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.