older than herself, already in embarrassed circumstances. Her step-children both disliked her, and had given her very good cause to dislike them.
She had four nearly portionless girls of her own to marry, and she herself had endless personal anxieties and worries, springing alike from want of money and from want of principle. Truly she had often not the wherewithal to pay for her own and her daughters’ dress. She did not mind being in debt because it was wrong, but she found it very disagreeable. She belonged to a circle of ladies who played cards, and for very high stakes. That led to complications. She was a beauty and had many admirers, with whom she liked to maintain sentimental relations, and she was just really sentimental enough not always to stop at the safe point. Very uncomfortable trains of circumstances had arisen from the indulgence of this taste; and, if she had had no regrets or difficulties of her own, Lord Haredale’s character and pursuits would have given her plenty. Nor had she outer interests or resources in herself. She never realised, she seemed scarcely to have heard of all the various forms of philanthropy which are furthered by so many ladies of position. She did not care for politics, literature, or art. She was probably conscious of being much more charming than most of the women who occupied themselves with these interests; but on the whole it was rather that she did not know anything about them, than that she set herself against them. As for religion, she was really hardly conscious of its claims upon her beyond an occasional attendance at church, and due consideration for the social rank of a bishop. In such unconsciousness rather than opposition Lady Haredale was behind and unlike her age; but the state of mind may still be found, where dense perceptions and exclusive habits co-exist.
Yet she was always ready for a fresh amusement; she enjoyed gossip of a piquant and scandalous nature; she greatly enjoyed admiration, and treading on social white ice. When none of these excitements were at hand, she liked realistic novels, and comfortable chairs, and good things to eat and drink. She also liked her little girls, though she took very little trouble about them; and, though it cannot be denied that Satan did find some mischief for her idle heart and brain, if not for her idle hands to do, he did not often manage to lower her spirits or ruffle her temper. She not only did what she liked—what is less common, she liked what she did.
But her young daughters did not inherit this cheery serenity. They had no intelligent teaching, no growing enthusiasms to occupy their minds, and they were inconceivably ignorant and bornées. They were entirely unprincipled, using the word in a negative sense, and they had not their mother’s steady health. They had knocked about, abroad and at home, with careless