Chapter VI

When Ambrosia returned to Sellar’s Mead, she found the Countess Fanny in the drawing-room with her harp; she seemed very fond of this most old-fashioned accomplishment, which Ambrosia had heard her mother speak of as out of date. She wore what was, to the Englishwoman, a most extraordinary dress of black and white striped silk, with green ribbon; but it was useless to try to mitigate the fact that she was a picture of exquisite loveliness, seated there in her fantastic, flowing garments, at the elegant gilt instrument, which she had brought, at much trouble and expense to Oliver, from Italy.

Seeing Ambrosia, she took from her pocket a letter, and presented it to her, saying, with her careless smile, that she had forgotten it last night.

“It is from Madame de Mailly,” she said. “Poor thing--she will be very sad and lonely at Calais, and I think it would show very kind in you, Amy, if you were, after all, to invite her here.”

“But it is Oliver’s house,” replied Ambrosia; “and if he has quarrelled with this lady, how is it possible for me to invite her?”

Fanny made a little grimace, and fluttered her long fingers across the harp-strings.

“Must it always be as Oliver says?” she asked lightly.

And Ambrosia replied:

“No; I dare say in time it will be as _you_ say; but, for the moment, surely it is better not to provoke him? Indeed, my dear Fanny, I do not see how it is possible for me to invite your friend here, in face of Oliver’s command to the contrary. Shall I read the letter now?” she added. “And do you know what is in it?”

“Why, I can guess,” replied the Italian girl, “but I do not quite know. Yes, read it if you please--and tell me what my friend says!”

Ambrosia tore the envelope, and took out the sheet of thin, foreign paper. The letter was in a fine, flowing hand and a finished English.

“Mademoiselle,--_No doubt you will think it peculiar that a stranger should thus address you; but the circumstances, you must admit, are peculiar also. I refer, of course, to the projected marriage between my dear pupil and companion, Countess Francesca Sylvestra Caldini, and your brother, Mr. Oliver Sellar._

“_In my judgment--and I do not lack experience and knowledge of the world--this matrimonial arrangement is of the most foolish possible. There is a vast disparity in age and a vast disparity in temperament._

“_I have endeavoured to make of the Countess Francesca an accomplished lady, but it has been impossible for me to give her, at the age of eighteen, the worldly wisdom which she would require to judge the merits and faults of such a man as Mr. Oliver Sellar. She is, in brief, thoroughly ignorant both of his character, his country, and his position._

“_I am aware, of course, mademoiselle, that your brother is of a fine presence, notable fortune, and of good family; but are these sufficient to assure the happiness of my dear pupil? For I may add that her heart is not touched. This you, no doubt, will soon perceive for yourself. Nor can I disguise from you--indeed, it is the main purpose of this letter to put it before you--that Mr. Sellar, obviously smitten by one of those passions which are usually as brief as they are violent, has importuned my pupil, the Countess Francesca, into the acceptance of his hand with a persistency and an ardour which have secured for him the present gratification of his wishes, and, I fear and dread, a most unhappy future both for himself and the girl on whom his choice has fallen._

“_Mademoiselle, it is a random affair, with passion on one side and indifference on the other; and I must state that I consider that Mr. Sellar has greatly abused his position by forcing his suit on an unprotected and unadvised female._

“_There was, also, another circumstance which operated greatly in his favour: the Countess Francesca’s parents had proposed a match between her and her cousin, the Count Caldini--the present heir of the Italian estate. This marriage, in every way desirable from a worldly point of view, was certainly not likely to be agreeable to a lively and beautiful young girl, for the Count Caldini is not amiable in appearance, polished in manners, nor robust in health. Mr. Sellar goes favourably by contrast with this unwelcome pretender, and by every means in his power--and these were considerable, as we were all enclosed in the castle together while the affairs of the late Countess were settled--pressed his advantage._

“_The result you know, and, I have no doubt, mademoiselle, are as dismayed at it as I am myself._

“_Mr. Sellar has already perverted the Countess from the faith of her childhood, and separated her from the companion of her youth. After enduring every possible disagreeableness during a long and tedious journey, I find myself separated from my pupil--nay, I was almost going to say my ward--and relegated to the obscurity of a lodging in Calais._

“_I send you this letter through the hands of the Countess Francesca, and I conclude it by entreating you to use every means in your power to break off a match which I fear will be fatal to both parties concerned._

“_The Countess Francesca Sylvestra Caldini has many friends and connections on the Continent, any one of whom would be willing to receive her at a moment’s notice should she decide, after all, to leave England, which I cannot believe she would find genial to her disposition._

“_I therefore, mademoiselle, shall remain for the present at this address, in the expectation and the hope that you will write to me and request my companionship and protection for the Countess Francesca, which will be very willingly and affectionately hers until I can escort her to the protection and guardianship of her friends._

“_Mademoiselle, pray take this letter both as a protest and as a warning; I am, with many compliments,_

“_Your devoted servant_,
“Hélène de Mailly.”

Ambrosia folded the letter up and returned it to its envelope, then glanced at the Countess Fanny, who remained seated negligently by her harp, idly plucking at the slackened strings.

“Your friend is not in favour of your marriage.”

“No,” said the Italian girl; “she quarrelled with Oliver, of course. Oliver quarrelled with everyone in Italy; it is odd, is it not? I suppose you would call him,” she added with her careless smile, “a disagreeable man.”

“Why are you marrying him?” asked Ambrosia, stung to bluntness. “All your friend says is quite true: you may read the letter, if you will.”

“There is no need for me to read it,” replied the Countess Fanny, “for she told me herself all that she could possibly tell me on the matter; used, I dare swear, every conceivable argument.”

“And you remained unmoved?” asked Ambrosia. “Therefore, of course, there is no need for us to speak about this any more. I shall answer Madame de Mailly’s letter, and tell her that the whole matter is quite out of my hands. You are your own mistress, of course. Oliver would remain quite unmoved by any argument of mine. Madame de Mailly says her letter is a protest and a warning--perhaps I ought to tell you that.”

“She told me so herself,” smiled Fanny. “It is a pity, is it not, that she and Oliver should not have been good friends?”

Ambrosia was silent. She picked up a painted hand-screen, and through it gazed at the flickering flames on the hearth. It was all very well for her so lightly to shake all this responsibility off her shoulders, but perhaps this foreigner, this stranger, was right in the attitude she had taken up. Perhaps it was not mere spite and malice, and the result of her quarrel and disagreement with Oliver. Perhaps she felt a sense of duty towards the girl, and perhaps, also, she (Ambrosia) should have the same sense of duty. Could she, this foreign creature of eighteen, realise what she had undertaken in promising to marry a man like Oliver and spend all her life at Sellar’s Mead? It was scarcely possible, and in that case was it not a bare duty of Oliver’s sister to warn her, to try and set before her to what manner of task she had put her hand?

And yet, when she stole a covert glance at the Countess Fanny, and saw her seated there, so negligent, so lovely, so fantastic, she found she could not speak the words of cold advice and dry warning. There was something in the vivid personality, in the vivid loveliness, that she found unapproachable. It was the Italian girl who spoke first:

“I hope it does not rain this afternoon, for I am to go riding again with Oliver.”

“You like riding?” asked Ambrosia mechanically.

“Yes--and I like this country too. It is so different from Italy, but grand and stimulating, is it not? These rocks and the loneliness.… I want, this afternoon, to go right down to the sea. There is a lighthouse there Oliver says.”

“Oh, yes,” answered Ambrosia. “We are all very interested in the lighthouse. It has just been renovated--almost rebuilt--and there will be a great test for it this winter, for everyone predicts great storms.”

“I have never seen a lighthouse,” replied the Italian girl with flashing vivacity. “It must be most vastly exciting! May one visit it?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Ambrosia. “Lord Lefton was only this morning asking if you would care to go.”

“Of course I should care to go!” cried the Countess Fanny. “I should like it above all things. It is out on the dangerous rocks, is it not, with a marvellous view of the sea?”

“No doubt it will please you,” smiled Ambrosia, “if you have never seen anything of the kind before; but I have grown up with the lighthouse and I am afraid it rather depresses me.”

The Countess Fanny laughed, and rose and tripped lightly to the window, and gazed up at the lowering clouds.

How lovely she was, Ambrosia mused, even in that cold, hostile light. How delicious and grand and noble the lines of her head and throat, the sweep of those black ringlets and the poise of those delicate shoulders! How exquisite and graceful every movement!

“You must find it all very chill and dark and foreboding!” remarked the Englishwoman thoughtfully.

But the Countess Fanny turned a flashing look over her shoulder.

“Indeed I do not,” she said. “I find it--well, I don’t know--exciting: that seems the only word. To be out this morning, and feel the wind and the rain on one’s face, those clouds all hurrying out to sea… and the rocks… and now, there is the lighthouse, right out there at the end of the land, battling with the ocean… oh, how could one find it dull or chill?”

“It is my native place,” said Ambrosia, “but I find it depressing.”

“And you will go away?” smiled the Countess Fanny. “Yes, I can understand that!”

“I think you will go away too,” Ambrosia could not resist replying. “You won’t want to spend all your life in Cornwall.”

“I don’t believe I think beyond to-morrow,” replied the Italian girl, gazing again at the sky. “Does anyone? For the moment I am happy here; I was tired of Italy and the castle, and that sunshine, so hard and so continuous. Yes; I loved the place, but I was glad to get away.”

“Where did Oliver take you this morning?” asked Ambrosia.

“Round the farms,” replied the Countess Fanny. “All over his estate and up to Flimwel, which is mine. And that is odd, is it not--looking at those strange lands and thinking: ‘Why, they are your own; that was where your mother came from, where she was born.’”

“You did not go to Flimwel Grange?” asked Ambrosia. “That has been shut up so long that I think it must be rather dreary.”

“No, we did not go so far. We saw the entrance gates, and they looked very worn and rusty. But I must go--I want to go--and I do not think I shall find it dreary,” she added. “It is my mother’s home, is it not? I am not quite Italian, you know, but half Cornish. And now I must write to Madame de Mailly. She will be looking for a letter from me, and it would be rude in me and unkind, would it not, not to write to her?”

Speaking rapidly, moving swiftly, and smiling, she left the window and the room. Ambrosia heard her running lightly upstairs.

Almost immediately Oliver entered, and asked for her.

“She has gone to her room to write a letter, I think,” said Ambrosia. “I don’t quite know. It is nearly luncheon-time.” And she could not forbear the thought that she would not be able, with much equanimity, to endure months of this: Oliver’s constant enquiries after the girl, if she was out of his sight for a single moment… no, it was too much to ask of any woman to remain during the storm and gloom of a long winter, shut up with indifference and passion! A man’s scarcely-contained violence of emotion; a girl’s ignorance and negligence and serenity.…

Ambrosia hesitated, then handed her brother the letter which she had been given by the Countess Fanny.

“Perhaps you ought to see this,” she said, and hoped that she had kept all malice from her voice and from her heart.

Oliver took the letter ungraciously.

“Whom is it from?” he demanded.

“Madame de Mailly. She dislikes you. Oh, what a pity you had to quarrel with her, Oliver!”

He replied fiercely, snatching the sheet of paper from the envelope:

“The woman was intolerable. I can’t think what Fanny’s mother was about to have her! She has been divorced, I believe; in every way unsuitable--a cynical, flippant, worldly woman.”

“But accomplished, I think,” remarked Ambrosia drily. “And she seems to have a sense of duty and a certain affection for Fanny.”

“Nothing of the kind,” retorted Oliver. “She merely wishes to preserve her own position. She was extremely well paid, and has been most generously pensioned; but that is not sufficient. She wishes to obtain a hold on Fanny, to get a footing here; and surely, even you, Amy, can imagine what that would mean. An intriguing woman who hates me is to be given a position of authority in my house.”

“Of course, you are right,” agreed Ambrosia sincerely. “It would be quite impossible for her to come here, and she would never have forgiven Fanny for leaving her religion. Still, need you have quarrelled with her, Oliver? It makes it all seem so disagreeable and harsh.”

Oliver Sellar did not listen to this. He was reading the letter, his handsome mouth set bitterly, and his fine face flushed darkly as he read the polished, acid sentences.

“Presumptuous impertinence!” he cried at length, and, crumpling the letter up, cast it into the fire. “The woman is false and dangerous, and I was well advised in dealing with her firmly.”

“One must allow for her affection for Fanny,” said Ambrosia. “I dare say that it does all seem very--well--peculiar to her.”

“And to you, too, I suppose?” asked Oliver haughtily. “I have no doubt that you have judged me--aye, and all the neighbours also, Amy.”

Ambrosia stood her ground before his portentous scowl.

“No one thought you would marry again so soon, Oliver,” she said, “and certainly no one thought that you would marry someone so much younger than yourself--a foreigner, a stranger. After all, we know nothing about her at all.” And she could not resist adding: “Neither, I think, do you. Probably you did not require to know anything about her--it was sufficient for you to see her.”

Oliver turned away with the deepest impatience. Though Ambrosia’s regard of him was cold, she admitted that he looked, in his riding-suit, a manly, almost a splendid, figure; and she could believe that Fanny might behold him in an attractive light. No doubt he had one manner for his sister and another for the woman whom he was going to marry, and yet there came into her mind, even at this moment, directly and poignantly into her mind, that remark made by poor Amelia: “Amy, I am not happy!”

“When is Lucius coming back?” demanded Oliver.

“I don’t know--to-morrow perhaps, or the day after. He is really obsessed with the lighthouse. There is a scheme now for a bronze wolf, that is to be hollow, and emit howls when the blasts blow.”

“Folly!” cried Oliver. “Folly! Surely enough money has been spent on that lighthouse! There is a foghorn now.”

“It is more than a lighthouse to Luce,” said Ambrosia. “An ideal, a symbol.”

“An ideal? A symbol?” cried Oliver in disgust. “I hope, Amy, you will knock all that nonsense out of Lucius when you are married!”

This was Ambrosia’s own hope, but she detested to hear it voiced in this harsh and unsympathetic manner.

“You do not understand Lucius,” she replied. “Everyone,” she added with meaning, “even those who most pride themselves on their strength of character, are liable to infatuation.”

Oliver frowned sullenly. He understood perfectly the meaning of her allusion. She knew that he was caught in the toils of an infatuation for Fanny, a more perilous infatuation than one for a lighthouse. He had not wished Amy to guess this, but it had been impossible to deceive her, and indeed, what other reason could anyone suppose he had in marrying this foreign girl? In his sullen pride and petulant temper, Oliver Sellar had hoped people would believe he was marrying the girl for her money, because the two estates marched, and Flimwel would be a very handsome addition to Sellar’s Mead. But evidently he had betrayed himself--at least to his sister, who was acute enough; and probably to those three old fools whose company had been forced on him last night. How tactless and stupid in Amy to ask those tiresome old people the first night of his arrival--just as it had been tactless and stupid in Amy to come to the shore with a brougham, not to send his horse to the ferry; to think that he wished to be shut up with Spragge and herself in that close carriage!

He would be glad when Amy was married and away from Sellar’s Mead. In many ways she jarred on him and irritated him. He thought now, with vexation, that she and that young idiot, Lucius, would be well matched. Pedantic, pragmatical--both of them!

Ambrosia broke in on his reserved and angry reflections.

“Fanny appears interested in the lighthouse,” she remarked. “She says you are taking her there this afternoon.”

“Not to the lighthouse,” replied Oliver sullenly. “Near enough to see it, I dare say. And of course she is interested, it is a great novelty to her. She has never seen anything of that kind before. You ought to be flattered, Amy, that Lucius has at least one admirer.”

Ambrosia ignored this. “Lord Lefton is coming over this afternoon,” she said, “so do not keep Fanny out late.”

“Lord Lefton need not have troubled,” replied Oliver. “If he could not get to the ferry yesterday, it is odd that he can get here to-day.”

“He means it most courteously and kindly,” said Ambrosia.

Oliver replied that he did not think that the old Earl meant it in any such manner.

“It is just curiosity,” he said hotly. “I suppose everyone, for miles round, will be coming to pass an opinion on Fanny, just because she is a foreigner and I am going to marry her.”

Ambrosia knew what lay behind this bitter protest; he was sensitive, almost ashamed, on this subject. He could not endure that anyone should nose out the store he set upon the girl. His next words confirmed the supposition on the part of Ambrosia:

“It is perfectly natural that I should marry Fanny,” he said in a guarded voice, “seeing how Flimwel and Sellar’s Mead march.”

“Oh, yes,” smiled Ambrosia ironically. “Of course it seems perfectly natural.”