Chapter IX

They entered the church, where they could scarcely have found their way about had it not been for the light of the lantern that Luce carried.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that it will be, after all, too dark to see anything, and we had best be turning towards Sellar’s Mead, lest we be benighted on the road.”

The Countess Fanny said she wished to stay, and remarked how beautiful the beams of the lantern were--like the long, regular rays of a star--playing upon the pillars, the funeral hatchments that hung thereon, and the mural tablets beyond, just picked out, gleaming with a black or white lustre of marble in the almost complete darkness of the long aisle.

“But you will not be able to see anything,” remarked Lucius; and he held the lantern a little higher, so that he, at least, could see something; and that was the face of the Countess Fanny, which seemed to have a peculiar and glowing radiance in this funereal darkness.

“How odd,” he thought uneasily, “that she should wish to stay here now at an hour so sombre and in a place so gloomy, alone with a stranger. And more peculiar yet that she should not appear in the least distressed by this experience, but elated--almost joyful.”

He asked her if she had been here before; he had noted that she had not attended last Sunday’s service, and he had thought, at the time, that this must have been a matter of some vexation to Oliver Sellar, and even to Amy. It was rather conspicuous for them to come to church without their very notable guest, who was to be of such importance in the social life of St. Nite’s.…

“No, I have never been here before,” replied the Italian girl; and then she, also, referred to last Sunday. “I would not come to the service, you know; I knew how I should be stared at, and that is rather disagreeable, is it not? I do not think that anyone really approves me--they think that I am peculiar. Miss Drayton almost said so, and so did the vicar’s wife. They asked me if I were going to continue to wear these foreign clothes, and they did not say it very kindly; although I think they were trying hard to be kind all the time.”

“I am sure,” replied the young man warmly, “that nothing in the way of unkindness could have been meant; but, of course, no one here has ever seen anything like you.” (“Nor I either,” he added to himself, “neither in London nor in Paris.”)

It was not peculiar that she startled a Cornish village, when she would have been remarked in the finest society of any capital.

“Oliver should take you away,” he added uneasily. “You will find it very dull here.”

“Everyone says that,” smiled the Countess Fanny, “but indeed I do not find it dull at all.”

At this moment she had no air of finding anything dull. She seemed to illuminate even this lugubrious and dreary building. She showed, in those long, dim lantern rays, with all the poise and grace and vivid loveliness of a spring-time flower against the dark lines of the pillar and the darker lozenges of the funeral hatchments.

“Where are the Flimwel graves?” she asked, as lightly as if she spoke of some pleasing and commonplace object.

Lucius Foxe winced from this careless expression, which seemed to show him how little she understood of anything. Even he, not so much older than she was in years, was startled, almost repelled, by such a light and indifferent attitude to life and death; an attitude even more careless than that of a child who is unfrightened by the dark, and tales of ghosts and goblins.

But the Countess Fanny seemed impervious to any such fanciful or mysterious terrors. She moved with her light, buoyant step down the gloomy aisle, and Lucius Foxe followed her, holding the lantern.

She glanced at the mural tablets, the urns and draperies, the skulls and crossbones, the weeping figures, the long Latin inscriptions; sometimes she paused, and with a fine finger traced the half-effaced letters, striving to discover the name of Flimwel.

It was there often enough, and he must pause and hold the lantern up, that she could read the lists of the pieties, charities, and virtues of her ancestors pompously engraved on tablet and scroll; and his name was there also--frequently enough, too--and she must read that out aloud, again and again, half laughing: “‘Lucius Foxe,’ ‘Lucius Foxe’; how many of them, eh?”

“This is a sad place,” replied the young man, “and I seldom come here--and never with pleasure!”

The Countess Fanny replied that she did not think it sad at all.

“We all of us must die,” she remarked, with her brilliant smile, “and why should we fear to contemplate death?”

“But these”--he was surprised into a familiar and intimate form of address--“but these are curious sentiments for so young a woman!”

“I have been well educated,” said the Countess Fanny. “Madame de Mailly taught me many things that young women do not usually know.”

She had reached the altar now, and stood there curious, glancing up and down the steps--at the tablets with the Commandments, the alabaster statue of the knight in armour who knelt here in perpetual adoration, the altar itself, which cast now a feeble glimmer from the gold metal and candlesticks thereon. Hot-house flowers from Lefton Park drooped in the chill, bleak air. Their whiteness had a ghastly and a deathlike look.

“So this is a Protestant church,” mused the girl; “and I am a Protestant now. When we stopped in Paris, Oliver insisted on that. I went to the Protestant church there, at the Embassy, you know. It was all odd, and Madame de Mailly was very angry indeed. But what does it matter? Madame de Mailly herself always taught me that one should never be a bigot.”

The young man endeavoured to rouse himself from a state of drowsy fascination; the scene and the girl seemed alike unreal. Never before had he been in the church at such an hour, alone with such a companion. He had always been sensitive to the thought of death, which thought was associated very intimately in this peculiar spot--in this church where all his ancestors lay beneath his feet when he came there to a service.

He had, in his extreme youth, often been assailed by terrible visions of what lay beneath those smooth stones: mouldering coffins, decaying skeletons--all the hideous panoply of decay; and it was astonishing to him to behold this foreign girl, a stranger, so unaffected by an atmosphere which to him had always been full of dread and gloom. So serene was she, so flashing with life, that she seemed to the young man like a symbol of resurrection herself--a flower, a lily-bell, growing from a grave. Standing on the altar steps, and glancing round at the half-hidden memorials of the past, she said:

“Is it not strange to think that, with them, it is all over, and with us, scarcely begun?”

“That thought does not depress you?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “Madame de Mailly used to say that if one permitted oneself to be depressed by the thought of death, who could ever be joyful? These people all had their day; and now it is your turn and mine.” She must unintentionally have coupled their names, yet the fact that she had done so gave the young man a curious pang, a deep thrill. He moved away from the altar steps, and the withdrawal of the lantern left her in darkness; and from that darkness he heard her voice:

“So little time for any of us--eh, Lucius? Such a small life!”

“But we can plan it,” he answered uneasily. “We can plan our lives so as to make the best of them.”

“But we cannot,” she said, descending from the altar steps and coming beside him. “We cannot plan our love.”

She looked at him without embarrassment, and added almost immediately:

“Tell me about the lighthouse.”

“The lighthouse?” repeated Lucius stupidly. “This is hardly the place in which to talk about the lighthouse.”

“But I want to hear; and what time do we ever get alone?” she answered. “There was a promise that you should take me to the lighthouse, but with every day the weather’s more stormy. Don’t you want to take me there?”

He parried that, and said:

“Why are you so fascinated with the lighthouse?”

“Why are you?” she countered.

“Oh, with me it is different! My family first built that lighthouse--quite a long time ago. It was theirs, you know; and they made a great deal of money out of it, with dues and tolls: and that seemed wrong to me--almost like blood money. Well, that was before my time, then the place was bought by Trinity House. It is one of the wildest and most lonely in the kingdom, you know, once it had been swept away.” He began to talk with some animation, forgetting the place in which he stood. “There is nothing, I think,” he continued, “like the ocean, nothing quite so grand and mysterious. I have felt a different man when I have been out on the rocks or in the lighthouse; and what more sublime symbol could anyone wish than that light, held aloft through the storm, giving protection and safety? I am interested in engineering also,” he continued hurriedly, as if making an explanation which must be made. “I should like to build bridges, and palaces--yes, and hospitals also, great buildings of all kinds, but I have had very little training, and my schemes are not at all practicable.”

The girl did not answer, and Lucius Foxe concluded hastily:

“But, of course, you cannot be interested in all this--to you the lighthouse is just a curiosity.”

“No,” she said, “no! Why will you not take me there?”

“I will take you there if you wish,” replied the young man uneasily. “We must ask Oliver about it.”

“Oliver!” said the Countess Fanny. “Is Oliver to be the master in everything?”

“I suppose,” answered Lucius Foxe, “that so you have decided, since you are to marry him.”

“I can make him do as I wish,” replied the girl with animation.

“Then make him bring you to the lighthouse,” said Lucius, and added immediately: “It is getting very cold here, we’d better return.”

She followed him slowly down the aisle between the high pews and the higher pillars, and the funeral hatchments and the mural tablets, all emblazoned with the arms and names of the dead.

“Do you think there will be any great storms this winter?” she asked.

“Everyone says as much,” he replied. “There is hardly a winter here when there are not storms. Two oceans meet round this point, and it is most exposed to winds.”

“I want to be in a storm!” said the Countess Fanny. “All my life, you know, I have lived in the sun, and peacefulness.”

“You won’t care for it,” he smiled. “Oliver ought to take you to London: you have friends there, of course?”

“Oh, yes--and in Paris, too; but I wish to remain here.”

They had left the church, and come out into the little porch, which darkened over them. The last bleak, lurid light of day glimmered on innumerable white headstones and stone vases, swathed with stone drapery, on the railings round ponderous altar tombs, and on the immemorial blackness of the mighty yew, which blotted out in its shadow yet more glimmering graves.

“I suppose,” said the Countess Fanny, “that they will bury me here. I shall be ‘Fanny Sellar’--a name on one of these stones.”

“Do not say that,” cried the young man at once; “don’t talk of such a thing!”

“Why not--did you think I was immortal?”

And he replied:

“Just now, it seemed to me you were! At least, I cannot think of you and death in the same breath.”

“But I shall be old,” she answered, “and not pretty any more; and then no one will regret me.”

“I wish you would not stay here!” he murmured. “I really cannot endure for you to stay here!”

“Amy,” she reminded him, “has been here all her life.”

“Amy belongs to the place,” he answered. “She is part of St. Nite’s. But you come from another country--almost from another world, I think.”

The Countess Fanny serenely accepted this extravagant speech:

“I believe I do!” she said. “But Amy--yes, of course, you are taking Amy away, are you not, in the spring? And I am staying behind.”

He did not answer, but preceded her down the brick path, lighting her way by that raised lantern. The long beams picked out tombs, one tomb after another, during their progress. He observed the names, the dates, the bleak harshness of the grey stone. The wind met them, and fluttered her long ringlets and the plume in her hat. He heard her laugh excitedly in the gathering twilight, which to him was so full of menace and even spite.

“It is too dark for us to ride home,” he said, in rising agitation. “You must go and stay with the Spragges, while I send for a carriage.”

“I should like to ride home through the dark,” said the Countess Fanny, pausing at the lych-gate.

The little yellow crude lights of the village gleamed, scattered beneath them; the village street wound down to the cove. Above them, light vaporous clouds whirled to a stormy confusion, and as they paused, looking upwards both together, by a common impulse, these clouds were torn apart, and in the rift appeared the crescent of the new moon, icy cold and unutterably far away.

“A gate,” murmured the Countess Fanny; “we are standing in a gate--at the entrance to something--and holding a lantern. True, is it not?”

“You are very fanciful,” replied the young man uneasily; and then, after both looking at the moon together, they looked at each other in that dim, uncertain and treacherous light, just touched with colour by the edges of the lantern beams which shone from a down-hung hand. His life had always been very quiet and monotonous; neither at home, at school, nor at college had he made many friends nor attracted much attention towards himself; and, even when he had gone abroad, it had been in a modest manner, for he was neither much impressed nor much impressed anyone else. Everything about him had always been ordinary; he had been restricted by the lack of means suitable to his position, and by a lack of energy and vigour in his own character: content with Lefton Park of his ancestor; content with attendance on a sick father, and dutiful visits to dutiful relatives; content with his dreams, clustering round the lighthouse, his fancies and caprices and whims, gathering round the lighthouse; content to drift into that engagement to Ambrosia Sellar.

As he lingered here now, gazing at the dark foreign girl, whose brilliant face was so near to his own, all these reflections rushed on him, bringing with them an amazing sense of his own futility, his own stupidity. He felt as if he had hitherto lived in a dream or trance, and that the awakening was painful unto agony.

The girl watched his clear grey eyes falter under the reddish brows, and a faint colour stain that long, smooth, pale face, so precisely set off by the exact folds of the white neckband.

“How the wind is rising!” she cried joyously. “It is rising high, high above the clouds. Look--it seems as if it would sweep even the moon out of place.”

As if he were painfully endeavouring to break a spell, the young man withdrew his fascinated regard from her.

“We cannot ride back now,” he said; “it would be too dangerous.”

“But the danger is all!” she answered. “What is anything if there is not a risk to it? Why, we are risking all in even being alive!”

This was a new philosophy to Lucius Foxe. He had always been taught, and had always accepted, the doctrines of prudence and safety. He had always believed, as he had told the Countess Fanny, just now in the church, that a man can plan his life; and she had countered with the remark, “We cannot plan our love.” His blood had stirred to that, as it stirred now to her speech of risk and danger. It might be that she was right, and he a sluggish fool, with his conventions and prejudices, with his prudence and foresight, with his acceptance of the easiest and most immediate path.

“But I cannot risk your safety,” he smiled, with an effort to cover his own roused emotion, “by taking you home now through the darkness and the wind, the road is not too good, and we might easily have an accident.”

“Are you always so cautious?” she flashed. “I should not have thought it, you know! Cautious and young--that is not admirable in you.”

“They will be wondering what has become of you,” murmured Lucius. “See, the blacksmith is at his door, with the horses: he also is surprised that we have been so long in the church.”

“And yet we have not been long enough,” said the Countess Fanny. “We have really seen nothing, and I must come again.”

They crossed the steep village street down which the wind was rushing in its impetuous travelling to the sea. They could just hear the boom of the surf on the rocks beyond the cove.

“You must go and stay with Mrs. Spragge,” said Lucius, “while I send for the carriage.”

She did not appear to hear these words; at least she took no heed of them, but stood there in the rough street, listening to the wind and looking up at the wild storm clouds, the cold serenity of the night heavens beyond, and the icy slip of moon, like a splinter of ice indeed in those remote regions beyond the clouds.

She had taken off her hat with the long white plume, and her hair was fluttering away from her face, down towards the sea--caught in the tempestuous passage of the wind. Lucius would not look at her. He went to the blacksmith’s door, and spoke to him hasty and ill-considered words about the horses, suggesting first that they rode at once, and then that it was not fit for a lady to return at this hour.

“She can wait in the vicarage,” he said confusedly, “and I will go to Sellar’s Mead and have the carriage sent.”

And then he decided differently from that, and asked if there was a messenger--someone who could ride at once to Sellar’s Mead.

The blacksmith stood humbly, listening with an air of deference to these contradictory orders; yet for all that Lucius thought he detected a leer in the man’s coarse face, and he blamed himself bitterly for this predicament. Of course they should never have stopped to go into the church. Of course he should have taken her home immediately. This careless, brilliant girl had induced him to act most foolishly. His present dilemma was solved for him by the sudden appearance of Oliver Sellar, who had ridden up to the village to discover the whereabouts of the Countess Fanny. He had taken the precaution to bring the carriage with him. As he drew rein at the blacksmith’s, Lucius beheld at once that he was in a violent temper.