The storm had darkened down earth, ocean, and sky to one lurid yet
colourless gloom; the wind was incessant, a north-easterly gale,
continuous day and night, rattling and pounding against the cliffs,
ravaging the land. The few scattered inhabitants of St. Nite’s village
and St. Nite’s Point kept to their houses, and shuttered them well at
night, for the cold was formidable, and bit to the bone; to walk
abroad was like struggling through freezing water, and this quality of
cold seemed to have a quality of blackness also, and to be a visible
entity, as the wind also seemed a visible entity.
Ambrosia, shivering at the windows of Sellar’s Mead, thought that she
could see them--cold and wind--abroad like two giant ogres, blowing,
from the smitten heavens, chilly disaster upon the shuddering earth.
With a courage at once cold and nervous, she kept up the routine of
her large, silent house. They were well supplied against storms, well
used to long and dreadful winters, by no means dependent upon the
ferry for any communication with the world. She could keep her precise
household running without worrying about the hope of the comings and
goings of wagon and ferry. No detail of her exact management was
interfered with; day by day she occupied herself with that. Everything
was smooth and elegant. The table was loaded at the appointed time
with glass and silver and lace and finely-cooked food, and abundance
of luxurious provisions. The rooms were warm and lit, and finely kept,
the servants moving about noiselessly, each in his appointed place,
doing his appointed duty.
And she was upstairs and downstairs with her keys and her books and
her lists, giving out the store, sorting the linen, visiting the
still-room, testing the preserves, superintending the cooking, sending
out blankets and firewood and food for this or that sick or bedridden
person; and always conscious of the wind, beating not only round her
house but round her heart, she thought.
There had never been any more news of the Countess Fanny since the day
when the fisherman came into the parlour at Sellar’s Mead, with her
bonnet and shawl in his hand; and it was now into the third week from
her disappearance.
Everyone agreed, in shocked and scandalised whispers, that the foreign
young lady was dead now; there could be no other solution of this
mystery. Was it not enough that her garments had been found on the wet
and slippery rocks? There was nowhere on this wild promontory where
she could have been so long hidden; there was nowhere on this wild
promontory where she could have escaped. It was known, beyond all
possibility of error, that she had not left St. Nite’s either on foot
or in any manner of conveyance. She had disappeared as completely as
some bright, gay land-bird, blown out seawards by the storm and
drowned in the first surge of the advancing billows.
On the ninth day, the fisher-folk had ventured out, for all the rage
of the tempest, to watch for her body being cast up; for they held
strongly to that superstition that on the ninth day all dead are
returned from the sea. But the body of the Countess Fanny had not come
back.
An accident, said the few gentlefolk--the vicar and the doctor and
their womenkind. An accident, said Ambrosia and the old Earl--what
else could it be but an appalling accident? The wilful and impetuous
girl had gone out alone on that wild morning, and she had walked along
the rocks. From the first, they all remarked, these had seemed to have
a fascination for her: witness her interest in the lighthouse, placed
on the most stormy of these precipitous crags.
She had proceeded along the rocks, enjoying, no doubt, the spray on
her face and the wind in her ears, and the light of the tossing clouds
above her, and the flash and glitter of the shrieking sea-birds; and
then she had slipped, and before she had recovered herself, been
washed away and dashed to death against the grey stone, and carried
out to the sea, and lost for ever.… They decided that she must have
died instantly--without a single moment of terror, they hoped. So they
pronounced upon the end of the Countess Fanny. Only old Miss Drayton,
the doctor’s sister, asked timidly:
“Why did the poor thing take off her bonnet and shawl?” And there had
been a little pause when she asked this, and no one had looked at the
other.
But Ambrosia had spoken, with a hard nervousness. “She was very fond
of doing that--taking off her bonnet and swinging it by the strings,
and letting the air blow through her hair. She was very wild, you
know.”
“She seemed to me very elegant and accomplished,” remarked Mr. Spragge
mildly.
“Oh yes, she was that!” said Amy with a heightened colour. “But wild,
too, you know--and she liked the storm. And she took off her shawl, I
suppose, for the same reason. It cumbered her--it must have been wet
and heavy.”
The vicar’s wife remarked quietly that it was a very cold day for
anyone to take off a shawl and bonnet, however wet.
“Without that amount of protection she must in a moment have been wet
to the skin, chilled to the marrow, hardly able to move.”
“Well,” answered Ambrosia, with pale defiance, “there is no other
explanation; she must herself have taken off the bonnet and the
shawl.”
“Oh, yes,” murmured the vicar, as one who blenched before a dreadful
thought; and a dreadful thought there was abroad amid that quiet
company, talking, as it were, from one to another: the thought that
the Countess Fanny had committed suicide, had deliberately cast
herself into the ocean--had run down to the shore with that intention.
Otherwise this absence was incomprehensible. She was not a fool; they
all knew she was not a fool! Why should she have climbed down with
difficulty and pain? For she must have had both difficulty and pain to
scramble down the face of that cliff, merely to wander around wet
rocks over which the foam was surging. It seemed an unlikely thing for
even a daring, high-spirited girl to have done, and to have done alone
and on a dark and stormy morning. Then, too, to take off her bonnet,
however wet, and to cast aside her shawl, however soaked.… Why should
she have done that, save that she was throwing aside an impediment to
her own death? Easier to leap into the water without those
encumbrances.…
Uneasy and still defiant, Ambrosia remarked:
“Perhaps the shawl and bonnet were torn from her when she was in the
water, and cast up again.” And the others agreed, without conviction;
each saying: “Perhaps--it may have been so,” or shaking their heads.
It was impossible for any of them to seize that dreadful thought and
make it tangible. Besides, there was no reason why that bright young
creature should have committed suicide. Why, of course, the idea was
absurd! Rich and young and healthy and lovely? Of course, it was
ridiculous! Lucius Foxe might know, and Oliver Sellar might know, that
the Countess Fanny had a reason for destroying herself, and Ambrosia
might horribly guess; but these people were without any clue that
might lead them to such a dark conclusion. Therefore it passed for an
accident--the young girl had been drowned.
No one asked the opinion of the fishers and the farmers, and what they
said among themselves no one enquired. She had vanished--that was the
hard fact against which all their speculations beat in vain--utterly
vanished, in a way that no ordinary death could have made her seem to
vanish. There was no fair body to look at once again, take farewell
of; no solemn funeral scene of last adieux; she had gone as suddenly
as she had come, and to many of them it seemed like an impossible
dream, the whole episode, from the moment when she had stepped ashore
from the ferry-boat, with her bright veil fluttering and her fantastic
shawl clasped over her bosom, walking lightly, buoyantly, with her
brilliant smile and her lovely face--alien to all of them; by most of
them resented, by none of them liked. And now she had disappeared--in
the minds of most, become like a vision.
“We can do nothing,” said Amy doggedly; “we must go on. She is a
stranger to all of us, and we cannot spoil our lives because of it.”
But she spoke in defiance, not only of the others, but of her own
heart; for she knew, only too bitterly well, that nothing that the
Countess Fanny could have done would have given her the importance her
disappearance gave.…
Lucius was changed, and Oliver was like a man possessed. Both of them
ignored her; even from her lover she received but a lame and
perfunctory attention, and Oliver regarded her as a mere part of the
machinery of the house. Both of them were absorbed, utterly absorbed,
by the thought of the dead woman, by the wild quest to prove that she
was not a dead woman. Ambrosia hardened herself. There was a debt
owing to the living, she told her tormented heart. She would not
remember that she might have been kinder--no, she would not let
herself dwell on that, even in the lonely darkness of the stormy
night, when the wind rushed and battled past her windows.
She had done what she could, she reminded herself with cold obstinacy.
There was no use in making a heroine of the girl because she was dead.
She had been light and obstinate, wilful and passionate--everything
that Ambrosia detested and had been trained to avoid. She had caused
malice and mischief. Whatever Oliver had done, he had not done
anything to justify her flight to Lefton Park. Of that Ambrosia was
sure. She could not speak of that last interview with Oliver; she did
not dare. But she assured herself that it had been nothing so
dreadful. The girl had exaggerated; the girl had indulged her temper,
her wilful fury. Ambrosia had marked her when she was in a rage: a
fury--that was what she was--a vixen!
Lucius had little indeed to say of that morning visit to his house. He
declared that the Countess Fanny had come to see his father, having
heard that the old man was ill; and that it not being possible for her
to be admitted into the Earl’s presence, he had entertained her for a
little while, and gone to order the carriage and equip himself to
escort her back to Sellar’s Mead; but, while he had gone, she had
disappeared. Mrs. Trefusis added her evidence. And when she told this
secretly to Ambrosia, as she did on the occasion of that lady’s first
visit to Lefton Park after the tragedy, she gave the whole episode a
very different flavour.
“The young lady, ma’am,” said Mrs. Trefusis, with look and accent
emphasising what she said, “was in a fair taking; she was wet through
when she came here, and quite wild, though she spoke very haughty, and
would take no hint from me, though that was an odd time for her to be
calling. And she didn’t ask for the Earl, ma’am, but for Lord Vanden
himself. And when I told her she could see neither, she pushed past me
in a manner, and went into the drawing-room and found Lord Vanden for
herself; and then she must change her shoes and stockings, and he in
the room! I had to send the maid down with some. His lordship asked me
himself. And she must demand breakfast, though she touched little of
it, I will say.”
Ambrosia never gossiped with servants, even with such a servant as
Mrs. Trefusis; but she did not refuse to listen to this, only salving
her pride by making no comment on it. And when Mrs. Trefusis had
finished her relation and mouthed over every scrap of evidence against
the decorum and propriety of the Countess Fanny, Ambrosia merely said
drily:
“She did not know our ways, Mrs. Trefusis. She had been allowed to go
about very freely. I dare say she found nothing odd in coming over
here that morning.”
“She must have known it was odd, ma’am, to ask for his lordship,”
objected Mrs. Trefusis, with pursed lips. “That’s the same law in
every country, I take it, ma’am; I’ve been abroad myself, and never
heard any different--only that they was more strict than we are,
begging your pardon, ma’am.”
“We must not criticise her,” said Ambrosia coldly. “She was our guest,
and now she is dead.”
“But that doesn’t seem to be an end of her,” grumbled the housekeeper.
“Everyone talks and thinks of nothing else. I’m sure I’m sick of it,
like I am sick of the storm--again begging your pardon, ma’am!” But
she knew that Ambrosia would not take offence at what she said; she
knew that Ambrosia would understand that her words were meant for
championship for herself. Mrs. Trefusis and a good many others
sympathised more with Ambrosia than with the Countess Fanny. She, at
least, was one of themselves. That was one great point in her favour.
And she had been engaged to Lord Vanden before the Countess Fanny
came. And that was another point in her favour, in the eyes of all the
women, at least.
“She’ll never be found now,” sighed Ambrosia; “it is past reason to
hope it.”
“Past reason to go on searching for her!” said Mrs. Trefusis drily.
“And yet that’s what the gentlemen still do, day and night.”
“I know it,” replied Ambrosia. “My brother is obsessed. In all
weathers, in all seasons, he must be abroad searching. Oh, Mrs.
Trefusis! I sometimes feel as if I could not any longer endure it!
Always this searching, day and night, hardly pausing to eat or
sleep--I fear for his reason or his life!” She caught herself up, as
if she were afraid of having already said too much, and asked
hurriedly:
“Where is Lord Vanden now?”
“Out riding, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Trefusis grimly. “Riding up and down
the coast.”
“Looking for her, I suppose,” said Ambrosia dully.
“Looking for her ghost, I should think you might say. That’s all he’ll
meet now!”
“Why should her ghost come to him?” demanded Ambrosia. “Let us be
quiet, Mrs. Trefusis; we talk wildly.”
“It’s enough to make anyone talk wildly,” replied the housekeeper.
“If the wind would only stop!” sighed Ambrosia. “Come, we must not
talk any more. I will go upstairs and sit with the Earl till Lord
Vanden returns.”
She went up the wide stairs slowly. This was to have been her house.
Keenly had she counted on being mistress here; she knew all the
pictures, all the tapestries, all the pieces of furniture, that yet
remained to the impoverished estate of Lord Lefton. Why did a chill
assail her as she thought of those expectations now? Nothing was
altered, nothing was changed: in the spring she would marry Lucius. By
the spring surely they would have forgotten the Countess Fanny. Not
forgotten her--she caught herself up on that word. No, they would not
have forgotten her, but by then they would be reconciled.
The old Earl had risen to-day, and was in his little favourite closet
off the library. A small room, but it was the easiest to heat and
light in this big, bare, draughty house, which did not possess much
comfort in the winter.
He greeted Ambrosia with a real and tender affection. He could see how
dreadful was her part in this, and he had noted, with a deep alarm,
the change in Lucius since the Countess Fanny had disappeared.
He was arranging his rosy shells in boxes, placing the minute
specimens in cotton wool, and when he saw Ambrosia, he paused at once
in this occupation, and asked anxiously:
“No news?”
And Ambrosia replied:
“No news!” taking the chair opposite him, and languidly untying her
bonnet-strings.
“I ought to give up asking that question,” said the old man. “It
becomes foolish. How could there be any news, after nearly three
weeks?”
“But they,” said Ambrosia with a pallid smile, “they will go on
searching!”
“Yes,” said the old Earl, “yes; I think it is time they stopped. It
will become a madness. The poor, poor creature has gone, and it were
best to display some resignation. Have you told her relatives?” he
asked.
Ambrosia shook her head.
“Oliver will have no one told. He is convinced that she is alive, and
that he will find her. And of course he is wise--there is no need to
raise an alarm or a scandal while there is the least possibility.”
“But is there,” asked the old man cautiously, “any longer the least
possibility?”
Ambrosia shook her head.
“I do not think so, but Oliver will not be convinced.”
“Oliver must pull himself together,” said the old man. “Get him to
come and see me, my dear--or Mr. Spragge. There is a point beyond
which these things are lunacy. God help us all if Oliver gets beyond
that point!”
“Yes, God help us all!” said Ambrosia. “For I do not think he can long
preserve his sanity.”
“He was very fond of the girl,” said the old man in a shaking voice.
“Fond!” replied Ambrosia. “I do not know that that is the word. His
feelings--” she paused--“one does not often speak of these things; but
I do not think it was love that Oliver had for poor Fanny, but
passion.”
“There should be no difference in the terms,” said the old man.
“But I believe there is,” said Ambrosia. “I believe he is not so much
sorry for her death as furious that he has been cheated.”