Ambrosia observed, and with an instant accentuation of her
despondency, that Oliver was in no amiable mood. He greeted her with
cold affection, and Mr. Spragge with forced courtesy, and began at
once to complain of the tediousness of the journey and the vexatious
accidents of the voyage. He refused to ride in the brougham, and asked
why the horse and groom had not been sent.
Ambrosia found herself at once falling again into the tone she usually
adopted towards her brother--a tone of mingled exasperation, excuse,
and conciliation.
“How was I to know, Oliver, that you desired the horse? The day is
very dark and unpleasant, and I thought it would be much more
agreeable for us all to ride in the brougham.” She tried to feel
kindly and sympathetic towards Oliver, even compassionate. After all,
he might easily feel awkward, embarrassed, and ridiculous at this
arrival with his fantastic foreign bride; for the Countess Fanny was,
in Ambrosia’s instant observation, very foreign and very fantastic.
She stood waiting with an appearance of meekness while these
arrangements about the return home were gone into, while the luggage
was brought ashore, and the valet and maids brought her wraps, shawls,
and rugs into the brougham.
Ambrosia sensed that this was only a superficial meekness. The
stranger was not in the least shy or self-conscious, and appeared
perfectly ready to take part in any argument. Oliver took no notice of
her whatever, and continued to address himself to his sister and the
clergyman.
Mr. Spragge exerted himself to be pleasant to the stranger, but she
only nodded and smiled at his attempts at an elaborate welcome, giving
the impression that she knew little English.
“Very well, then,” said Ambrosia at length. “We will go in the
brougham; I will take Fanny, Oliver, and tell them to bring the horse
for you and the wagon for the servants; that, of course, is following
in any case; but surely Fanny’s maid may come with us as it is such a
harsh afternoon!” And she looked pleasantly towards the French maid,
who was sitting, with a disagreeable expression, on the first trunks
that had been brought ashore.
“There is no occasion,” said Oliver shortly. “Do you take Fanny home,
and I will follow immediately with the others. I am surprised,
Ambrosia, that you have not sent the horse, knowing my dislike to the
carriage.”
“He feels awkward and foolish!” So Ambrosia excused her brother to
herself, and with the better grace since she knew that she, also, felt
both awkward and foolish in the presence of the Countess Fanny.
The two women and the clergyman got into the brougham, and turned down
the road which the Sellars had had made from the ferry to Sellar’s
Mead--a very tolerable and smooth road, kept in order at the expense
of the gentry.
Ambrosia knew that she must talk, and talk at once; so she began
hastily, before the horses’ heads were even turned, putting into
practice the speech she had rehearsed for several days now; and yet
not altogether that speech, for it was nervously broken, and
interspersed with sentences that she had not meant to say.
“It is so agreeable to see you, dear Fanny, and I hope you find it a
little agreeable to see us! Though doubtless everything must be new
and strange to you just now, and the weather is not what it might have
been--still, we hope to make you comfortable at Sellar’s Mead. You
must not be a little alarmed if it appears very gloomy to you.
Perhaps,” continued Ambrosia, speaking very rapidly, “you do not know
English very well, in which case I shall teach you.”
The Countess Fanny answered with hardly an accent:
“Indeed, I understand very well, and do not speak so badly; and as for
gloom, I come from a very large and old house--a castle, in fact--on a
lake; which is not at all what you would call cheerful. And the
weather I have scarcely noticed. It did not seem to me unpleasant.”
“That is very courteous of you, Countess Fanny!” said Mr. Spragge
gallantly. “We are really rather lonely and isolated here, and Miss
Sellar has been fearing that you may find it dull.”
The Countess Fanny answered at once, in a high, rather eager, voice:
“But I am to live all my life here, am I not, sir? And therefore it
would be very stupid of me to find it dull at once!”
Neither Ambrosia nor Mr. Spragge had been prepared for quite such
plain speaking. They were a little abashed. Ambrosia contrived to make
an answer:
“Never breathe the word ‘dull’!” she said; “twilight is coming on, and
that makes everything rather dark. In the house we must contrive that
everything is very cheerful and pleasant”; and after that she could
find no more to say of any purport, but had to descend to enquiries
and solicitudes about the journey: Had it been so long? Had it been so
tedious? And was the passage across the Channel very rough? And what
about Madame de Mailly, the companion?
“Ah!” said the Countess Fanny in dismay, “I regret her indeed very
much; it seems to me a thousand pities that she and Oliver could not
have been good friends--that I could not have brought her with me
here. Indeed, I think you would have liked her very well, and, indeed,
she has been a most dear companion!”
This again was very bold speaking, and very fluent, too, Mr. Spragge
and Ambrosia could scarcely refrain from exchanging a glance.
“I am indeed sorry!” said Ambrosia. “But doubtless Oliver thought that
the lady would be rather out of place in a Cornish village.”
“Why, then, so shall I!” smiled the Countess Fanny, “for she and I are
much alike in many things. Nay, I have no doubt,” she added, “that
Madame de Mailly would have tolerated solitude better than I shall do,
for she had a great many happy memories, and a deal to look back upon;
and I have nothing, I have spent all my life, as I tell you, in an old
castle where there was nothing to amuse one, and very little to look
at.”
“We are in the same case,” said Ambrosia; “but here there is Oliver,
is there not?--and soon you will be mistress of your own house, and
that will give you a great deal of occupation.”
The Countess Fanny did not answer this; she simply yawned, and put up
a tiny white-gloved hand to her mouth, then leant back in the corner
of the brougham in an attitude of lassitude, of fatigue.
“I am, now I come to think of it,” she remarked, “a little tired.”
“We will not speak any more,” said Ambrosia hastily, “but be silent
until we reach the house; then you must rest till supper-time.”
“Thank you,” answered the Countess Fanny; “I shall be glad to rest.”
Ambrosia could not forbear a covert survey of the stranger nestling in
the cushions of the carriage in the corner. She had, unfortunately for
herself, taken an instant dislike to the Countess Fanny, nor was this
dislike much mitigated by her present scrutiny. The girl was odd,
fantastic, and foreign--three qualifications by no means desirable in
the eyes of Ambrosia. She was also lovely, with a vivid, sensuous
loveliness that seldom pleases even the most good-natured of women.
Ambrosia had a feminine mistrust and dislike of very conspicuous
physical beauty in another woman, and the beauty of the Countess Fanny
was not to be disputed: in any company, in any place, she would have
been conspicuous. She was dark and slender, with those features that
Ambrosia had always heard described as “classic”; she was more than
above average height, and exceedingly graceful, with an air of pliancy
and swiftness fascinating to behold. Her profuse and glossy hair was
arranged in very fine ringlets, which escaped, either side of her oval
face, from the framework of the odd apple-green bonnet, which was tied
with a large bow of satin ribbon edged with silver; her multi-coloured
striped shawl was of the finest texture, her green cloth dress trimmed
with fur; she wore curiously embroidered gauntlet gloves, and
bracelet, brooch, and ear-rings of coral, while her veil of black lace
floated back carelessly from her bonnet; it appeared not often to have
been dropped over that lovely face. Ambrosia was sure that she must
have been a great deal stared at on the journey, particularly through
England; she knew that Oliver was not the type of man who cared to go
about with a woman who was an object of curiosity.
But the Countess Fanny was absolutely composed, as if she were unaware
of having been the centre of any scrutiny. Her manner was indeed a
great deal too composed for Ambrosia’s approval. The elder woman
thought it odd that so young a girl should not have been more
embarrassed by her present curious situation; but then, everything
about the Countess Fanny was odd!
Rousing herself from her position of lassitude, she suddenly asked:
“What am I to call you? Ambrosia is such a stiff name--and yet it is
familiar enough to me, because, you know, it is really an Italian
name.”
Ambrosia answered at once:
“Yes, it is a very stiff and queer sort of name, but I am used to
it--we have had it in the family a long time and, I suppose, always
shall; but everyone calls me Amy, and you must do so, if you please!”
“Amy,” smiled the Countess Fanny; “yes, that makes a very delightful
name, and I shall use it; but what,” she said, glancing at Mr.
Spragge, “am I to do with Oliver--is not that a grotesque and awkward
name for anyone to have? And yet there is nothing else that one could
call him.”
“No,” said Ambrosia, “he has no other name than Oliver, and you must
do the best you can with it, I am afraid.” And she, too, tried to
smile with graceful good-humour, but felt it difficult. He was indeed
Oliver to her, and nothing else; nor had he been, she believed,
anything else to anyone. Even in the nursery he had had no odd, pretty
name, given by affection.
The Countess Fanny now turned her lively black eyes on Mr. Spragge.
“You are a clergyman, are you not?” she asked; and he, surprised and
amused, bowed and said, yes, he was the vicar of St. Nite’s.
“Then you will be _my_ clergyman, I suppose,” smiled the Countess
Fanny lightly, “for Oliver--since I must call him Oliver--says that I
am to become a Protestant now, and leave the old faith; and that is
very peculiar and disagreeable, is it not, for me? And yet I do not
mind very much, though Madame de Mailly says it is very dreadful; but
since I have left my country, I suppose I can leave my religion,” she
added with a little pout. “And Father Martinelli was really very harsh
and dull.”
Mr. Spragge did not know what to answer to this frankness. All his
instincts told him to warn the girl not so lightly to leave a
hereditary and cherished faith; nor did he wish to be the one to
persuade her to become a convert to his own Church. Yet he knew that
it was for Oliver’s interests that she should do so, and his loyalty
was for Oliver Sellar, not for the Countess Fanny Caldini.
Ambrosia was in the same predicament: it was not at all pleasant, she
thought, to hear the girl talk so lightly on such a subject, and yet
it was a matter of relief to think that Oliver had been able to induce
her to change her faith. It would have been, as she had already
thought to herself, most disagreeable and tedious if the Countess
Fanny had persisted in being a Roman Catholic in a place like St.
Nite’s. So she tried to speak moderately and evasively, in that
temperate tone which good breeding had taught her.
“You will be able to go into all this presently yourself, my dear
Fanny,” she said, “and come to your own decision. It is really a
matter about which no one can advise you.”
“But I have been already advised,” replied the girl, with a
devastating frankness, “and I have already made my decision: I am now
a Protestant, and,” she added, with a little bow towards Mr. Spragge,
“you must teach me exactly what a Protestant is.”
Mr. Spragge thought she mocked him, and could not find an answer. He
had been very greatly impressed by her beauty, but he thought even
less than he had thought before of Oliver’s prospects of happiness in
his forthcoming marriage.
“We know so little of you,” smiled Ambrosia, with an effort to be
amiable and entertaining. “Oliver’s letters have been very brief. We
are not even aware what has become of your Italian property; this
castle of which you speak, now--is it still yours, and will you
sometimes return there?”
“It is not mine,” replied the Countess Fanny, with something of a
sigh. “My father’s brother inherits that, and I have money and the
English property, because my mother was English, you see.”
“Then I am afraid you will feel rather homesick,” condoled Ambrosia,
“though of course you will be able to visit Italy.”
“But Oliver says no; Oliver says that I am never to return to Italy
again, and that I must forget all about it,” smiled the Countess
Fanny. “You see,” she added, “Oliver did not like Italy, and the
Italians did not like Oliver.”
Neither Ambrosia nor Mr. Spragge could here resist a laugh. In the
minds of both, the girl’s words had called up a very definite picture
of the Englishman abroad and Oliver Sellar in Italy.
“Well, my dear young lady,” remarked the clergyman, “it seems to me
that you are called upon to make no mean sacrifice, and that you are
doing this in a very cheerful spirit.”
To this remark the Countess Fanny returned an odd answer:
“I really don’t think,” she said, half under her breath, “that I know
quite what I am doing.”
Ambrosia stared out of the window. This was exactly as she had
surmised. The girl did not know what she was doing, and probably
Oliver did not know either. She had been anything but happy and
gratified at the glimpse she had had of him when he landed from the
boat. No, they neither of them knew quite what they were doing, and
she had got to stand between them through the black winter months
ahead.
She could hardly repress a heavy sigh, both at the potentialities for
disagreeableness of the situation and her own incapacity to deal with
them; for emotionally she was an indolent woman, and both her
affections and her interests were absorbed with Luce, and Luce’s
future, and Luce’s character, and Luce’s projects.
Mr. Spragge endeavoured to bring the moment back to the commonplace.
“I have no doubt,” he remarked, “it all seems very strange to you just
now; but presently you will find that we contrive to be tolerably
happy here.”
The young girl replied with a charming vivacity:
“Indeed, dear sir, I am sure you will do your best for me, just as I
am sure that I shall need everybody’s best to help me; for, as you
say, it is all very alien to me at present.”
Ambrosia would have been moved to some real affection and tenderness
at these words if they had been spoken in a different manner; but they
were delivered in so light and airy a style that she felt that they
came from the lips only, and not from the heart. She was excused from
further conversation by their arrival at Sellar’s Mead, and by the
immediate necessity of ordering Oliver’s horse and groom to go down to
the ferry, where, no doubt, he would be already fuming with impatience
at the delay.
“Why did he want to ride, I wonder?” she could not help remarking. “It
is so unreasonable in Oliver to be so difficult over these details!”
The Countess Fanny remarked at once:
“But he would not care to be shut up with two women and a clergyman,
would he? It is not very reasonable to expect that, either!” And she
smiled, with a little malice, Ambrosia thought.
Mr. Spragge had left them before they reached Sellar’s Mead, and
returned to the village. He was coming to dinner that evening--he and
the doctor, and possibly the old Earl; a little party of welcome for
the Countess Fanny.
When Ambrosia had seen Mr. Spragge go off down the lane that led to
the village, she had had a little regretful feeling that his gesture
of welcome, at least, had fallen considerably flat; but the Countess
Fanny seemed neither to know nor care when he left her company.
She now showed the girl her room, with a faint misgiving lest she
should dislike it; but the Countess Fanny commended it with her
buoyant good humour.
“It is quite charming,” she said, “but small.”
And Ambrosia exclaimed:
“Small! It is the largest room in the house! And none of the rooms
here seem to me of mean dimensions.”
“Ah well, small after the castle,” smiled the Countess, “where the
rooms were very large indeed, you know; but I like it immensely, and
thank you for making it so pretty for me.” And she dropped a little
old-fashioned curtsey.
Again Ambrosia should have been moved and touched; and again she was
not.
“Your maid will be here in the wagon with the luggage in a moment or
two, I have no doubt,” she replied; “and meanwhile there is Julia, and
you must command her for anything you wish. Tea will be brought up to
you, unless there is anything else you prefer; and then you must rest
just as long as you wish.”
“I am not so very tired,” said the Countess Fanny, sitting down by the
fire, “but I shall be glad to rest, just to get used to things, you
know.”
“And at dinner,” continued Ambrosia, lingering by the door, “there
will be one or two old friends--very dear old friends of ours--and if
you care to come down in your very prettiest frock, why, how pleased
and honoured and gratified they will be.”
“Of course I will come down,” replied the strange girl. “I have no
wish to spend my evening alone, and it was very thoughtful and
obliging of you to call all your friends together to welcome me. I
hope they will not be disappointed in me, for, as far as I have been
able to observe on the journey, I am not like ordinary English girls.”
She smiled brilliantly, and took off her shawl and coat and untied the
apple-green bonnet, which Ambrosia so disapproved of; without these
encumbering garments, she showed indeed very lovely, even lovelier
than before. There was something so swift and graceful and elegant in
every line and pose of her--something so rich and lustrous in that
dark colouring and in those pure features and in that exquisite
complexion. To cover her almost uneasy sense of this great beauty
revealed so artlessly, Ambrosia said:
“You speak a wonderful English, Fanny!”
The Countess Fanny replied:
“My mother was English, a Flimwel, was she not--one of your
neighbours? I always spoke English with her, and I had an English
nurse, and later an English governess. Oh, yes, it was considered very
important that I should speak English.”
Ambrosia retired to her own chamber, where the candles had now been
lit. “That girl,” she thought heavily, “will require neither patronage
nor help; indeed, it will be all I shall be able to do to hold my own
with her. How unfortunate that I cannot like her--but perhaps that
will come later. Anyhow”--and she consoled herself with this
reflection, which continued to come into her head like a
refrain--“anyhow, the winter will soon be over, and with the spring I
shall be away, thank heaven, away!”
Her evening gown of flowing, stiff bright blue silk, with a bertha of
blond lace, was lying ready on the bed, and again she unlocked her
jewel-case and took out her mother’s _parure_, which went so
excellently with the brilliant glitter of the stiff silk; and then
something occurred to her, so suddenly and with such force that the
blood rushed into her face. Of course, the jewels were not hers; they
really belonged to this stranger--the Countess Fanny! Oliver had
always impressed on her that they were only lent to her. His first
wife had worn them. Of course; how foolish! How could she have been
trapped into such stupidity? The jewels were not hers--they were
Oliver’s, and would belong to Oliver’s wife. How horrible if she had
not recollected this in time, if she had gone down to dinner with
those stones round her wrist and throat, in her ears and hair, and
seen Oliver’s angry glance! Perhaps even heard his angry words, and
had to go upstairs and take them off! Or wear them all the evening
under his ironic eye! And he would never have believed in her
innocence in the matter; he would think that she had done it on
purpose to flaunt them. It was most merciful that in time she had
remembered.
Hastily she locked the jewels away, and returned them to the place
from which they had come--a large walnut-wood case inlaid with brass,
which stood in the corner of the room and contained other gems which,
of course, were also no longer hers. They had only been in her
keeping.
With the same haste, she flicked from her mind the emotion of jealous
discomposure. What did it matter to her? She had other souvenirs of
her mother, and, as for jewels, she would soon be wearing those of
Lord Lefton: nothing very magnificent, perhaps; nothing very costly,
certainly--but her own, just as these were Fanny’s own.
Meanwhile there were the modest jewels which her father had given her
on her twenty-first birthday, and the Indian bracelet which poor
William had sent home just before he was killed in a frontier action,
and seed pearls and a brilliant brooch that her mother had left her in
her will, after all. She was glad of the little respite. Her head
ached, and she thought: “If only Luce were here!”