Chapter XIII

Lucius and the Countess Fanny rode back side by side across the sombre landscape. The engineers had taken the shorter way to Lefton Park. They were alone on the desolate road, which finally reached St. Nite’s village and Sellar’s Mead.

She had spoken little to him, save to commend the lighthouse, and once, as they passed a lonely farm, to say that, on her way there, she had stopped and spoken to the people.

“You should not have done so,” said Lucius. “They are wild and ill-conditioned folk, disregarded here, where none are too civilised. They have the worst of reputations. You should not have entered their house.”

The Countess Fanny had smiled, and said that the woman had been very kind, and that she had nursed the baby by the fire, and given it a jewel from her wrist.

“She gave me a drink, and set me on the right road. I have no ill will against them; and they are horribly poor! The land here is miserable, is it not--sterile and bleak?”

“Not in the spring,” said Lucius, but heavily. “There are primroses then--masses of primroses.”

“Even on the graves, I suppose?” said the Countess Fanny; and for a while they rode in silence.

The young man knew that he must break that silence; he must discover how she stood in her relations to the Sellars, and what her plans were. She had declared that she could not marry Oliver; what, then, did she propose to do? And yet he had no right to question her, and he did not dare ask her why she had ridden down to the Leopard Rock--to seek him out or to look at the lighthouse? In sheer wilfulness or in despair? And while he conned over all possible manners of speaking to her on this subject, it was she who broached the matter in hand.

“Listen to me, Lucius!” she said suddenly, turning slightly in her saddle and speaking to him directly. “I am not going to marry Oliver; and yet he terrifies me. Now, tell me what I am to do!”

“You must leave Sellar’s Mead, of course,” he answered nervously, “and immediately. He can put no obstacle in your way.”

“But I do not wish to leave St. Nite’s,” she replied. “Besides, I do not think he would let me. He will not accept my decision, Lucius. He says I am a child and a fool, and do not know what I say, and that he will hold me to my promise. And I have conceived such a disgust for him,” added the girl with a shudder, “that I cannot endure that he should approach me; and that infuriates him the more. He says I am a flirt and a rattle, and turned his head for fun. And of course it is true; but one does not expect----” she stopped abruptly.

They were on a desolate stretch of land on top of the cliff, riding inward from the coast; barren burrows and bending trees and sad horizons and grey skies encompassed them. Not in all the prospect could they discern one blade of grass. They rode slowly.

“What of your friend, Madame de Mailly?” asked Lucius.

“Ah--she? She writes to me frequently, but I think that Oliver will endeavour that I shall not get her letters any more, for I was imprudent enough to show him the last one, in which she said much ill of him. She has come to Brest now, which is so much nearer than Calais; and there she is living in discomfort, for me.”

“But you must go to her!” urged Lucius. “Or you have friends in London and Paris. It is of course ridiculous that you should remain here if you wish to go!”

“I want to remain here!” she persisted. “I like the country. I want to spend the winter in Cornwall; but I also want to get away from Oliver. Tell me--what shall I do?”

Oliver felt helpless before this appeal, and it was the last of appeals before which he would have wished to appear helpless. The situation seemed to him both intolerable and to admit of no solution. Well he knew and greatly he dreaded the black, implacable temper of Oliver Sellar. The man loved the girl--in what measure of love it did not greatly matter; he loved her, or felt for her a passion that he would term love; and he would not let her go. How then was he, Lucius, the betrothed of Amy, to rescue the Countess Fanny from this terrible predicament in which she had so lightly involved herself? He had no mother or sister, or near female relative, to whose care he could relegate her--to whose advice he could implore her to listen. Who was there in the village? Miss Drayton, Mrs. Spragge--all those conventional old women who had disliked her from the first.… He thought perhaps Madame de Mailly might be asked to St. Nite’s; but where could she lodge? Her presence would be but an added vexation and an increased scandal.

“Ambrosia,” said the young man, “Ambrosia seems your only friend. What does _she_ suggest?”

The Countess Fanny answered mournfully:

“Did you not see that she disliked me from the first?”

He had seen it, but he knew that it was not usual to talk of such things, and, with some reproach, he told the girl so.

“But why ignore it?” she asked, with her cold candour. “It is very important to me; if Amy liked me, everything would be so much easier. Amy stands apart--says she is not to be tormented with any of it. She does not like Oliver, either. I think,” added the girl with a certain passion, “that no one likes Oliver.”

“Then why?” asked Lucius distractedly, “did you engage yourself to him?”

“Out of lightness and some malice,” she confessed; “because Madame de Mailly provoked me on the subject; because it was amusing to have so stern and gloomy a man devoted to me--and I did not wish to marry the Count, my cousin, and remain in Italy. It seemed very exciting and diverting to come to England. Can’t you understand?”

Lucius could scarcely understand--he was too young and too fastidiously minded. But he could sense something of the situation she wished to convey, and it made him shudder.

“You must get away, then, quickly--you must get away at once.”

“But how?” she asked. “Who will save me from Oliver?”

“I must speak to him,” murmured Lucius. “I will speak to Amy.”

“Amy is angry with you,” remarked the Countess Fanny mournfully, “because you have been so long away; for three days she has watched the clock for your coming, and still you have not come nor sent a letter. And when she heard you had gone to the lighthouse, she was much vexed; she does not like the lighthouse, you know!”

“It is the last of it,” replied Lucius uneasily. “I shall not go there again.” And he remembered his cherished project of spending one of the winter watches out in the lighthouse. That must go, with so much else; it seemed that he was no longer to be his own master, now he was betrothed to Amy.

“I’ll speak to my father,” he said; “he will help.”

“Your father likes me well enough,” smiled the Countess Fanny, “but I do not know if he will help me, because, of course, he will be thinking of you.”

Lucius wanted to say, “How are you and I connected--in his mind or in anyone else’s?” But he could not speak these words. Slowly they rode together across this desolate landscape, and stared at each other now and then, when they were not occupied in guiding their horses over the rough road.

How strange she looked, even now, in her quiet riding-habit. How alien to this grim landscape. Yet something of her bright, flashing radiance was subdued. Something of the light arrogance of her manner was gone. She still bore herself with a negligent gallantry, but this now seemed forced. Lucius observed, and observed with terror, that there was a change in that gay, careless creature whom he had met for the first time in the parlour of Sellar’s Mead, seated so radiantly among her cushions, smiling so indifferently, with such finished pride and cool self-assurance. What emotions had changed her? He believed, and yet dared not believe, that this emotion was fear.

“I will come with you at once to Sellar’s Mead!” he said impulsively. “And speak now, immediately, to Oliver, if you wish.”

She shook her head.

“No; you must not do that. Something terrible might happen if you did that. I do not wish you to come to Sellar’s Mead at all.”

“But I must do so--to see Amy, if for no other reason!”

“Amy can wait till to-morrow. Ride over to-morrow! But I cannot endure--nay, you must not persist, Lucius--I cannot support our joint arrival to-night.”

“You’re afraid of Oliver!” he exclaimed.

The Countess Fanny did not answer.

“Why, then,” he continued desperately, “this expedition, which must vex Oliver to the heart? He will detest the thought of your riding alone so far, and you know he dislikes the lighthouse!”

“But I had to,” she said; “I wanted to see you! And I heard that you were leaving the lighthouse to-day, and there was a chance, was there not?”

“But it has done no good,” he said impatiently, “has it?”

“No good!” she repeated. “I don’t know, but I had to see you. I wanted to tell you. I didn’t want someone else to tell you. From me you get the truth, you see--that I can’t marry Oliver, that he inspires me with repugnance. If you had heard this from Oliver or Amy, they would have told you that I was whimsical and tiresome and malicious, just doing all this to upset their peace; they can’t believe--Oliver won’t believe; and Amy, I think, has no feeling.”

Lucius felt impelled to make some show of loyalty towards Amy.

“Amy is not cold,” he protested. “She disguises her emotions, that is all; it is our English way, you know.”

The Countess Fanny gave a hard smile, and said:

“Of course you must champion Amy, for you are going to marry her--in the spring, is it not? Ah, holy heavens! Where shall _I_ be in the spring?”

They had come now to where the roads divided, one going to Lefton Park and one to Sellar’s Mead, which lay about two miles apart; and there they paused at the cross-roads, side by side on their patient horses in that universal, damp, windy greyness, in that slight sea-wind ruffling the curdled clouds above their heads, and looked at each other and trembled, neither knowing what to say.

“I’ll come with you,” he declared at length. “Whatever happens, I’ll come with you. You’re not to go back alone. See, it is getting dusk again, and Oliver is sure to be angry! Probably he is already searching for you.”

But she was firm in her desire to return to Sellar’s Mead alone.

“I will give Amy a message from you,” she said. “I will say you are coming to-morrow. That will be true, will it not? And to-morrow you need not see me, if you wish, for now I am generally in my own room. There is Luisa, my maid, for company, and books, and my needlework.”

Lucius sensed something ghastly behind these simple words; a far from pleasant picture, that, the girl shut up in her own room; and why? to be rid of Oliver.…

“Tell your father,” she added in earnest tones. “Tell him of my trouble, and get his advice. There is no need to plague him--but ask him what I should do.”

“But it is so clear,” cried Lucius, “what you should do. You should go away.”

“But what should I do?” she said, with a sudden break in her voice, that had been so clear and brave, “if Oliver will not let me go away? Oliver is my guardian, you know, and has all my money and all my affairs till I am twenty-one.”

Lucius had never considered--indeed, had scarcely known--of this aspect of the case, and it appalled him. But he exclaimed instantly:

“Of course Oliver can’t abuse that power. There are your other relations and friends. But it is grotesque for us to discuss this--if you wish to leave Sellar’s Mead, of course you must leave.” And the young man looked at her anxiously, with straining eyes, and no confidence in the bravery of his own words. She intently returned his regard. Her eyes were abnormally large and dark in her pale face, and the black ringlets that fell beneath her hat were ebon itself in the colourless light.

She pulled off one of her gloves and gave him her hand.

“Good-bye!” she said. “And come to-morrow to see Amy, and ask your father about my case; and, indeed, there is no more to be said!”

Indeed, there was no more that he could find to say. He was baffled. He wished to linger there with her; he wished to return to Sellar’s Mead with her; and yet, perhaps she was right. She seemed to have more command of the moment than he could possibly possess.

“Good-bye!” he repeated, and clasped her hand closely. It was cold within his cold fingers, and she drew it away, and rode past him and down the lane which led to the estate of Sellar’s Mead.

Why had she come? he mused bitterly, looking after her retreating figure, and hoping that she would glance back; but she did not--she rode resolutely away. Why had she come? There was no sense or reason in that visit--that long ride to the lighthouse, just to say these few words, just to tell him that she could not marry Oliver Sellar: a thing that he would soon have heard, or have guessed, for himself. No sense or reason. But was there anything else? “We cannot plan our love!” He turned, and rode away to Lefton Park.

The Countess Fanny proceeded so slowly and reluctantly on her way that the landscape darkened about her, and straight drives of rain began to fall from the clouds, ceasing from their hurrying flight with the dropping of the wind. She did not mind the splash of the raindrops in her face, nor even the gathering sombre gloom of the winter twilight; as she approached nearer and nearer to Sellar’s Mead, she rode more slowly.

At last the house rose before her, blank and bleak, with the straight façade and the narrow windows and the porticoed door, and the bare parterres in front, and the barren, leafless park on either side.

The Countess Fanny left her horse at the stables, which were some little way from the house, and went her way on foot underneath the bare trees, where the wind made a rocking in the branches, and the rain dripped from one bough to another. The faded grass of last summer was sodden beneath her feet. Now and then she moved through a wet litter of dead leaves. There were lights in the house--pleasant orange lights of lamps and candles, glowing in nearly all the windows. It seemed suddenly much colder; the rain was like ice on her face.

She turned into the iron gates that separated the garden from the park, and moved with her reluctant steps between the shrubs and laurels and bays and tamarisks which had been planted to keep out some of the wind, but which now rustled, dry and withered, an inadequate shelter from winter storms.

As she entered these gates, she saw a man waiting for her, holding a storm-lantern, and it reminded her of Lucius, and the storm-lantern he had taken with him into the church; but this was not Lucius--it would be, of course, Oliver, and she paused.

The man, perceiving her, came forward, and the Countess Fanny observed that it was not Oliver either, but the man Jeffries, his servant, sent to look for her, no doubt. And she was passing on with a smile, but he stepped in front, impeding her way.

“Have you been looking for me?” asked the Countess Fanny, surprised at his stopping her.

“Everyone has been looking for you, my lady,” replied the man, in a whisper. “And it were best if you went in, if I might be so bold as to suggest it, by the back way, and straight up to your room. You could do it, you know,” he added anxiously, “by the servants’ staircase.”

“But why,” said the Countess Fanny, “should I use the servants’ staircase? What do you mean?”

“The master, my lady--he’s angry, like a wild thing, hardly in his right senses, as you might say; and I don’t think it would be wise for you to meet him just now.”

“Ah!” cried the Countess Fanny, and stood still, gazing at the man, who continued to talk vehemently and anxiously, urging her, with respect and terror mingled, not to cross Oliver Sellar’s path just now.

“I have been to see the lighthouse,” said the girl slowly.

“That won’t make it any better, my lady. He’s no love for the lighthouse; and it’s your going out alone again, and at this time of day--and now it’s nearly dark.”

The Countess Fanny interrupted.

“Did Miss Ambrosia send you?” she demanded.

The man shook his head.

“No, my lady--I made bold to come on me own. And the housekeeper, Mrs. Nordon, and Julia, the maid--they both thought you should be warned; and it being my own idea too, I said I’d do it, come what may.”

“Not Amy, then,” reflected the Countess Fanny. “She had no such care of me, eh?”

“My lady, the groom who saddled your horse has lost his place, so maybe I’ll lose mine; but I had to give you this warning. If you slip round the back Julia will let you in, and you could be in your room unobserved.”

The Countess Fanny replied:

“I am much obliged--you are very kind; but I will go in by the front door.”