Chapter XIX

“This must not go on any longer,” said the old man absently, yet with unconscious love fingering the boxes with his frail treasures. “Her other guardian, her uncle, should be informed. There should be notices in the paper; there must be a question of property, too. One detests to mention these things, but the poor child must have had an heir. She was, I believe, of some notable wealth. To whom does this go?”

“Oliver will know,” replied Ambrosia dully. “I do not. I suppose to these Italians, since there are no further English relations. You see, the country is so unsettled there, and in such a difficult state, that her mother, being an Englishwoman herself, greatly desired her to have the shelter of England, and to live on her English estate; for I believe the Caldinis stand neither well with the Pope nor the Archduke. They are, of course, Italians without any foreign blood whatever, and are not likely to come over here.”

“They will sell the estate, I suppose,” said the old Earl. “They should be told, I think,” he added, “in sheer justice. It will look odd, and perhaps worse than odd, if they find this death has been concealed so long.”

“But all the money owing to them from the first can be paid,” said Ambrosia anxiously. “There is no question of that, of course.”

“What have you done with her maid?”

“I have her still,” said Ambrosia, with a shiver of aversion. “A most impossible creature, crying on her mistress day and night, refusing either to work or rest!”

“Why don’t you send her home?”

“She won’t go; besides, the weather--the ferry has been impossible ever since Fanny disappeared.”

“Well, she must be sent back,” replied the old man, with some energy, “on the first chance. It is all very hard on you, my dear! After all, the poor child was no friend or relation of yours. You did not even, I believe, very much like her?” he added, frankly. “And that I can understand.”

“I endeavoured to like her,” said Ambrosia.

“Yes, my dear--I know, I know; but you did not find it very easy. She was wilful and difficult, of course, and it was a very odd thing in Oliver to bring her here like this.” Then he ventured to ask what he had not ventured, in the first hurry and alarm of the tragedy, to ask before: “Was there any quarrel--any severe disagreement with Oliver--the night before? You may as well tell me, my dear child! It might help one to come to some sort of a conclusion.”

“There was a quarrel,” said Ambrosia; “I expect everyone guesses as much, though no one is likely to speak of it; and she provoked him--you know that I admit the violence of Oliver’s temper and the disagreeableness of his manner--but certainly she exasperated him! For the second time she went out alone, and on this occasion a long way--down to the lighthouse where she had been forbidden to go. Continually she had asked Oliver to take her----”

The old Earl interrupted:

“Why didn’t he? Why push it to this point, with a wilful creature like that? Why shouldn’t Oliver have taken her? You should have advised him to be a little more gentle, my dear.”

“Oliver wouldn’t listen to me,” replied Ambrosia with some warmth. “I spoke to him, and got abused for my pains. I asked him to be considerate and gentle, but it was useless. And, as I say, she exasperated him. She refused to marry him--said she could not and would not keep her word.”

“Well, she was right in that--it showed honesty, anyway,” said the old man quietly.

“I know; but at the same time, you know, with a man like Oliver, and his temperament… she had led him on in Italy; she admitted that herself. She tried to turn his head, and seemed to think that was nothing--part of her business.”

Ambrosia could not keep all the bitterness out of her voice, but she was irritated by the way the old Earl smiled indulgently, and said:

“Well, with that face, I am not so sure, my dear, that it wasn’t her business.”

“Was her face to excuse everything?” demanded Ambrosia proudly.

“Well, she had more than her face,” mused the Earl, “She was a very radiant and gay and lovely creature, my dear. There was something most uncommon about her, I must admit, and I suppose, in the brightness of her youth, she had a certain licence. After all, it’s generally supposed to be the man’s business, you know, he’s got to take the risk of having his head turned, as you call it. He’s got to try and keep his self-control with a young creature like that. There must have been a few, you know, who were very willing to have their heads turned.”

“So she reminded me,” said Ambrosia coldly.

“Well, she was frank, anyway,” smiled the old man, “poor creature. I dare say she’d have been a very good wife, after all, they often are, you know, my dear. Their own beauty and their own power intoxicates them a little when they are very young, but afterwards they become the dearest and most loyal creatures.”

“That is the man’s point of view,” remarked Ambrosia drily. “You also, I think, were quite entranced by the Countess Fanny.”

“Ah, well,” he replied, “I didn’t see very much of her. But she did seem to me a very radiant sort of girl, and very finished, too, her manners were very pretty to an old man. I believe she was warm-hearted underneath all her coquetries, and I can’t quite bear, even now, to think of her out on those rocks, and----”

“It was an accident,” exclaimed Ambrosia.

The old man peered at her.

“Why do you interrupt me like that--with that word? Of course it was an accident; who says anything else?”

“I believe,” murmured Ambrosia, looking away, “that many people think a great deal else; you must have heard those rumours, sir.”

“No,” said the old man stoutly. “No one would have dared to say anything like that to me. Of course I know quite well what you mean, but I have no reason to suppose it true.” And he added, with an air of authority: “Have you?”

Ambrosia was silent.

“If you have any such grounds,” added the old man sternly, “I shall find it very hard to tolerate your brother.”

“Why blame him?” flashed Ambrosia. “What of her, and her part in it?”

The old man looked at her sharply, and with some indignation; a faint flush tinged his fragile cheeks.

“Her part in it?” he repeated. “I marvel at you, Amy, speaking so ungenerously. She was a girl, not eighteen years old, and he a man of forty and over; he’s alive, at least, and she’s dead; you must know, as well as I, my dear, that a young girl so full of vitality as she was, so lovely and so eager, must have been most bitterly moved to drown herself on such a morning as that morning when she disappeared.”

Ambrosia rose.

“I never suggested she drowned herself!”

“No, but that is what you were insinuating. That, according to you, is what many people think, and dare not say; and yet you would have Oliver free from blame. And _I_ say,” added the old man with a certain violence, “that if that poor child _did_ drown herself, Oliver is little better than her murderer!”

“What do you mean?” asked Ambrosia, speaking with stiff lips.

“You know what I mean,” replied the old man. “Oliver must have persecuted her. You said that she didn’t wish to marry him. She wanted to get away, I suppose; and he wouldn’t let her. You spoke just now of passion, and not love. Well, it all bears a very ugly complexion, my dear, and I wish--I wish for your sake--that you had not had to stand by. I wish,” he added deliberately, “that you had been able to save her.”

“So do I,” murmured Ambrosia faintly. “So do I! There was nothing I could do.”

“I suppose not; but it’s a pity you had to keep silent, Amy. You might have told me. Between us we could have got her away. You might have taken her up to London--over to her friends--this Madame de Mailly, who seemed so devoted. You might, surely, my dear, have done something. You need not have stood by and kept it all quiet, and allowed Oliver to persecute that poor creature, that impetuous child, even if she was light and a flirt.”

Ambrosia found herself forced to defend her actions of the past, and she did this hurriedly and tremulously, with a rather frantic defiance.

“How was I to know, how was I to guess? I could not tell that she was not playing with Oliver. He brought her home; she affected to be in love with him.”

“Did she?” interrupted the Earl. “Did she? I never guessed that from her demeanour.”

“Well, she was going to marry him, anyhow, she did have a free choice.”

“There again,” said the old man, “I wonder! Oliver was shut up with her in Italy. I don’t suppose anyone cared very much to rescue her from him. I dare say they all thought it a very good match; and she didn’t know what she was doing--that was obvious, I should think.”

“What made her suddenly know what she was doing?” demanded Ambrosia, with her bosom heaving angrily. “Why should she suddenly realise that she had an aversion to Oliver, after having declared she would be his wife?”

“Did she say that?” demanded the old man. “Did she say she had an aversion to him?”

Ambrosia was sorry she had made that admission.

“Well, so she said, it was all over very briefly--a question of days, she couldn’t suddenly have been driven desperate in a few hours like that. I told her, again and again, that if she wanted to go away she could go, but what could I do on the moment, with the storm, and everyone so far away, and no other woman to help me? Miss Drayton and Mrs. Spragge both disliked her,” added Ambrosia with emphasis.

“Just as you did,” said the old Earl. “Well, I wish I’d known--for your sake as well as for hers. It is a most unpleasant tale, my dear.”

“And I am in a most unpleasant position,” cried Ambrosia. “Since she went away--since she died, whichever it was--I have not known a moment’s respite. Oliver is like a lunatic, a beast cheated of its prey. Yes; that’s not a pretty simile, but it’s what Oliver reminds me of! He can hardly contain himself. He had a fit or stroke, that night they brought her clothes in--that night that stupid fool of a fisherman had to come in with her shawl and bonnet. And now he’s always out, even in that fierce storm days ago, Oliver was out and on the cliffs.”

“That’s the act of a lunatic, certainly,” said the old Earl. “How could he have hoped to find her then?”

“I don’t know, but he can’t rest; he has no respite, day or night, as I have no respite day or night. God help us both! Where are we? Why did this woman ever come?”

“It seems to me,” remarked the old man shrewdly, “as if Oliver were tormented by something else, besides his love; and that’s his conscience.”

“It’s absurd to blame him for that!” protested Ambrosia with violence. “Absurd! Why will you not listen to what I tell you? Again and again I had assured this impossible girl that I would stand by her and be her friend.”

“It may have been on your lips,” replied the old man, “but did you show it in your actions? You admit yourself that you disliked her, and all the women here disliked her, you say; she was the alien, the interloper, and none of you understood her nor wished to understand her. She couldn’t help it, poor child--that she was so beautiful, and clever-headed, no doubt. Eighteen years! Eighteen--think of that, Amy! Ten years younger than you!”

He could not have made any remark that would have been more distasteful to the woman who listened to him. Amy bit her lip to keep back some uncivil and coarse reply.

The Earl sighed, unconscious of the deep offence he had given, unaware of the bitter tumult in Amy’s racked soul; but feeling that the conversation was becoming dangerous, and wishing to be just. It was hard on Amy, of course, very hard; and there was that other aspect, that he had not dared to dwell on, but had just felt round cautiously--the place of Lucius in this story. But he might as well go a little into this now, for he must know where he stood, for the sake of all of them--and particularly for the sake of Amy, who seemed so unhappy, and looked so distracted and even ill.

“Why did she come up here that morning?” he asked gently. “I’ve never quite been able to understand. Was it because this was the only house she knew of? She didn’t come here, I hope, Amy, for protection.”

“Why should she have come here for protection?” replied Ambrosia haughtily. “I was at Sellar’s Mead, and her own maid, and other women--she didn’t require protection.”

“You take my meaning a little too easily,” remarked the Earl sadly. He thought how painfully ready Ambrosia had been with her defence. With everything that Amy said, he seemed to be brought nearer some hideous conclusion. The girl had seemed frightened, had seemed frantic. She had run through the storm to his house for protection, and she had not received it; and she had gone away desolate, and drowned herself. Good God! Help him from coming to this most hideous conclusion!

“Oh, no,” he said hastily, “I must not think that, of course; why should she have been afraid? Oliver wouldn’t frighten her, surely, surely.”

“She had a wild, fierce temper,” said Ambrosia rather shrilly.

“Yes, yes,” murmured the Earl. “A pity that Lucius couldn’t have detained her. I was unwell that morning, but I would have made an effort to see her. Something might have been done--she shouldn’t have been turned away.”

“She wasn’t turned away,” said Ambrosia hotly. “Lucius was bringing her back to us; she was left waiting in the hall a moment or two, and in that moment ran away.”

“You see,” remarked the Earl slowly, “Lucius was taking her back to you. Well, if she was afraid of Oliver, that was the strange thing to do in turning her away, I wish he’d let me know.”

“Mrs. Trefusis watched her go,” said Ambrosia. “_She_ saw nothing unusual about her.”

“Mrs. Trefusis is a hard woman,” said the Earl, and almost Ambrosia was forced to take this as a challenge, and to say wildly: “I suppose you think I, also, am a hard woman!” But she controlled herself, and bit her lips to keep that impassioned sentence back.

“Lucius has been much moved,” said the Earl sadly. “I have noticed a great change in him. And so have you, no doubt, my dear. He has it on his mind, I think.”

“Yes, she might have thought of that,” retorted Ambrosia bitterly. “She might have considered, in her temper and her passion, what she was inflicting on others.”

“But we are not concerned with that,” said the old man gravely. “We have to search our consciences for what we inflicted on her.”

“I have nothing to reproach myself with,” said Ambrosia coldly; “nor has Lucius. And you might consider, sir, how this has blighted _our_ lives. This stranger has come amongst us, and with her wilfulness, and then her tragedy, has blasted life for us!”

The old man took no heed of this. Instead of offering any sympathy to Ambrosia, he asked quietly:

“Has Lucius told you exactly what she said, that day she came here?”

“Yes, and it’s been repeated a thousand times. Every detail of the episode is worn by now,” replied Ambrosia impatiently. “She merely asked for you, and for a change of her shoes and stockings, and for some breakfast; nothing else. And he, of course--what else could he do?--was for taking her back at once to us; and she acquiesced, and then slipped off behind his back.”

“Yes, I know all that,” said the Earl patiently. “But is there anything else--something that he would tell to no one but you?”

“He has never given me any other version,” said Ambrosia deliberately; “and what else could have passed between them? She was not in the house above ten minutes.”

“Mrs. Trefusis,” remarked the Earl, “said she was here over half an hour; and there’s a great deal can be said in a half-hour, my dear. They could hardly have talked of nothing but the storm for that time! Lucius, no doubt, is fearful of betraying her; but I think it would be fitting if he disclosed to you exactly what she said, and it were more reasonable that you asked him that yourself.”

Ambrosia sat down at the table covered with shells and boxes and drawers, with the bowls of water and cotton wool and tweezers. She felt sick at heart, and trembling in her body.

“I must return now,” she said. “I must go home. Lucius is long abroad. He may be riding up and down the cliffs all day. I won’t wait any longer.”

The old Earl was moved by the note of despair in her shivering voice.

“My dear child,” he said, in tender affection, “don’t think I am indifferent to your suffering. I know what it must be to you. It is terrible for all of us. Don’t think I meant to reproach you.”

“Sometimes,” Ambrosia replied wildly, “I reproach myself, but it is all unavailing--reproaching or defence.” She languidly picked up her bonnet. She had, indeed, no desire to wait for Lucius, after all. What use was it again to see that distracted face, to listen to those distracted sentences, to know and feel that his whole being was absorbed, not with her, but with the Countess Fanny? To receive his perfunctory courtesies and his forced attentions--useless and humiliating. And the day was darkening again. How short they were, these winter days. And the wind was rising. How stormy they were, these winter days. She must ride back home, and take up her round of duties at Sellar’s Mead.

But the old Earl implored her to stay.

“Don’t go, my dear, don’t go! Lucius must want to see you.”

“I don’t think,” she replied dully, “that Lucius will notice if I am here or not.”

“But you haven’t had your tea,” protested the old man. “You can’t leave without tea; and Mr. Spragge is coming in, too; he wants to see you. We all feel you mustn’t be shut up too much alone at Sellar’s Mead!”

As he spoke, Lucius entered, and did not, indeed, at first seem to notice Amy. It was to his father he spoke.

“No news? Useless, useless!”

“What did you expect?” asked the old man mildly. “It’s too late now for news. Have you not seen that Amy is here?”