CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

"IRIS."

One sunny afternoon in spring, Lucian Leigh was sitting on a bench in the garden at Ashfield Mount. Nearly two years had passed since he had left Cleverley in the agony of his great disappointment, and he had now come back to it for the first time.

The flowers were as gay as when he had walked among them during the brief days of his betrothal, the house looked as cheerful and comfortable as of old; the great deer-hound that sat at his feet was unchanged during his absence, but Lucian himself had grown from youth to manhood, and though the expression of his impassive, regular-featured face had changed but little, it was so effectually bronzed, that hair, and even eyes, showed light against the sunburn.

He sat still and smoked, and patted Donald's head--he liked the feel of it--till footsteps approached, and he was hailed from the neighbouring shrubbery.

"Ha, Syl!" he said, jumping up, "so there you are. Glad to see you."

"I'm uncommonly glad to see you," said Sylvester, grasping his hand. "I began to think you were never coming home any more, but were permanently given over to tigers and elephants. Did you like India?"

"No," said Lucian, "the big game is the only thing worth going there for. I've had a shot, I believe, at everything there is there to shoot at I know all the tracks of them, but so do so many other men. Now I think of trying bears in the Rockies for a change; and I should like to go north--an arctic expedition would be rather jolly."

"You want to add a polar bear's hide to all the tiger skins you have sent home to adorn the hall at Toppings, before you settle down to pot your own partridges."

"Yes," said Lucian.

"But what does Mrs Leigh say to that?"

"She doesn't like it. She wants me to go to London now, and, as she calls it, `keep up our old connection,' and then keep open house at Toppings in the autumn, have shoots, and so on. I have been there with her now, you know, for two months."

"And you don't see it?"

"No, not yet. I must, of course, finally. But Evans is a very good agent, and the Rectory people look after the tenants. I subscribe properly to everything,--schools, and hunt, and county show, and so on; but I'm not going to live there now. Why should I?"

"Well, you might see a little more of the world first, certainly."

"In two years' time Miss Carisbrooke comes of age, and the lease of this house will be up. The mother will have to make a new start somewhere then, and it will be time for Kate, at any rate, to come out. That ought to be in our own neighbourhood, so I must be in England then."

"Does Miss Carisbrooke mean to live here?"

"I believe so. My mother had her to stay here, and liked her, before I came home. You might try your luck, Syl, she's a catch. Her only relation is a youngish uncle, her guardian. I believe he lives abroad a good deal."

Lucian paused, then said--

"She has been living for the last year with that old Miss Haredale, who lost her money. She chaperons Miss Carisbrooke, and is to bring her out, I believe, in London this year."

There was a little silence. Perhaps it had been from a kind of embarrassment that Lucian had at once rained facts upon Sylvester, and put him in possession of his intentions. Now he said--

"Don't let the mother set you on to bully me about staying at home. I always meant to have a shot at a white bear some time--except once, for about three months.--And that's quite over, for good and all. I've no more concern with it. So I must do something else, you know; and I like sport, and seeing new places."

Lucian paused again, and Sylvester looked at him keenly, hardly knowing what to say in answer.

"I am convinced," continued Lucian, with the same unmoved voice and face, "that I acted rightly. So we'll say no more about it. What have you been about? The mother says you're writing a poem."

"Yes," said Sylvester; "will you read it?"

"I'll _buy_ it," said Lucian, gravely; "and, yes, I'll read it, if you like, as it's yours. I hope you'll make Tennyson take a back seat."

"Thank you," said Sylvester, laughing. "I'll be content to hang on behind his coach. But of course I'm rather full of it. I've had several things in reviews and magazines, and some men, whose word is worth something, like them. But it's all luck. The public's harder to hit than a tiger, Lucy."

"I hope it won't turn and rend you. Well, it's jolly to see you again, after all. Come in, I've got some curiosities for you--art objects, don't you call them?--to adorn your rooms at Cuthbert's."

"Thanks. And then come down and see Aunt Meg and the governor. They'll be delighted."

If Lucian had not known Sylvester from babyhood, he would have had little in common with him; but, as it was, whatever he had to say, he said to Sylvester; he took all his alien tastes for granted, and never supposed it possible to be so intimate with any one else. Absence, probably, neither made his heart grow fonder, nor the reverse; he would have given and expected exactly the same amount of regard, after an absence of five-and-twenty years instead of two.

Sylvester had other friends, and his notion of sympathetic intercourse included more than this, but he had a brotherly regard for "Miss Lucy," as the pretty-faced, but manly little boy had been called in his early school-days, and liked his company. Lucian now took him into the house, and bestowed various Indian valuables on him, stating where and when they had been bought on purpose for him, and giving him many distinct pictures of places and people; for he was very observant, and had an accurate memory.

Then, as they walked down together to the Rectory, he asked after old friends, and neighbours, till they turned into the Rectory drive, opposite which, half open, were the great iron gates of Cleverley Hall.

"There's Aunt Meg," said Sylvester. "Who's that girl?--Good heavens," as Lucian suddenly stopped, and held him back; for there, not fifty feet from them, in the act of parting from Miss Riddell, stood Amethyst Haredale.

Retreat was for her impossible. As she turned and saw them, Lucian, without an instant's pause, raised his hat, turned and went off up a side path into the garden.

Sylvester moved forward, blushing and confused, but with an eager light in his eyes. She came straight on towards him, stopped, and held out her hand.

"How do you do, Mr Riddell?" she said, in soft gracious tones, like Lady Haredale's own. "I have come down for a few hours on business for my mother, and I came to see Miss Riddell. I am hurrying now to catch the London train. Good-bye."

She did not speak hurriedly, she left time for Sylvester's confused murmurs of reply between her sentences, but she had walked on and turned out of sight before Miss Riddell had time to come up to them.

"The hand of fate!" she exclaimed. "It is months since she was here, and now only for an hour or two."

"I'll find Lucian," stammered Sylvester, turning into the garden, where Lucian came quickly to meet him.

"I was told they were away," he said abruptly.

"So they are. She came down on business. She--she--"

"Don't talk about her," said Lucian, sternly. "There's the Rector, and Miss Riddell with him."

He came up to them, shook hands cordially, presented his little offerings of Indian curios, and after a very short visit, took his leave, and went away by himself.

"Unlucky!" exclaimed Miss Riddell. "I wish it had not occurred."

"But, Aunt Meg, are they coming down here?" said Sylvester, hurriedly.

"No, they are to be in London for the season, Amethyst is to be presented. I suppose their affairs are looking up. They have been abroad, you know, for some time, and visiting-about; but Amethyst was in town last year for a very short time, with their cousin, Lady Molyneux, at the end of the season. You heard that? She was only there long enough to show that she would make a sensation. R, the new artist, asked to paint her, the picture is to be in the Academy this year. She will have every chance now. She looks well, and has not lost her sweet manner, but her girlishness has all gone, and she is more the grand lady than her mother."

"I--I hardly remember what a beauty she was," said Sylvester, rather nervously. "And that fellow, Fowler, he married the heiress, didn't he?"

"Yes. They live in London. Haven't you ever met them at Loseby? The marriage turned out very well. There is something very engaging about Amethyst, and she spoke nicely of her sister Una, who is very delicate, she tells me. But, dear me, it was a bad business for Lucian. I don't know when he will settle down. His mother longs for him to marry and live at Toppings."

"He had much better see the world first," said Sylvester.

"One doesn't quite see the end of it for him," said Mr Riddell, thoughtfully. "But, Syl, I thought I was to see the _magnum opus_. I like to know what you young men are doing."

Sylvester recalled himself with a start, to what had been an hour before an important ordeal to him. Now, part of the poem seemed to have come to life, and the picture faded before the original.

That same brief three months, which had turned Lucian Leigh's outward life away from the course that had seemed marked out for it, had given a colour to all Sylvester Riddell's inward existence. When he began to add another to the many poetical versions of a youth in search of an ideal, that ideal was, for him, embodied in his memory of Amethyst Haredale. He might call her Art, Truth, Womanhood, Beauty, anything he would, she looked at him from the deep grave eyes, and smiled the enchanting smile which had filled his imagination at first sight. To Lucian, every thought of Amethyst was painful, never, if possible, to be recalled; to Sylvester, she was a dream of beauty and delight, and, as he had never seen her since the fatal summer, there was a certain dreaminess in his feelings with regard to her.

But when, encouraged by various successes in the way of criticism and of occasional verses, and having a good deal of leisure on his hands, he began to write a long poem, he had no doubt as to the source of his inspiration.

He had called his poem `Iris,' and the subject was that of a youth pursuing an ideal love. The hero was a minnesinger of the early middle ages, and the story was related in sections of narrative interspersed with suitable lyrics. The subject was not new, and he could only hope that the treatment was. He had not yet decided whether Iris should be for ever unattainable, a rainbow of promise, melt mystically into his hero's being in some ineffable manner, as a final reward, or identify herself with the maiden who had been his childish friend.

But the sight of the real Amethyst had dimmed this ideal Iris, and he hardly knew whether it was as lover or author, that he blushed and hesitated as his father settled himself in his study to listen. He was so nervous that he read hurriedly and badly, and his father told him that he was not doing himself justice, and made him read a passage over again, in which Amelot, as the minstrel boy was called, played and sang to himself in the sunset, his heart full of longing to express itself in song, till, with the sweetest strains that he had ever uttered, the soft and amethystine colours of sun and air took shape and form, and the lovely eyes of Iris shone upon him, amid rainbow hues and gleaming mists, beckoning him ever onward and upward to more strenuous efforts to attain her.

"Of course," said Sylvester, hurriedly, as he paused, "I suppose he never did reach her--I think she was always the end of the rainbow."

Mr Riddell did not appear deeply interested in this question. It did not, he said, affect the intrinsic merit of the poem.

But he pounced on the song with which Iris had inspired Amelot, and after declaring it to be smooth, and not without sweetness, tore it to pieces in its author's sight, proclaimed one epithet commonplace and another redundant, and finally told him, that he should aim at simplicity of sentiment and perfection of expression.

"What all the world can feel, my dear boy, and only you can say,--that's poetry."

"I--I am afraid," said Sylvester, "that Amelot's devotion to Iris is rather unusual--the lot of the few. Dante is of course the eternal model, after which one can only labour."

"A case in point, Syl," said Mr Riddell, briskly. "Thousands of young men have fallen in love, like Dante, with unattainable young women. He knew how to tell the world of it. Besides, Dante was a prophet; he had another function to fulfil. But the simplest things are the greatest."

Sylvester did not agree, he was not at all prepared to consider that the devotion of Amelot to Iris was usual; quite the contrary. It was an exceptional grace bestowed on such as could receive it.

The point was, however, rather too personal for comfortable argument. Besides, he did not know yet what his father thought about the poem.

"I gather," he said, "that you think the sentiment of the poem rather too finespun."

"Oh dear, no," said Mr Riddell. "Not at all. I've often felt the sort of thing myself. I'm glad young men can still be honestly sentimental. Don't get too mystical, and avoid unusual words--all sorts of aesthetic slang. The thing has a good deal of merit in its own way. I must go down and see old Tomkins."

And while Sylvester hardly knew whether he was pleased or not, the Rector rammed on his shabby soft hat, stuck his walking-stick under his arm, and remarked--

"Glad you employ your leisure time so well Very pretty lines--many of them--excellent tone and feeling. Of course the genuine lilt of a perfect love-song only drops from the sky once in a generation."

Sylvester had hardly expected that his father would tell him that, in Lucian's language, he had made Tennyson take a back seat; but he felt ruffled and dissatisfied.

Sympathetic as Mr Riddell was, he did not quite know what his verdict was to his son. He had written many a smooth and graceful copy of verses in his own young days, reflecting more or less the style and taste of his generation, and he had long survived the discovery that they had not added much to what it had to tell the world. He had found quite enough to live for, without poetry.

Sylvester was of a more intense and less many-sided nature; worthy and sufficient objects in life did not seem to him so easy to find. He had secretly lived much for his poem, and he needed to find it worth living for.

Now, the thing most worth living for seemed to be the hope of seeing Amethyst again. Fate had kept them apart hitherto by a series of chances; but now, if the poem was finished, if it came out and was a success, if he met her in London, if she did not cherish any resentment against him--if she could ever know that Iris--

So Sylvester dreamed. But Lucian went up to London to meet the friend who shared his aspirations as to the bears of the Rocky Mountains, and made arrangements for an immediate start in pursuit of them.