Chapter XVI

Mrs. Trefusis, the housekeeper at Lefton Park, looked with dismay and hostility at the figure standing in the portico, blown upon and ruffled by the continuous stormy wind. It was a second before she knew this guest to be the foreign young lady from Sellar’s Mead, whom she had from the first disliked and mistrusted: the young lady whom they called the “Countess Fanny”--but was no such thing in the eyes of Mrs. Trefusis, but a nameless foreigner who deserved little consideration.

The girl’s shawl and bonnet were wet, and her long skirt draggled at the hem from traversing the wet grass of the park and the muddy roads of the country-side.

Mrs. Trefusis marked, with increasing disapproval, her ungloved and ringless hand, and soaked shoes, which were of the finest kid.

“I want to see Mr. Lucius Foxe,” said the girl, as if wholly unconscious of anything peculiar in either her looks or the manner of her visit.

“You mean Lord Vanden, ma’am,” replied the housekeeper severely.

“Oh, yes--that is his title, is it not? I did not quite know how you called people here. Can I see him, please--and immediately?”

“I do not think so, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Trefusis grimly. “His lordship is not, I believe, in the house.”

“Then I will wait for him,” replied the Countess Fanny, still without the least trace of self-consciousness. “Perhaps I could see the Earl?”

“Indeed, ma’am, that you cannot; the Earl is not at all so well this morning; he had one of his heart seizures last night, and there are two doctors there. Lord Vanden has been very occupied with that. It was difficult, in the storm yesterday, to get someone over from Truro, his young lordship being on the lighthouse, and all that. Indeed, ma’am, you cannot see either the Earl or Lord Vanden this morning.”

“But I can come in?” asked the Countess Fanny haughtily. “I cannot wait here in the wind and the rain. I have walked over two miles from Sellar’s Mead, and I am most exhausted; I have had no breakfast, either. Pray let me pass, and get me some refreshment!”

Mrs. Trefusis was too well trained to be able to resist a tone of authority on the part of a superior. She moved aside, but with an ill grace, and allowed the Countess Fanny to enter the wide hall.

“Where is there a fire?” the girl asked.

“In the withdrawing-room, I suppose, ma’am,” said Mrs. Trefusis, vexed. “I perceive that you are very wet and blown, and it is indeed wild weather for a young lady to be abroad.”

“There are times,” said the Countess Fanny, “when the weather, however wild, is of no moment at all. Is this the door?” And she opened that at her right, which led into a large room, where, however, no fire was burning.

“The room beyond,” said Mrs. Trefusis, stiffly and crossly, and without offering to conduct this, to her, most unwelcome guest.

The Countess Fanny took no further heed of her, but crossed the long room which, with the green panels, indigo tapestry, and a few black, sombre pictures, was gloomy enough on this dark morning. But in the room beyond was a fire. It was a smaller chamber, and one more frequently used by the inhabitants of Lefton Park; and there, at this moment, was Lucius, discontentedly turning over a pile of papers and letters at a little desk which stood in front of the one small, uncurtained window.

The Countess Fanny gave a joyful exclamation, and stepped forward lightly, holding out her hand as if unconscious of any possibility of rebuke or rebuff.

“Well, Lucius!” she exclaimed. “So that cross old woman did not tell the truth after all! You _are_ here! I thought you would be. It is a very stormy morning for anyone to go abroad. Why,” she added hurriedly, on a panting breath, “I saw the trees fall even as I came through the park at Sellar’s Mead; and the wind is terrible--I could hardly keep my feet sometimes, and had to crouch against the hedges till the gusts went by. I think my shawl is torn,” she laughed, “and my bonnet is battered--see!” She snatched it off, and her black ringlets fell in a cloud on to her shoulders. She dashed the bonnet on to a chair and took his reluctant hand in hers; for he was standing and staring at her with dismay, not untouched with horror.

“What has happened, Fanny?” he stammered. “What has happened?”

She laughed again, and approached the fire, holding out her stiff, cold fingers to the genial heat.

“Look at my shoes--they are soaked, and even split! What shall I do, Lucius? I have never walked so far before, and I thought these shoes were so stout; and see, they have been no use at all. And yet I had to put them on because they are so pretty! One cannot help choosing a pretty thing if one has it--can one?”

“Yes, you are wet!” he cried. “And will be ill, I must send for Mrs. Trefusis, or one of the maids.”

“No, don’t do that,” she smiled, “for Mrs. Trefusis was very cross with me. She did not want to let me in--said that you were abroad, and that the Earl was ill.”

“It is quite true that my father is ill,” replied Lucius uneasily. “When I arrived yesterday I found that they had sent for another doctor, besides Dr. Drayton; but that is of no matter now--you must change your shoes, and have some hot milk or cordial.”

“I should like something,” said the Countess Fanny; “I have had no breakfast this morning.”

“No breakfast! What do you mean?”

“I mean that I cannot eat anything more in Oliver Sellar’s house,” she replied.

He rang the bell.

“Oh, Fanny--what has happened? What sort of a tangle are we involved in?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I can scarcely tell if it is a tangle or not. You see, I told Oliver some days ago that I could not marry him. I told him that I had been wrong--light, a flirt and a rattle, as he calls me; but I was quite honest, really. From the moment that I knew I couldn’t do it, I said so. And he would not accept that; he said that I must stay there, and marry him in the spring; and last night he was very angry because I had been to the lighthouse.”

“I knew he would be!” cried Lucius. “You should have let me come with you!”

“Then it would have been worse,” she said candidly. “He was so angry that his man, Jefferies, met me in the drive and told me to go in the back way; but of course,” she added simply, “I could not do that. I went in and faced him--and he was terrible!”

“What did he do?” breathed Lucius.

“First there was Amy. Amy blamed me. Amy said I provoked him and destroyed everyone’s peace; but he provoked me first, by refusing to let me go out, by refusing to accept my decision that I could not and would not marry him. But Amy was hard and unkind. She shut the door in my face, and left me there in the hall; and then Oliver came in, and asked me into his room, and of course I went.”

“But Oliver--Oliver--surely he----” stammered Lucius.

“He behaved very badly,” said the Countess Fanny calmly. “He lost his temper and his manners. I think he is rather a dreadful man. He ended by taking me by the shoulders and shaking me. I don’t want to talk about that--but I have never been treated in that manner before, and, of course, I shall not return to the house.”

Lucius did not trust himself to speak. Mrs. Trefusis had come, in answer to the ring, and he was glad of her appearance, for it gave him a few moments’ respite.

He asked, hurriedly and nervously, for refreshment for the Countess Fanny, and for shoes and stockings--surely the maids had something? Could she not be taken up to one of the bedrooms?

But here the Countess Fanny interrupted.

“I will remain here, if you please. Pray do not look so disagreeable and angry with me, Mrs. Trefusis, but just bring me these things that Lord Vanden--is it not?--has asked for, and I shall be greatly obliged to you.”

The housekeeper left the room in silence.

“How unkind everyone seems here!” remarked the Countess Fanny coolly. “All the women, I mean--so harsh and severe!”

“She thinks it odd that you are here,” murmured Lucius. “Of course, it _is_ strange: you should have thought a little, Fanny. I cannot save you from yourself, it seems.”

“You too are dry and cold to-day!” cried the girl with vivacity. “I should have thought you would have been glad to see me--distressed, but glad! Are you not glad to see me sitting here?”

Glad! He had always thought of her as a branch of flowers, as a bouquet of brilliant red roses; and in this old house, which so long had been dull and monotonous to him, she was indeed like colour and radiance and melody; all life, every second, seemed to move to a different music when he was in the presence of the Countess Fanny, so lovely and so self-assured, so intent upon her own brilliant business of being beautiful, so radiating life--life at its fullest and most wonderful, blown in from the storm, from the greyness and the dark, like a brilliant butterfly, or a gorgeous bird, helpless but gallant. But he must keep his head--he must think of the best for her and for Amy. He had to drag Amy into his thoughts; that was a plain duty--and he had been always trained to put his duty first.

“Fanny,” he said hoarsely, “we will think of something to do; you shall not be forced to do anything that you do not wish to do. Believe that. Confide in us, my father and me--we will think of something. You shall go back to Italy, or to your friends in London or Paris.”

“But I,” she replied, “wish to stay here.”

“Stay here, in Lefton Park?”

“Yes,” she said. “I like your father; he likes me: and you----”

Lucius looked away.

“I like you too, Fanny; but you cannot stay here!”

“How odd and cold you are!” she said wonderingly. “Are you afraid?”

“Yes,” replied Lucius gravely, “I am afraid!”

“Of what?” she challenged.

“Of what may happen to you,” he answered; “and there’s Amy also.”

Mrs. Trefusis did not return; in her stead she sent a maid, who was far more respectful, and even sympathetic. She had brought Fanny her shoes--her own very best, she said, but hardly good enough for the young lady.

“These are very pretty,” said the Countess Fanny, gracious at once in response to this courtesy. “And I will buy you another pair--blue kid, if you will, with silver ties; that will be pleasant, will it not? And I see you have brought me some milk and cakes; I shall be very glad of those. You are a kind, sweet girl, and I am greatly obliged to you.”

The girl blushed violently, and gave the brilliant foreigner a look of worship.

“Now,” said the Countess Fanny to Lucius, “you may look out of the window, if you please, and I will change my shoes; otherwise I fear I may get a chill, and perhaps a sore throat, and that would be very disagreeable.”

Lucius moved obediently to the window, and stared out at the greyness of the sky and the park, where he seemed to see the wind, like a visible thing, rushing over the tops of the trees and bowing them beneath its progress.

The maid changed the young lady’s soaking shoes and stockings, and put on those of her own; and again the Countess Fanny thanked her, with her graceful, self-confident manner. And then they were alone again, and she said to Lucius:

“Come back to the fire now. See, they have brought me some breakfast, and I feel revived already.”

In that moment or two when he had stood by the window, he had endeavoured to formulate some plan of conduct. This was a difficult and unexpected situation, and he was totally unprepared to meet it; but there must be some way out. He had always been taught that--that, whatever the situation, there was some strong and honourable way out. But here he could not, for the moment, find it. He was too young and inexperienced, and his emotions too disturbed. In those brief moments he had been conscious of nothing but the greyness without and the rush of the embattled wind, and the sweep backwards of the bare trees under its onslaught.

No, he had not been able to think of anything honourable and sensible and just. Bitterly he regretted the illness of his father. It was impossible for him now to disturb the old man. Agitation or a shock might be fatal to him. He could not, in common humanity, plague his father with this affair; he must settle it alone and by himself. He had no friends here; nor was it, in the face of this intense tempest, easy to communicate with anyone.

The Countess Fanny drank her milk and nibbled her biscuits with as serene an air as if she had been mistress in her own house.

“I feel safe and happy and free here,” she declared. “It has been dreadful at Sellar’s Mead, shut in my room, and with that horrible face of Oliver’s always so dark and scowling, so staring and greedy; and Amy pinched and grim. Horrible, I say!”

“Oh, but Amy is your friend,” he protested. “Amy would help you! Amy, I am sure, you misunderstand.”

She looked at him directly, and said:

“Don’t pretend to me, Lucius--you don’t love Amy, you know; and I don’t think Amy loves you! That was also a mistake, was it not?”

Lucius could not answer.

The Countess Fanny rose. She seemed to be suddenly impressed by the reluctance of Lucius, by his hesitation and half-heartedness, and she said, almost haughtily:

“Why are you so dull and slow?”

The young man answered that challenge with almost equal haughtiness:

“Because of what I may not say; but because of what you, I think, can very well guess!”

“You love me, don’t you?” asked the girl, in the same proud tone. “Several men have loved me, and out of them all I choose you. I have come to you now.”

“Oh, Fanny!” he groaned.

“Why should it distress you so? I am well-born and well-dowered; I shall make you quite a good wife. I am not such a fool as Oliver says; not now, since I have met you. For I love you, Lucius, and you must have known it from the moment you first saw me.”

“I didn’t wish to know it,” replied the young man desperately. “I don’t wish to know it now. We must not talk like this, Fanny. I dare say you only do it to try me; I must think of it like that!”

“You don’t believe what I say?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“No, Fanny, of course not!” replied the unfortunate young man, hardly knowing what he said. “I think you play with me, make a game of me, and it is all impossible and dreadful! I must think of Amy.”

“You must think of Amy before me?” she demanded. “What is Amy to you?”

“She is the woman I have promised to marry,” he replied. “One can’t forget that so easily.”

“But Amy will set you free when she knows,” said Fanny, with surprise at his protest. “Amy can find someone else, she is much older than you, and, as I say, you don’t love her! Why, it is impossible that you should love her! But you do love me, I can’t be mistaken in that!”

“Fanny,” broke in the young man desperately, “you must not talk so, and I must not listen! We are involved in a lunacy! You shall not marry Oliver--I will see to that, but I can’t break my bond to Amy, that is out of the question. You must not stay here, I should be doing you a wrong to allow it. You must leave, and at once, Fanny,” he added sternly. “You don’t understand this country, you don’t know what you are doing.”

She went pale under his stare.

“I would not have believed you would have spoken to me so!” she cried. “It seems impossible, when I have come to you like this. What do you think I am going to do, then? Are you sending me away?”

“Yes,” he returned, “I am sending you away, Fanny!”

“Where do you think I am going?”

“You must, of course, return to Sellar’s Mead. Amy is there; that is enough!”

“Oh,” said the girl; “oh!” And she turned away to the fire. No further word or sound than that.

Lucius continued speaking, rapidly, thickly; he felt that he had done a difficult, almost an heroic thing, and that encouraged him. He was denying his own heart and passions as he had denied hers; he strove now to justify himself--spoke of honour, and plighted words, of conventions and obligations, of scandals to be avoided, of gossip to be quenched. He told the girl that she must return to Sellar’s Mead, and leave the house decorously with the full countenance and protection of relatives and friends; said that she could trust in Amy, and even, to an extent, in Oliver.

“Oliver is a gentleman,” he answered, trying to impress this fact upon himself as much as upon her. “You are, after all, safe with Oliver, even if he does lose his temper.”

The Countess Fanny stood with her back to him during this agitated and broken speech, with her hands upon the mantelshelf, staring into the fire. At length she turned round, and said swiftly:

“There is no need for you to make any more of this pragmatical discourse, I understand your meaning very well. I have come to you and you have turned me away.”

“Oh, not that, Fanny, not that!” he cried in despair. “I am trying to do my best for you.”

“You are trying to thwart our destiny, it seems to me,” she said with a bitter smile. “I do not understand you, you are quite right when you say that I do not understand this country.”

“Love is not all the business of life,” said the unfortunate young man gloomily.

“It is all _my_ business,” said the Countess Fanny. Then she added coldly: “So you say I am to return to Sellar’s Mead?”

“I can see nothing else,” said Lucius; “at least for a few days--till something can be arranged. It is impossible for you to remain here.”

She looked at him strangely, intently, with her fingers laid lightly on her bosom, and her eyes sparkling with a deep passion.

“Very well,” she said at length; “I will return to Sellar’s Mead. Do you go and get the carriage, and take me back with all propriety. Amy is expecting a visit from you to-day, and that will do very well, will it not?”

The distracted young man replied faintly that he did not think it would do very well, but it was the best they could do, and he would immediately order the carriage.

“It can somehow be glossed over, no doubt,” he said; and she, smiling, said:

“How much you think of those things--glossing over!”

“It is for your sake,” he replied hoarsely. “I have to think of you, for myself, of course, it does not matter.”

“Order the carriage,” said the Countess Fanny in an expressionless tone.

She moved from the room, and he behind her, they stood side by side in the other long, green chamber, so dark with tapestries and pictures, and that cloudy light of the stormy day without the tall windows.

The Countess Fanny had picked up her bonnet, and now put it on and tied it under her chin.

“Go at once,” she insisted in a still tone. “I will wait for you in the corridor without.”

He was hesitant, baffled, reluctant; he scarcely knew what to do. There happened to be no servants in the hall, and he left her there while he went in search of one, and to find his own coat and hat, thinking also, in a confused manner, of a warm wrap for her. Her shawl was still damp, and he had noticed how storm-beaten was her bonnet, with the pretty wreaths of red flowers hanging limply on the silken straw. What to do for her? Oh, heavens! How to look after her? The problem was too acute.

When he returned to the hall, ten minutes or so later, Mrs. Trefusis was there, but not the Countess Fanny. He immediately and peremptorily asked after the girl.

“She has gone, my lord,” replied the housekeeper, with an air of hostility and surprise. “As soon as you left the hall, I entered it. I saw you, sir, departing, she at once left the house. I watched her across the park, but she is now out of sight.”