CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

ACCORDING TO HIS LIGHT.

Amethyst's two lovers went out from her presence into the gaslight and the moonlight, and walked through the still busy streets of the West End, hardly exchanging a word with each other.

Neither of them had eaten much that day, and Sylvester took Lucian to his club and ordered supper, but he looked white and wretched, and shook his head when his friend pressed him to eat and drink. He hated the public place, the sense of homelessness, he wanted to hide himself like an unhappy dog. At last he said,--

"I can do nothing to make up for the past."

"Well, two years is a long time," said Sylvester, whose own feelings were too exacting just then to leave space for much sympathy with Lucian.

"Is it? I've done a great many things since we parted; but I've never felt anything but--wanting her. She seems a thousand times more glorious than ever to me, and I am nothing to her--now."

"But you didn't think, before you saw her again, that, after all that passed, she had continued to care for you?" said Syl, curiously.

"I did not know _then_, if she ever had truly cared for me," said Lucian. "I supposed that she had not, that it had all been a delusion. What else could I think? Even then, I did not forget her. But when I found, when she herself says now, that in that old time, she was real and true--I don't see how any one can change a true love once given. It's a thing I can't conceive possible. It would have seemed a fresh wrong to her to fear it."

"Did it never occur to you," said Sylvester impatiently, "that she was not half-grown-up, two years ago, and that now she may see that you are not the kind of person to suit her?"

"I never could have outgrown her," said Lucian. "And did you never think that she has never forgiven us--you--for misjudging her?"

"That is a different thing. That is not how it is," said Lucian, positively; then, standing up, "I want to get back to your rooms, Syl. I can't stand anything more. I'll go to bed, I feel done for." There was something pathetic in the faithfulness that could not imagine the possibility of change in the love that had once been proved worthy; but naturally Lucian's self-confidence struck Sylvester forcibly, and as they walked away together once more, he suddenly lost the remains of his patience, and broke out--

"Can't you see that a creature like that has a thousand needs and possibilities that have developed in her since she belonged to you? It may be for good, or it may be for evil, but she cannot go back. Did it never strike you _then_ that you had got hold of a being all force and fire, a splendid goddess, altogether out of your ken?"

"No," said Lucian, "I meant to take care of her, and I hoped we should go on, and lead the right sort of lives together."

"Well, we are each shut up in the bounds of our own nature," said Sylvester, shortly.

"I think," said Lucian, after a pause, "that you are trying to make me see that I never was good enough for her."

"Who could be?"

"If it has been all my fault," said Lucian, in a shaken voice, "it is a hard thing to know. For--it is not all right with her now. Good-night, Syl,"--for by this time they had reached the lodgings--"I'm going to bed. You think I'm not enough of a fellow for her, but she has all there is of me, and it's no good to her."

He hurried away, and shut himself into his room. His words hardly did him justice; for his thoughts were crude and one-sided; but the entire trust in the word once given, the love that had survived even the loss of faith, were feelings of heroic size.

Lucian really had few faults, and such as he had, he guarded against with dutiful, if somewhat formal, technical conscientiousness. Defects of nature, as distinct from acts of sin, he did not recognise.

When he found that he had been led to misjudge Amethyst, his conscience, as well as his heart, was shocked, he felt that he ought not to have been deceived, and, whether he could understand it or no, he knew that she was lost to him for ever. She was not for him. He saw too that she _was_ changed. She was not what he had expected to find her. He was bewildered by her, and he had to live without her.

Lucian's religion, was as simple as his view of life. Under its dictates, he had abstained from the ordinary sins of school and college life, and had framed his view of what was becoming to a young man of property. Like the young ruler, he kept the Commandments. He distinctly believed that his life was ordered for him, and, in this fresh agony, which had brought a certainty, which, while the separation from Amethyst had been his _own_ doing, he had never really felt, he recognised that he must not throw it away.

The right thing to do, soon, was to go and live at Toppings by himself, or with his mother and sisters. There would never be any one else now. He would go for his three months' cruise in the _Albatross_, and get over the worst of his trouble. He thought that he would rather be alone, at first, than with Sylvester. Somehow, his old companion jarred upon him. Perhaps friend, as well as love, had outgrown him.

Meanwhile, Sylvester had been haunted by the echo of one of Lucian's sentences, "All is not right with her now." No, indeed, and the lover of her girlhood was powerless to help. Could his own love, so much more full, as it seemed to him, of comprehending in sight, do nothing? He would have been wretched if she had turned back to Lucian's love. That could not have sufficed her; but it was far worse that she should choose the lower part, defy and ignore all the imperious demands of her fine spirit. And he must stand by and see it--He who had watched her course, and read her needs and her dangers, from the very first day that, behind the beauty that had captivated his senses, he had seen the aspiring soul look out from her eyes.

Through the short hours of darkness Sylvester lay in helpless rage and despair; but suddenly, when the light of the summer dawn came through his open window, and the London sparrows began to twitter, and the life of London to wake up with the roll of the market waggons and the tread of the earliest passing feet, he started up, inspired with a sudden purpose.

"I will not stand by, and see it. What matter what she may think of me or of my doings? I have no hope of her. She is not for me. But my soul shall tell her soul the truth. She, her true self, shall not fight the battle alone, with every one around her on the side of the world, the flesh, and the devil."

Sylvester Riddell was not a person who led an ardent or strenuous life. His professional duties at the University were not very arduous, his literary work was of a somewhat dilettante nature, his mind was full of conflicting theories.

But though he wrote verse that was not quite poetry, though he was inconsistent, and harmlessly self-indulgent, he had moments of inspiration, when the "demon" that speaks to prophet and poet would speak to him. Such a moment came now. A purpose, impossible conventionally, but which, nevertheless, he would carry out, had come to him, and he called down all power in earth and heaven, every force which he believed to make for righteousness, to fight on his side and to help him. Never had such real prayer gone forth from his soul, as now when he determined to reinforce with every particle of spiritual strength within him, the wavering spirit of the woman he loved. He felt ashamed of his irritation against Lucian, who, after all, had served Amethyst as well as he knew how, though he did not wish him to guess either his feelings or his purpose, thinking, rather unjustly, that Lucian would not be able to understand him, and would suppose that he meant to make Amethyst an offer.

Lucian was very quiet, and seemed to find breakfast a difficulty. After a silence he said--

"There's one thing, Syl, I think should be done, and it would be best for you to do it. Will you write to my mother, and undeceive her? She will believe you. It is all gone by, but I cannot have one shadow left upon her which can be removed."

"Yes, I will," said Sylvester. "What shall you do now yourself?"

"I think I shall close with the man who owns the _Albatross_--for three months only. Will you come?"

"I hardly know. I ought to go to Cleverley first. Perhaps I might join you later."

"I've got a note from Jackson," said Lucian; "he wants me to run down and see him first. He misses me--I got to know his ways."

He did not get very steadily to the end of the sentence, he was touched at finding himself satisfactory to some one.

"Could he go with you?" said Sylvester. "Oh no. He ought to be perfectly quiet. But I shall ask him to come to Toppings in the autumn. I must make a beginning there some time. I'll do it then."

"Well, Lucy, I dare say that's quite right."

"I shall go off this morning," said Lucian. "Jackson's father lives near Chester. Then on to Liverpool. I'll leave word there about letters. Tell me if--when--when anything happens. I'm very much obliged to you for having given me the chance of contradicting my former conduct. I think, perhaps, in time to come, she may like to remember that I did it. And tell your father, please, that I renewed my offer, and that she refused me. I can't think of anything else that I can do or say."

"It has been hard lines on you, my dear old boy."

"Yes. But that's no matter, if I have in any way repaired the injustice. I've seen her; I suppose I never shall again. She did say a hard thing. But--well, Syl, good-bye, I'll go and look after a train to suit me. Thank you. I'm glad it's all happened. Good-bye. When your time comes, I hope you'll have better luck."

He smiled ruefully enough, and held out his hand. Sylvester took it.

"Say one thing more, Lucy," he said; "wish me as single a purpose as your own."

Lucian looked puzzled. Sylvester's lips were set and pale, and his eyes very bright.

"I'll wish you anything I can," he said, and went off to collect his belongings.

He was longer about it than Sylvester had expected; the hansom he had ordered waited, before he came in again ready to start.

He put something down on the table.

"I don't think you brought that photograph to Liverpool for me, Syl," he said, and was gone before a word could be spoken.