Читать книгу Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty - Coleridge Christabel Rose - Страница 11

“Oh yes, I always knew that she was Lucian’s property. They were marked out for each other from the first. But no man can keep such loveliness all to himself; it is the inheritance of humanity, like the great beauties of nature. I am convinced that Amethyst Haredale is the embodiment of the ideal of our generation. Rossetti – Burne Jones – they aim at her, they cannot reach her. It does not matter whom she belongs to, she is – ”

“It strikes me, Sylvester, that you are talking nonsense.”

“No, Aunt Meg, not to the initiated,” said Sylvester, pulling the collie’s ears, and looking dreamily out at the sunny Rectory garden, one day shortly after his return home at midsummer. “There is Beauty, you know, and sometimes it takes shape. Dante had his Beatrice; Faust, or Goethe himself, sought, but never found – ”

“I have always understood that Goethe was interested in several young women,” interrupted Miss Riddell.

“Yes, but you see the ideal always escaped him; he never quite believed in it. But when one has once seen it, you know, life must be the richer and the fairer. – Eh, dad? Have you been listening?” as he suddenly met his father’s eyes fixed on him over the top of the county paper.

“Yes, my dear boy, I have. But young men’s ideals have been in the habit of taking shape ever since Adam woke up and saw Eve.”

“Oh, a man’s own ideal,” said Sylvester impatiently, and colouring a little; “but I meant the ideal of the race. That is impersonal, and exists for all.”

“H’m!” said the Rector. “The two ideals had a way in my day of seeming identical. I strongly suspect they ran together, as far back as Plato, and will be found, in the same person, however many philosophies may succeed his.”

“And I don’t think,” said Miss Riddell, “that that cheerful, healthy-looking girl is at all like those melancholy pictures that I see in the Grosvenor Gallery.”

“Oh,” said Sylvester, starting up and laughing, “there is no use in talking about the ideal to either of you.”

Perhaps he had been impelled to do so, by the consciousness that his feelings concerning the engagement were watched.

He had known, as he said, from the first, that Amethyst was Lucian’s property; but she had so filled his imagination, that he could not help thinking of her, and fancied he had found a way of doing so, compatible with the turn events had taken. Of course he was not quite in earnest, or rather, he hid the earnestness of which he was conscious, under a veil of fine talking.

He thought of little except of Amethyst and Lucian, but by talking of her he could prove to himself that the thinking was not painful. No, rather it was sweet to compare her to all the fair impersonations of poetry and art.

This peculiar feeling for her was surely quite compatible with his own happiness, when she was Lucian’s wife. Then came the encounter at the post-office, perplexing him extremely; so that he thought of little else, until the day arrived for the garden-party at his cousin’s at Loseby Hall, to which he repaired with his father and aunt, thinking only that he should there see Amethyst. The weather was fine, the gardens beautiful, and half the neighbourhood were gathered on the wide smooth lawn, or scattered about in the paths and shrubberies.