THE
COUNTESS FANNY
A CORNISH SEA PIECE (1856)
BY
MARJORIE BOWEN
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED
LONDON
PROLOGUE
The one man who might know the truth of this story was the one man
who could never speak that truth; yet in old age, when his passions
were stilled into a quiet curiosity as to his own youth, he would
refer to it with those who had never known the Contessina Francesca
Sylvestra Caldini, familiarly named the Countess Fanny.
But once, when he mentioned to his grandson Oliver Sellar’s wild
accusation against him, the young man asked:
“Would it, sir, have been possible--I wonder--in those days--could she
have really been there and then have got away? Escaped?”
“It was a madman’s suggestion,” was the smiling reply.
“But if it had been true, you could never have admitted it, could you,
sir? You would have had to lie.”
“That is understood. In those days, as you call them, a woman’s
reputation----” The old man broke off. “One’s sense of duty, too----”
The young man laughed suddenly. “Of course it isn’t possible, and no
one could have done it--kept such a secret--a whole lifetime.”
The old man smiled sadly. “Don’t you think so?” was his slow reply.
THE COUNTESS FANNY
CHAPTER I
With her own hand, and an air of ceremony, the lady unlocked her
jewel-case, took out the _parure_, and placed it on her large, dark
dressing-table. She had not for some time looked at this set of
ornaments, and now that she did gaze at them, they seemed to her
rather old-fashioned, and ill-suited to an unmarried woman: necklet,
bracelet, comb, ear-rings, and buckle, all massive and sparkling. The
diamonds were very fine, and handsomely set; the cornelians that they
surrounded gleamed a most silky lustre, and showed the colour, when
held to the light, of old blood.
The lady thought that these adornments would not look so fashionable
as they had appeared when her mother had worn them, or even when she
had worn them herself, ten years ago, during her one brief London
season; but the jewels remained handsome and impressive, and, by their
sheer incongruity, would make a certain flashing show, worn in the
dark, sombre rooms of this remote country house. And she must wear
something to-night (to do honour to the occasion) that would be both
beautiful and conspicuous. The jewels would, after all, do very well;
and she tried them on, clasping the wide bracelet upon her slim wrist,
and lifting up the long locks of her dark hair with the prongs of the
heavy comb, which sparkled with diamonds and was elegantly set with
cameos, which her mother had bought in Rome. Not very suitable for an
unmarried woman, no doubt! But Ambrosia Sellar had been so long
mistress of this important house that she had rather the air of a
married woman. She was not in any sense a girl; she had a poise both
of maturity and experience and appeared older than her twenty-seven
years.
As she thoughtfully and carefully locked the jewels away again, and
left the case on her dressing-table ready for the evening, she marked
with apprehension the darkness of the day: not the darkness of
twilight, but a natural darkness that was a portent of
fast-approaching winter. And before this portent Miss Sellar winced.
Winters at Sellar’s Mead were to her in every way dreadful--ordeals
that could scarcely be endured; and, though this coming winter was,
most certainly, the last she would be called upon to support, she
still did not know quite how she would endure it; the gloomy, lonely
house, the gloomy, lonely country, the spit of land thrusting out into
the endlessly tumultuous sea; the sense of being isolated, here at the
very extreme of the country; the prospect of the ceaseless winds, the
continuous storms, the long nights and short, gloomy days--these
things oppressed the spirit of Ambrosia Sellar, although she had been
used to them since she was a child.
It was the home in which she had been born and bred, and, save for
very few occasions, she had never left it; first she had lived there
as a child with her parents; then as housekeeper to her father; now as
housekeeper to her brother--a widower who, two years ago, had returned
to Sellar’s Mead, an austere, a disappointed, and (as Ambrosia well
knew) a violent man.
Their circumstances seemed to Ambrosia as lonely as their estate. A
brother had recently died in India; the death of their parents had
followed quickly one after the other; a lingering disease had taken
Oliver’s wife while she was yet in the flower of her days, and she had
left no children. There were just the two of them--herself and
Oliver--alone in the old, large, and sombre house; and Ambrosia could
never forget this. It seemed to her as if Death had swept a wide,
clean circle round them which cut them off from other people. They had
relatives and friends, but these were all far away, and seldom
communicated with; there were two other considerable houses within
reasonable distance, but one had for long been shut up, and the land
appertaining thereto rented to Oliver Sellar. The other was the domain
belonging to the most considerable magnate of the county--Lord Lefton;
but he was an old and ailing man, much reduced in means. He maintained
a pinched state with a diminished staff of servants and the company of
one son. To this gentleman’s son, Lucius Foxe, Lord Vanden, Ambrosia
was promised in marriage; and, with the spring, she would leave
Sellar’s Mead and go as mistress to Lefton Park, which was only a few
miles away, and as familiar to her as her own home.
But she did not intend to reside there. Some way, somehow, she would
get to London or get abroad; she would break through this monotonous
dullness which enveloped this lonely portion of Cornwall, and in which
she had grown up. But she made this resolve rather in a spirit of
tremulous bravado, for she knew the claims of the old Earl, an invalid
and a lonely man, who would not easily be able to endure to part with
his only son; and she knew the disposition of Lucius, which was not as
her disposition, but one that was content to dream in inaction. He had
never been galled by the loneliness and gloom of his estate, and
seemed part of the land on which he had been bred. He was absorbed,
too, in an odd hobby; one with which neither Ambrosia nor his father
had any sympathy. He wished to be an engineer, and, with but little
training, employed most of his time in this difficult science,
essaying all manner of odd and fruitless experiments, and attempting
all manner of fantastic inventions.
In particular, he was interested in the lighthouse on the terrible
rocks of St. Nite, which, once swept away in a ghastly gale, had
lately been rebuilt--chiefly by his exertions and his father’s
generosity.
Ambrosia was not interested in the lighthouse, nor in engineering.
Some day she hoped to make Lucius forget both these subjects, which at
present seemed so to occupy his time and his mind. She thought, with a
steady, concealed persistency that was impervious to all argument and
reason, that the only occupation for a gentleman was statecraft or the
services; and she trusted that, in time, she would be able to turn the
attention of Lucius to one of these--to her--noble pursuits.
She rose and looked out of the window, though she knew that she would
dislike the prospect that she would behold. Yet some fascination
brought her there, and made her put aside the stiff, heavy curtains
and stare out at the late October day. Grey, grey--everything grey!
Garden and field and distant headland and sky, and far-off glimpse of
sea; all grey; and the air bright with the flashing passage of
sea-birds, presage of a storm.
“I must not be so low-spirited!” Ambrosia said to herself. “I must
count my blessings; that is a very good practice. Why should I be
melancholic? I am going to be married to Lucius in the spring!” And
she added--though this was difficult to add in a cheerful spirit: “And
Oliver is going to be married, too.” And this reflection made her
think of her duties.
She was an excellent housewife, perfectly trained in all the details
of her duties as mistress of a large country mansion; and she
proceeded at once to inspect, for the last time (an unnecessary
inspection this, for she knew that every detail was in order), the
room put aside for the guest who was to be, in the spring, the wife of
Oliver.
Ambrosia herself occupied, not without repugnance, her mother’s
chamber; and she had given to her guest that which had been her own.
But, though it had been for so long a girl’s room, it had, like all
the other apartments in Sellar’s Mead, a sufficiently austere and
sombre appearance.
Ambrosia, pausing now on the threshold, hoped with some misgiving that
the girl would not find it dreary and repellent. The furniture was
heavy walnut, the walls dark panelled; and the chintz of the hangings,
though white glazed and printed with birds and flowers in cornflower
blue and raspberry tints, would do little to alleviate this general
impression of massive darkness.
Ambrosia herself had draped the dressing-table with sprigged muslin
over blue sateen, and tied it up with bows of silk ribbon. She had
hung some water-colours on the walls--pale paintings of children and
flowers. She had put some books--keepsakes and collections of
poetry--in cheerful covers on the inlaid table by the bedside. She had
gathered some late autumn blooms, which were beginning to look sodden
and drooping, and set them in a bowl of pink lustre ware in the
window-place. She had ordered a fire to be lit; the logs were even now
crackling on the wide hearth. But, with all this, Ambrosia had her
misgivings about the cheerfulness of the room.
The visitor was coming from Italy, and, though Ambrosia had never been
to Italy, she always thought of it in connection with laughter and
sunshine and singing. A very conventional conception, no doubt; but
she could not believe that it was in any way like the concentrated
gloom of Cornwall in the winter-time; and she thought that, if she had
been in the visitor’s place, she would not have greatly cared to come
to Sellar’s Mead in October, with Oliver as a promised bridegroom. An
odd marriage, of course--Oliver and this half-foreign girl. Everybody
said so, with their eyes if not with their lips, when Ambrosia, with
some embarrassment, had made the announcement to their few neighbours.
Oliver! Forty, stern, austere, passionate! And this girl, not yet
eighteen! Of course, from the worldly point of view, not a bad
marriage at all, since it would unite two large estates, and make
Oliver the most considerable landowner for many miles round. With
Flimwel Grange added to Sellar’s Mead, he would rival in importance
Lord Lefton himself. From that point of view, very well and good; but
from any other point of view, Ambrosia could see nothing hopeful in
the proposed match.
She had not been very well acquainted with Oliver’s wife--the woman
whom she would soon have to think of as Oliver’s _first_ wife; she had
been delicate, and they had lived in London, or abroad, not only
because of her health, but because, during his father’s lifetime,
Oliver’s pride did not easily permit him to come and cut the second
figure at Sellar’s Mead.
There had been two children, who had died, bringing to the parents’
hearts black and ineffaceable grief; never had Ambrosia been taken
into the confidence of either. Only there had been one occasion which
she could never forget, and which had come very poignantly into her
mind ever since she had received that letter from Oliver, written from
Italy, in which he announced his second marriage. This was the
occasion:
It had been in London--a day of fog--and she, Ambrosia, had gone to
call on Amelia, her sister-in-law, and found her alone on a sofa,
embroidering a chair-back. She looked ill and forlorn, and Ambrosia,
with an impulse of pity, had made a futile attempt to get within her
guard. But Amelia had put her off with insipid chit-chat; only when
Ambrosia was leaving, a sudden depression had seemed to fall over the
other woman’s spirits, and, as she was kissing her “Good-bye” at her
drawing-room door, she had suddenly whispered, in tones of a broken
misery: “Oh, Amy, I am not happy!” She had instantly appeared to wish
to annul these words by a return to her former manner; and, the maid
being present, Ambrosia was not able to urge the matter. She did not
see Amelia again. The next news she heard of her was the news of her
death. But it was impossible for her to forget that short sentence:
“Amy, I am not happy!” No, not happy with Oliver; Ambrosia could
believe it. She knew his faults, although she was fond of him,
although she tried to love him; but there was something about him
which made even her sisterly affection cold. And she was not a cold
woman, though often hard in manner.
How was this little strange, half-foreign girl going to succeed where
Amelia had failed, with the added handicap of this remote Cornish
life, which Amelia had never been asked to support? For it was
Oliver’s intention, of course, to remain for the rest of his life at
Sellar’s Mead, administering the two estates--that of his own and that
of Flimwel Grange.
Ambrosia was glad that her duty was plainly not to remain and help
them, but to leave them. She knew that a third party would be fatal in
such a case, and it was most gratifying that her own marriage was
arranged, and that she would not have to remain at Sellar’s Mead--a
tolerated dependent where she had been mistress, and an awkward
go-between in an unhappy marriage; for unhappy she was sure it would
be.
Well, it was Oliver’s life--not hers. She would not be able to help
Oliver; he was not the manner of man whom anyone could help. Better
for her to take her mind off the whole matter, and consider Luce and
her own problems.
While she stood thus musing, still at the door of the large
guest-chamber--what was now the guest-chamber, though it had been so
long her own chamber--Julia, the grey-haired maid, came upstairs and
told her that Mr. Spragge was already below.
“But it is not yet time to start!” said Ambrosia.
Mr. Spragge was the vicar, who was to accompany her to the ferry,
where she was to meet Oliver and the girl he was bringing home.
“No, miss; Mr. Spragge says there is no hurry. You may step down when
you will. He is quite able to entertain himself in the drawing-room.”
“But I have nothing to do,” said Ambrosia, endeavouring to rouse
herself from her vague and despondent mood. “I will come down at once;
and you might order some sherry and biscuits to be sent in, Julia. I
don’t think this room looks very cheerful, and yet I cannot see what
we can do to improve it.”
“I think it looks very handsome and suitable, miss!” replied Julia,
not without an accent of reproach. She, of course, was secretly
hostile towards the newcomer, and extremely hostile towards the idea
of a young, foreign mistress. Ambrosia knew this, although the subject
had never been touched upon between them. Everyone, she reminded
herself, would be hostile to the stranger, and it would be her duty to
combat and reduce this hostility, and to champion the strange girl on
every possible occasion. This must be done tactfully, or she would
rouse a more bitter antagonism. Therefore, for the moment, she said
nothing, and went downstairs to the drawing-room, where Mr. Spragge
waited.
“I am too soon,” he began immediately; and Ambrosia smiled, knowing
why he was so early. He wanted a talk--the last opportunity there
would be for a talk before Oliver came. At least, he wished to know
all there was to know about the odd affair of Oliver’s marriage. He
hoped that there might be some new scraps and fragments of information
since he had last discussed the matter with Ambrosia.
But Miss Sellar knew nothing more. If she had, she would have related
it, for she sympathised with the vicar’s anxiety about her brother’s
marriage; not, she was sure, a vulgar or a gossipy curiosity induced
him to take this interest in Oliver’s matrimonial projects. Oliver
was, to Mr. Spragge, quite an important personage, and his marriage a
matter of some moment. And Ambrosia could very nicely sense the
sensation of dismay and perplexity that had overtaken good Mr. Spragge
and all his parishioners at the news that Oliver was going to marry a
young foreigner; a dismay and perplexity which, if she had told the
truth, she would have admitted to sharing.
“I am glad you have come early,” she said. “I want someone to talk to.
I must admit I feel very nervous.”
“It is most difficult and embarrassing for you!” agreed the clergyman
cordially. “I quite understand, Miss Sellar, the delicacy of your
position.”
Ambrosia seated herself beside the fire.
“We must all make up our minds,” she smiled, “to like her very, very
much.”
“Of course, of course!” he answered. “There is no reason to suppose
that that will be much of a strain on our affections: a pretty, a
lively, a well-bred young girl, I have no doubt!”
“But a foreigner,” said Ambrosia warningly, “and one in a most curious
position; an orphan, an heiress, and one who is betrothed before she
has seen anything of the world. Oliver,” added Ambrosia fearfully, “is
old enough to be her father!”
“We,” said Mr. Spragge, “must not think of it like that!”
“No, I suppose not,” replied Ambrosia, with a certain restiveness;
“but it is going to be a difficult winter, and I am trying to face it,
and to decide on some course of action. You see, Mr. Spragge, though I
have made up my mind to like her, I do not know if I can find it very
easy to do so; one cannot control one’s inclinations.”
“What will you call her?” asked the clergyman.
“The Countess Fanny!” smiled Ambrosia.