Chapter XVII

It was another quarter of an hour before Lucius could get his horse out, mount, and ride across the park; and in that ride there was no sign of the Countess Fanny. Not the distant flutter of a pale shawl amid the bare trunks nor even a footprint on the soft ground: nothing that his anxious and frantic gaze could discern; and, when he had left the park, ridden out of the high gates which she must have passed through a short time before, there were several roads in front of him--one straight ahead, across the pasture-land belonging to his father; one either side, running to the rocks and cliffs (for here the point of land was only a few miles wide, and either side reached the sea).

A wild fear knocked at the distracted heart of Lucius Foxe. He could not decide which way to take. Surely she had returned to Sellar’s Mead, and that would be straight ahead! And yet the road was level across the uplands, and he could discern, sharp as his young eyes were, no trace of a figure in the grey distance. How swiftly she must have gone, with the haste of passion, of despair, perhaps of fear! He groaned, and clenched his teeth. If she had intended to return to Sellar’s Mead, why had she not waited for him and the carriage? The day was still terrible; at intervals the rain splashed down from the low, tumultuous clouds, and the wind hardly ceased.

Lucius stayed his restless, nervous horse, and stared about him, in the grip of this terrible indecision. Which way had she gone--which way? Or was she, even still, behind him? Lagging, perhaps, in the park! She might have done that--turned aside; and yet it would be difficult for her to hide behind those bare trees. There was the summer-house--did she know of that? He did not think so; and yet he hesitated, wondering if he should turn back and see if she was hiding in the summer-house. Yet that thought was dreadful, too--she, so bright, so self-confident, so lovely, hiding amid the storm.

She had come to him, and he had sent her away. How cruel and heartless he must have appeared, with his narrow ideas of right and duty, with his sense of the conventions and his horror of scandal. She so bold and passionate! And he had rejected her.

What, after all, _was_ Amy? Less than dust in the scale against _her_!

He took the straight road at length, urging his horse to a gallop across the grey landscape. Of course he must overtake her; it would not be possible for her to evade him, on foot and, by now, weary--ah, poor child, weary.

He thought, with the bitterest remorse, of those soaked shoes, of that neglected breakfast--for she had scarcely touched the milk she had been so glad to see; of the poor, pretty wet bonnet, of the shawl that had been slashed in struggling with the wind; and she, so delicate and fine, so luxurious and fragile, exposed to this horror of cold and wet and sleet, and this bleak and formidable country.

He came within sight of Sellar’s Mead, and still he had not seen her. If she had taken this road, he must, by now, have overtaken her. He paused, again in the clutches of a dreadful indecision. Should he go up to Sellar’s Mead and alarm them? That, surely, would be the right and natural thing to do. Oliver should help in this pursuit; it was Oliver’s business more than his, after all. And then he caught back that reflection. Had she not repudiated Oliver? he demanded of himself fiercely. No; Oliver had no right--no more right than he. Whatever happened--even if Amy took her brother’s part--Oliver should not be allowed to annoy her; nay, scarcely to approach her again.

He did not want to go to Sellar’s Mead now; did not want to face Amy. That was selfish and unkind in him, he knew; Amy must be terribly distressed--she must have found out by now about the flight of the Countess Fanny. It was his duty to go and comfort Amy; yet he could not do it. Could not do anything but continue this wild search for the girl through the storm.

He did not think, in his nervous remorse and terror, that she could long survive the inclemency of the day, and her own emotions working upon her from within. She would be faint, she would be exhausted. She might have to drag herself behind one of these barren hedges, into one of these water-logged ditches, to die.

He turned his horse, and was riding back to his own gate to take one of the other roads when he heard hoofs behind him, and, looking backwards over his shoulder, saw another horseman: Oliver Sellar, of course. Lucius waited.

Oliver Sellar had perceived him, and galloped up alongside and drew rein, and stared at him after the driest salute--stared at him with the bitterest antagonism.

“Why are you here?” he demanded, with scarcely a pretence at courtesy.

“I am looking for the Countess Fanny,” replied Lucius.

“I also search for her,” said Oliver; and the two men stared at each other in the lurid light of the bleak, grey heavens.

Oliver Sellar was more than pale. He seemed to Lucius to be the colour of ashes: a dead greyness in the complexion as in the hair that showed beneath his low-crowned beaver. Massive and grim, he sat his powerful horse, and gave out an atmosphere of vast fury before which the younger man instinctively recoiled. It seemed to him that he had never known Oliver Sellar till this moment, and he wondered how he had ever tolerated him. He had not liked him, of course: he did not know of anyone who ever _had_ liked Oliver Sellar; but he had tolerated him, and from this moment he would tolerate him no more.…

“What did you do to her?” he cried hoarsely.

“What have you done with her?” replied Oliver grimly.

And Lucius closed his eyes and gave a gasping sigh, trying to command himself. If he were not careful he would say too much--he would betray her and himself. The Countess Fanny must be saved--not only from this man, but from the least flick of the tongue of scandal.

“She came just now,” he said in laboured tones. “The Countess Fanny came to Lefton Park.”

“I knew that,” interrupted Oliver fiercely.

“She came to see my father,” continued Lucius, staring now, not at the other man, but over his horse’s head; “and it was not possible for her to see him: he is ill--seriously ill, I am afraid; and I--when I found--when _she_ found, I mean--that my father was ill, she was coming back with me, of course. I ordered the carriage, and left her for a moment or so in the hall. When I came back, she’d gone!”

“That’s all a lie!”

Lucius scarcely appeared to notice this, the strongest insult that anyone had ever given him. He replied, in the same difficult tone:

“No, it’s the truth. I’m looking for her now. Don’t quarrel with me, but help, you go one way, and I’ll go the other. This is a dreadful day for her to be abroad.”

But Oliver did not stir.

“Why did she come to you?” he asked thickly. “This is the third time!”

“No,” said Lucius; “no, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you mustn’t say or think such things! She has not come to me three times.”

“Once you were with her in the church,” stormed Oliver; “once she went to the lighthouse to meet you, and this morning, when I had taken the precaution to lock up all the horses, she must go on foot to find you, eh?”

“Ah, you did that!” cried Lucius. “Locked up the horses, did you? That’s why she had to fly on foot. Don’t you understand that your cruelty has driven her to this? She is frightened of you, Oliver!”

“I would she had been a little more frightened!” the big man replied. “Frightened enough to keep her place, the hussy! Are you going to let her entangle you, you young fool? Don’t you see that she’s an artful minx--one of those foreign pieces, brought up by that Frenchwoman? She can’t see a man but she must try to make him lose his head; aye, and succeed, too, nine times out of ten!”

“She only asked to be allowed to go,” said Lucius. “I can understand what you feel about it. She said herself,” he added, with a deep compassion for the ravaged face of the other man--he might loathe Oliver, but he could feel sorry for him--“she said herself that she had not behaved well, but she has had that kind of upbringing, as you say. You must let her go now, Oliver. Listen, I am trying to speak moderately and quietly, I don’t want us to quarrel, for Amy’s sake.”

“Amy!” said Oliver, violent and sneering together. “Better leave Amy’s name out of it, I should think!”

“Why?” asked Lucius, very pale. “Best bring her name in, I think. She is the only one who can do anything for Fanny, she must look after Fanny till we can find somewhere to send her. You must let her go from Sellar’s Mead, Oliver. It is impossible for her to stay there--you must see that for yourself. It really was always impossible, but you insisted. She knew nothing.”

“She knows more than you think,” cried Oliver bitterly. “She is not the innocent she seems to be--a flirt, I say, experienced with two seasons at Rome. Girls marry at fourteen in Italy. She’s accomplished enough!”

“For God’s sake,” said Lucius, with a cry of almost insupportable pain, “let us leave this ranting, and try to find her. I suppose you have some tenderness left, however you are disgusted with her.”

“Tenderness!” Oliver flung the words back at him as if he would fling back an insult. “Tenderness is not my feeling for the girl, she’s mine, and I mean to have her,” he added coarsely. “I’m going to marry her in the spring, whatever she, or you, or any of you say.”

“But you’re not,” answered Lucius coldly. “Put that out of your head, Oliver, not only are you not going to marry her, but she is to leave Sellar’s Mead immediately.”

Oliver leaned forward from his saddle, thrusting his face close to the shrinking face of Lucius.

“Did she come over to Lefton Park whining to you?” he demanded. “Did she come telling you tales about me?”

“No tales,” replied Lucius, with trembling lips.

“Did she say she had taken an aversion to me, eh?”

“No, not even that, she said that you had not behaved well last night.”

“Ah, she told you about last night, did she? I might have known--the foreign jade, the sneaking piece! Go to you with tales of me! I’ll break her, body and spirit, yet!”

“Don’t talk like that!” cried Lucius wildly, “for even as you speak she may be broken, body and spirit, by another power than yours.”

Oliver Sellar seemed to blench at that. He, too, looked round the wild, desolate, grey-coloured landscape, those bleak, rotting hollows, those iron-coloured distant hills and rocks.

“Where are we to search for her?” he muttered. “Where? Perhaps by now she’s crept back to Sellar’s Mead. I’ll go and see.”

“I don’t think so,” said Lucius. “I don’t think she would return there. I was such a fool as to have been taken in by her; she became meek, all in a moment; said she would come with me--therefore I left her. I can see now that she thought I was betraying her in taking her back, and therefore she has fled.”

A poignant cry broke from Oliver Sellar.

“My God! What are we going to do? Where are we going to search?”

“Everywhere!” replied Lucius. “She can’t have gone far on foot!”

Then the two men stared at each other, forgetting their enmity.

“But there’s the sea!” said Oliver.

“Yes, the sea!” muttered Lucius. “But why do you speak of that? She wouldn’t go to the sea!”

“She’s so wild,” said Oliver. “When she’s in a passion--of course, you don’t know. I’ve seen, in Italy.”

“We must sound the alarms,” said Lucius. “We must send everyone out, searching. We haven’t so many more hours of daylight. The storm grows worse.”

“There’s the scandal,” said Oliver bitterly.

“We’ve got past caring about the scandal, it seems to me,” returned Lucius. “We may say she has gone for a walk, in her queer foreign fashion, and maybe has lost her way. That’s natural enough--it will have to serve, at least, he added impatiently.”

The two men separated on that. Oliver dashed back to Sellar’s Mead--no trace of the girl there. Lucius returned to Lefton Park--no trace of her there. No glimpse of her, no message. Both the men scoured the country in different directions during the next couple of hours, and neither found the Countess Fanny.

By then their apprehensions were so acute that there was no longer any talk of concealment. Both the servants from Sellar’s Mead and those from Lefton Park were sent out in search of the foreign lady who had so strangely disappeared.

With the darkening down of the day the storm increased in violence; the sound of the frantic billows hammering on the precipitous rocks of the coast was borne far inland; even in the sheltered ravine where the village was placed, slates were torn off the roofs and chimneys flung down, while the huge elms and oaks in the park were here and there still uprooted and cast groaning on the ground.

By the time the dusk fell, the whole population of St. Nite’s--that is, all the men and boys--were abroad with lanterns, searching for the Countess Fanny; and the old vicar had gone into the church and put up prayers for the safety of the girl. It was no night for anyone to be abroad, let alone for one like the Countess Fanny to be abroad. Fisher-folk searched the coast--the rocks and caves. She might, they said, have wandered there, or fallen, and be lying with a wrenched ankle at the bottom of some cliff; might have tried to walk along the shore, and been cut off by the tide; might have struck inland, and been lost in the utter loneliness of the fields and hills.

Lucius had not been yet to see Amy. Amy could understand that. She tried to be reasonable and just. Of course he would need to search for the Countess Fanny: that was understood. Of course, in a moment so terrible, he would have no time for her: that also was understood. Yet there were little creeping flames of doubt and jealousy, of disgust and disappointment in her mind. Why had the girl flown to Lefton Park? Why must Lucius be so utterly and entirely absorbed in the search for her? If she, Amy, had come first in his heart, surely he would have found time to come and see her? Oliver also--it was not pleasant to see him so rapt in this obsession; he could think or talk of nothing but the Countess Fanny.

Twice he had returned, and snatched a little food, but not for that reason--only to ask if, by any chance, the Countess Fanny had returned; and, when Amy had said no, he had given her a black look, as if the fault were hers, and, dark and formidable, ridden off again. That day he had tired out three horses.

It had not taken them long to ascertain that the girl could not have left the village. No horse had been hired, nor had the one public coach, which was kept at the inn, left the place; no one had left the village the whole of that short winter day.

The ferry was impassable; the small steamer not running; and it was impossible to reach the little town of St. Lade without using the ferry, just as it was impossible to reach the railway at Truro without going to St. Lade.

Wherever the girl was, she must have reached there on foot, and how far could she get on foot, exhausted as she was already, in such weather as this, wandering over an unknown country?

Oliver Sellar had ridden down to the lighthouse. The few cottages there were searched in vain. None of them had seen or heard anything of the Countess Fanny, though they very vividly remembered the visit of the girl the day before.

On his way back from the lighthouse, Oliver stopped at the one desolate, miserable farm which lay in that bleak and uncultivated district. These were wild people, with an evil reputation, who lived there--people who were the descendants of smugglers and wreckers, and were themselves suspected of being capable of both these practices. Oliver detested them, and had again and again endeavoured to get them removed; but, by some odd chance, their little bit of land was freehold, and they remained there in defiance of the lord of Sellar’s Mead.

When he enquired now about the Countess Fanny, they stared at him with stupid malice, and said they had never seen such a lady; but one of the younger women struck in and said yes, yesterday _she_ had seen such a lady, who had come in and been pleasant to the child, and given it a jewel; and she showed a little turquoise, set with pearls, that the Countess Fanny had yesterday hung round her baby’s neck. But to-day, she said, she had seen no one, nor was it very likely that anyone should come to their wretched and desolate habitation.

Oliver knew this was true; he had only asked in despair. He turned away now sullenly, with an evil and a formidable look for the inhabitants of Pen Hall Farm.

When he reached home again he was, for all his strength, exhausted, and had to throw himself into the chair by the fire, drinking brandy heavily in the hope of keeping up his powers so that he might again pursue the search, even through the night.

“This is madness, Oliver!” Amy said sharply. “Leave it now to other people; they are doing all that can be done--they know the coast, at least, better than you, and I am sure the girl is safe somewhere,” she added bitterly. “What is likely to have befallen her?”

“Hold your tongue!” said Oliver savagely. “You would be only too glad if she never was seen again, I dare say. But it is different with me. I won’t be treated like this--I won’t be cheated, I tell you!”

“But if she has run away from you,” Amy reminded him, “you cannot drag her back by force.”

“Oh, can’t I?” asked Oliver violently. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Hold your tongue, woman--hold your tongue!”

Julia, the maid, came into the lamp-lit parlour with a frightened air. A fisherman was without, she said. He had brought something to show Mr. Sellar.

“Oh, heavens!” cried Amy. “Not something dreadful!”

“I don’t know, miss,” said Julia, white-lipped, “that you’d call it something dreadful; it’s just a bonnet and a shawl.”

Oliver had staggered to his feet, and come round the dark, gleaming expanse of the mahogany table.

“Show it to me,” he said hoarsely. “Show it to me.”

But there was the fisherman in the doorway, standing wet, halting, and awkward; and in his big rough hands was a pale cashmere shawl, and a little bonnet of fine Tuscan straw, with flat wreaths of red flowers on it, all wet and bent and tattered.

“I found them on the rocks, sir,” he said awkwardly; “down there by Pen Coed Cove.”

Then Oliver Sellar did a dreadful thing. He snatched the bonnet and shawl, and tore them across, with his big trembling hands, and screamed:

“Damn you! Damn you all!” and dropped, in a convulsive fit, across the table.