CHAPTER XXXIII

“You followed me?” asked Lucius quietly, returning the bracelet to his pocket.

“Every step,” said Oliver. “You did not perceive me, did you, in the shrubbery when you passed? You were so bemused that you never thought there was anyone behind you!”

“I never thought that you would follow me,” said the young Earl quietly. “Why should I?”

“You’ve forgotten, then, what passed when we last met, eh?”

“No, of course I’ve not forgotten,” answered Lucius. “But I have discovered to-night, Oliver,” he added, with something of an effort, “that you have not mentioned this to Amy; and for that I respect you. You have not let that accusation, so wild and impossible, pass your lips to any but myself, and I am grateful.”

“It was not for your sake I kept silent,” said Oliver harshly, “but because I wished to settle the matter myself, with no interference. As for Amy, she’s a fool--or cunning; she’ll take you, knowing what she knows!”

“Amy knows nothing,” replied Lucius firmly. “What is there for her to know? Do not again try to force these wild imaginings on me, Oliver. I hoped that you had recovered from your insane delusions.”

“I think of nothing else, day and night,” replied Oliver in low tones, and with such agony in his look and voice that Lucius glanced at him with a deep compassion. “What else should I think of--what else can I ever think of?” Then he added fiercely, with a change of manner: “And you--what do you do here now? You didn’t return home, you see; you came to the cliffs. And there you’re standing, looking at the lighthouse, looking at the sea, staring at her bracelet.”

Lucius drew back a step before this violence.

“Take care,” he said quietly, “don’t go too far, Oliver. This is a dangerous matter to broach in this dangerous place.”

“Aye, dangerous indeed!” smiled Oliver. “It wasn’t far from here, was it, that they found her bonnet. I always admired those red flowers--she looked well in crimson.… I thought of her like that, you know--crimson flowers.”

Lucius was startled off his guard, for he, too, had thought of Fanny Caldini as a branch laden with warm red roses, and he could recall how this simile had come to him the last time she had been at Lefton Park, sitting there by the fire in her damp clothes, with her wet shoes; he had thought of her then, so vivid and beautiful, as a spray of crimson flowers.

“Oliver,” he cried now, with a wildness in his accent, “our silence is her best monument.”

“Maybe, there’ll be years of silence, I think,” retorted Oliver; “but meanwhile you and I must make our reckoning.”

“There’s no reckoning between us,” replied Lucius sternly.

But Oliver retorted violently:

“There’s a dreadful reckoning. You had her on that lighthouse for days, for weeks. You stole her away under my eyes. Either you’ve got her hidden somewhere on the Continent, or you let her drown. Either way you’re answerable to me. She was mine, I say! I might have endured to be cheated by death, but not by you!”

“You are not sober,” said Lucius, breathing quickly. “You would not have done a thing like this in your senses. You drink too heavily, Oliver, you’ll bring on another attack.”

“Look to yourself, and leave me.”

“I shall be glad when I’ve taken Amy away.”

“Taken Amy away!” sneered Oliver sombrely. “That’ll be a pretty wedding; some fine love-making there! She knows, I tell you; she knows! And Fanny, dead or alive, will always be between you. I’ve told her so.”

“You told her that?” exclaimed Lucius.

“Yes; and she wouldn’t hear it. She’ll cling on to you at any price. She hasn’t the courage to let you go. She’ll pay, poor wretch, she’ll pay,” he added bitterly. “As the years go on I dare swear her agony will be worse than yours.”

Lucius did not speak, but put his hand to his lips and stared out to sea.

“You think that you’ll gloss everything over by marrying Amy,” continued Oliver violently. “You salve your conscience by that--doing your duty, you call it--covering everything up. Well, you’ll have your reward for all your respectability and dutiful behaviour. You and Amy will come to hate each other, I have no doubt. That is, you would,” he added, “if I gave you a chance.”

Lucius looked at him swiftly, sensing the meaning of this last menace.

“I mean to kill you,” added Oliver. “For weeks my fingers have ached to be at your throat. I mean to throw you down now on the rocks and into the sea that you’re so fond of.”

“I had thought,” whispered Lucius, “that you had some such intention. I’ve seen it in your eyes several times.”

“I was only waiting an opportunity,” said Oliver, “and now I’ve found it.”

Lucius folded his arms on his breast. He knew that Oliver was immensely his superior in strength, and infuriated even beyond his ordinary powers by drink and long, brooding, violent passion.

The place was completely lonely. There was no house nearer than Lefton Park, which stood a mile or more away. He had no weapon against any attack on the part of Oliver, and for all he knew Oliver might have knife and pistol hidden on his person. Even if he had not, with his bare hands he could murder Lucius.

With contempt the young man said:

“This will be a cruel thing for Amy.”

“You’ll not save yourself,” retorted Oliver Sellar, “by talking of Amy. This is between you and me; we’ll leave Amy out of it. She’ll be happier withering and pining at Sellar’s Mead than married to you.”

“Even if you hang for this?” asked the young Earl haughtily.

“I shan’t hang,” replied Oliver, with a ghastly grin. “It will be an accident--the same kind of accident as befell Fanny Caldini.… I’m going to throw you over the cliff--you’ll be found there, dashed on the rocks. And then I shall go home, and nobody will know that I left the house to-night, and they’ll think that you were wandering here, dreaming about Fanny Caldini, and lost your balance, like the fool you are! I shall not hang for you!” He came closer to Lucius as he spoke, and Lucius, drawing farther away from him, found himself nearer to the edge of the cliff; and, as he did so, calculated coolly his chances of escape. He thought that these were slight enough; nothing would be likely to placate Oliver Sellar now, nor would he, Lucius, have the strength to resist his murderous onslaught; there would be a brief struggle before the strong man cast him down that drop of thirty feet or more on to the sharp rocks beneath. But his heart scarcely beat the faster for his peril. He reflected coolly that this was an odd and sudden end to it all, and one unexpected; and his mind turned to Amy, and the long lonely distress ahead of her; and then, oddly, to his stranger cousin, who would inherit his name and his property.… If it had not been for Amy, perhaps it was as well that it should end thus, leaving another man, a more fortunate man, to carry on his line.

“Oliver.” He spoke with proud indifference, staring with narrowed eyes through the moonlight. “You’re behaving like a fool, you know. This’ll only drive you into deeper madness when you think of it later on.”

He turned and stood his ground a couple of feet from the edge of the cliff, calculating as to whether, if he turned and ran inland, he could escape Oliver. He might do so, for he was the younger and the swifter; yet to do so would be like running away, and he could not bring himself to do that.

“Confess,” cried Oliver, standing close to him. “Confess that you had her on the lighthouse--that you know where she is. Tell me if she was drowned the night the French barque went ashore, or if you have her hidden somewhere. Tell me that, and I’ll let you go.”

“Do you, then, trust me to speak the truth now?” asked Lucius scornfully.

“Men generally speak the truth when there’s Death face to face with them,” cried Oliver, bearing down on him.

“You don’t know me,” replied the young Earl, “if you think I can be frightened. Lie or truth--take it which way you will--you’ll get nothing more out of me but what I told you in Lefton Park on the day of my father’s funeral.”

“We’ll see!” yelled Oliver.

Lucius expected the flash of a pistol, or the gleam of a knife in the moonlight; but there was neither. It was with his bare hands that Oliver Sellar came at him, making for his throat with clawing, greedy fingers.

The young man threw out his arm to ward off this attack, and at the same moment stepped swiftly aside, but he could not altogether evade his assailant, who got him, if not by the throat, by the shoulders, and shook him up and down, to and fro, snarling, screaming, raging incoherently.

“You fool!” panted Lucius, struggling frantically to wrench himself free, and exerting more strength than he knew himself to possess. “You’ll have us both over the cliff!”

“Speak, speak!” screamed Oliver. “Tell me where she is; tell me if she’s dead or hidden; confess you had her in the lighthouse!”

Lucius did not answer. He was fighting with all his force to keep his foothold, struggling not to be hurled to the ground or flung over the cliff by this lunatic strength which attacked him so ferociously.… He did not so greatly care if he died or no, but youth and health were strong in him, and he thought of Amy with real affection and tenderness, and desired to spare her this last tragedy. So he resisted fiercely the grip of Oliver, and once wrenched quite away, leaving a portion of his torn sleeve in the other man’s clutch.

“You had her, you had her!” shrieked Oliver. “Confess that you had her!”

“No,” panted Lucius, “no!”

Oliver did not, as he had expected, immediately attack him again, but stood for a second rigid, with his distorted face turned up, and bleached in the moonlight, with an unnatural, ashy pallor; there were blood and foam on his lips, and his hands clenched stiffly at his side; he seemed dead. Lucius remembered with horror the seizures to which the wretched man had lately been subject, and cried out:

“For God’s sake come away from the edge of the cliff--come away!” and made an attempt to seize that dark, erect, convulsed figure.

But Oliver turned, and struck out impotently, still rigid, still convulsed, and fell to his knees, then to his side, and then was gone, falling through the calm moonlit air.

Lucius sank prone on the ground, and covered his face with his hands; when he could compose his swirling, dizzy senses he rose and peered over the face of the cliff.

Oliver was lying below on the dark rocks, black and white in the moonlight--black clothes, white shirt, white face--so distinct in the moonlight.

“He, and not I, after all!” thought the young Earl curiously; and he began the painful descent of the face of the ragged cliff.

When, torn, bleeding, and exhausted, he reached Oliver, he discovered that he was dead, as he had known he must be dead from the moment he had seen him topple over the cliff--had known and yet not quite believed--dead… Oliver.…

“Another secret,” thought Lucius quietly.

He knelt beside the dead man with a certain tenderness. Oliver Sellar looked grotesque in his precise evening clothes, flung there on the wild rocks and lonely shore.

Lucius searched his pockets, and took from one of them a coral bracelet, which was the companion to that which he cherished himself; and, with both these ornaments in his trembling hand, he sat down on a rock near by, and by the light of the moon stared down on the dead man. He thought: “Never again will he ask me about Fanny Caldini--that’s over.”

The gentle boom of the sea was in his ears, and when he raised his eyes he could see the red and white flash of the lighthouse in the distance.

Another secret! No one need ever know; no one would be the better for knowing. Another accident on these treacherous rocks… he had been walking with Oliver on the cliff; Oliver had had a seizure and had fallen over… a simple story; a likely, if tragic incident; no one would doubt it, any more than anyone had doubted that other death he had had to report, that other accident of which he had been the sole witness, the end of that other victim of the sea--the youth lost on the lighthouse rocks.

EPILOGUE

Custom had so schooled the lady that she seldom indulged in the dangerous luxury of memory. But sometimes, when the music played, and she sat, as now, idle in the theatre, vague images of years ago would come into her mind. She was beside her husband in a box at the opera in Paris, formal, composed, amiable, brilliantly yet modestly dressed--an aristocratic Englishwoman, the wife of a successful diplomat, the mother of well-bred children--the Countess of Lefton, by all respected and admired; by none, perhaps, very warmly loved; but that had not as yet been admitted by Ambrosia. She never said, even in the innermost recesses of her heart: “My husband does not love me.…”

She looked at him now as he sat beside her--a distinguished, quiet, stately man. She had no definite thoughts of her own, and she wondered what his thoughts were.

They very seldom went to Cornwall now--both Sellar’s Mead and Flimwel Grange were let, the land farmed by others and the houses shut up; and their visits to Lefton Park were brief and rare and always in full summer.

They lived mostly abroad, as Ambrosia had always planned to live abroad; but, of all the countries they had been to, they had never travelled to Italy, and there was good excuse in the revolutions, the wars, and troubles in that disturbed South.

But the music to-night was Italian, and one of the songs both these people had heard lightly played on a harp, in the drawing-room in Sellar’s Mead, ten years ago this winter: the winter that Lucius had taken the watch on the lighthouse and Oliver had met with the accident that had killed him; far away now, all of it, and they never spoke of it, of course; and Ambrosia wondered why she must think of it to-night. Simply because the melody was Italian, she supposed. They never spoke of Italy, or of anything that came from Italy. That had become a frosty custom between them, part of the eternal subterfuge they played with one another, and to which they were now so used that they were hardly aware that they played it--custom, “deep as life.”

They had never quarrelled: that was the most deadly fact about their life--that they were always courteous to one another, and never disagreed; because they were keeping a pact which each had sworn to themselves--a pact of gratitude on her part, and of duty on his, which she maintained with fortitude and he with sweetness.

The many clusters of radiant lights were kept lit during the performance, and Ambrosia’s gaze wandered from the stage and round the house; and finally rested on a party opposite, who occupied one of the ornate boxes facing their own.

Her attention was attracted by these people because the woman wore so many diamonds--a _rivière_ of brilliants round her white neck, and falling in sparkling drops on her white bosom; a tiara of brilliants in her smooth black curls; brilliants round her wrists; a very beautiful woman--vivid, imposing, and splendid. An elderly lady and two men were her companions; she sat before them, and rested on the edge of the _loge_ an enormous bouquet of deep crimson roses arranged in a circle of white lace with long crimson ribbon, which hung over red velvet and gilt tasselled cushions; and Ambrosia looked, fascinated, at this profusion of luxurious flowers--crimson roses in the midst of winter. And presently, when the act was over, she remarked to her husband:

“That is a very beautiful woman opposite; do you know who she is?”

The Earl glanced across the theatre, and said no, he did not know who the lady might be. He spoke with careless courtesy, and deep indifference.

A great many people were gazing at that beautiful woman, and when some friends came into Lady Lefton’s box she asked them, “Who is the gorgeous stranger?” and one of them informed her that she was a certain Marquise de Marsac, the wife of a considerable noble, and, they believed, Spanish by birth. She had certainly been for some years in South America, and that was where her husband had met her. “He was a very wealthy man,” added the informant with a smile, “as the lady’s appearance might indicate.”

Ambrosia gazed at the stranger again. She could not fathom her own uncontrollable impulse to stare and stare at this woman. And then, suddenly--and the knowledge was like a sharp pain in her body--she knew why: for the lady opposite had turned her face full towards her, and Ambrosia thought: “Why, she is like Fanny Caldini! Exactly like Fanny Caldini would be now!” And she instinctively glanced at her husband.

He was reading his programme; Ambrosia could not bring herself to mention that name, which had not passed the lips of either of them for ten years. Besides, of course, it was absurd; a Spanish-American! How could Fanny have escaped, and have remained for ten years concealed? And what of her relations--that woman with her now? Why, she was like--and Ambrosia smiled at her own oddity--she was like she had imagined the faithful Madame de Mailly; and surely that was Fanny Caldini’s very way of holding her head, and flinging back the long, black curls?

“You look very pale, my love!” remarked the Earl, suddenly turning towards her. And then she had to say:

“That woman opposite reminded me of someone--Of poor Fanny Caldini!” And the name was spoken at last, after all these years.

“Ah, yes,” replied the Earl, still indifferently. “It is a common enough type, you know; and then those red roses.”

“Why do red roses make you think of her?” asked Amy. “There were no red roses then, you know, in Cornwall in the winter-time.”

“No,” he admitted, “no; and yet there is that association in my mind.”

“In mine, too,” said Amy. “Odd that they should be playing Italian music to-night,” and she nearly added (but checked herself in time): “when we have so avoided everything Italian.”

“It is the music, perhaps, that brings up the likeness,” returned Lucius, and Amy looked earnestly at his fine face--already, though he was but little over thirty, too fine-drawn--a closed, a secret, a resigned face.

“She is very beautiful,” murmured Amy. “How those diamonds become her! I suppose the elderly man is her husband, and that lady, perhaps, her sister; an elder sister, do you think?”

“Why, too old,” remarked the Earl; and the man who had told them the identity of the fair creature said no, she was only a companion, one who had always been with Madame de Marsac, and was in her complete confidence.

The voluptuous music began again to fill the vast theatre. Amy felt her head aching. She wished she had not come to the opera; she did not care for these garish diversions. The routine of every day suited her best: small duties, small cares, decorous conventions, elegant company, a stately going to and fro of petty pleasures and petty cares. Why need she tell herself now, defiantly, that she was happy? Why need a flicker of passion that she had long hoped burnt out flame up again as she looked at her husband, so remote and cool, as always remote and cool.

He was holding his programme up as if to shade his tired eyes from the glare of the light; behind his programme he was looking at that woman opposite, flashing in her diamonds, throwing back, with a white hand, those long, black ringlets.

Absurd! absurd! She must not let such a thought get hold of her, or everywhere she might see the likeness of Fanny Caldini. Had she not been married at an altar, beside which was a new marble tablet inscribed: _To the memory of Francesca Sylvestra Caldini, drowned by accident on these coasts, November_ 13_th_, 1856?

There were many Italian women of that type; she must remember that. It had been the music and the roses. Italian! But this woman was Spanish… well, then _Southern_ women of that type. The music and the roses, of course.… Italian music, and that little _aria_ Fanny had played on the pretty gilt harp that Oliver had brought, with so much vexation, from the castle outside Rome, the odd association with red flowers--of course she had heard Oliver say that, and that was what lingered in her mind.… The girl who had come and stayed so short a time had been like red flowers, he had said--red roses, in that unutterably chill and stormy and distant winter.

They left the theatre, and were delayed for a moment or so by the brilliant crowd in the _foyer_. In that moment they were brought quite close to the lady who had sat in the box opposite, and who was leaving the theatre with her companions. Amy could still not forbear to stare at her; seen close, she had more than ever the likeness of Fanny Caldini--yet a woman, where that Fanny had been a girl; and stately, where that Fanny had been wild. But how like! And Amy stood mute beside her husband, glad of the press, the gay voices and the laughter, and the formal, artificial air that encompassed them.

As the stranger approached, she looked at them. She was holding that close-packed bouquet of red roses high against her bosom; and then, as she paused near them, higher still against her lips; and over it she looked at them directly. And Ambrosia’s lips almost formed the word “_Fanny!_”

She pressed her husband’s arm, murmuring a request that he should take her away, for the heat and the perfumes were excessive. The stranger had just passed them, and was glancing back, still looking at them; and Amy saw that the Earl was looking at her; no wonder in that; she was a very beautiful woman, most extravagantly bedizened with diamonds, the most voluptuously and gorgeously attired woman there; he was not the only man who stared at her. For a second they looked at each other across those red roses she carried, higher still now, so that only her black eyes flashed above their crimson radiance.… For that one second she and Lucius looked at each other… he had no expression in his tired face.

And then she had turned away, and, leaning on the arm of her elderly escort, was gone down the wide stairs, the long, stiff train of her crimson satin dress rippling behind her.

“She is very beautiful,” murmured Amy timidly.

The Earl did not answer; Amy had always been accustomed to feeling outside his intimacy, but never had she had that sense so strongly as she had it to-night.… He was a stranger--a stranger who was not interested in her; she had never quite put that into words before.

In the carriage she began talking about ordinary affairs; this was their last night in Paris. He had a post in a city in Central Europe, and it might be months before they would return here. She said she was glad--she had grown to dislike Paris. It was so large and noisy and garish.

The Earl said yes; the excessive lights at the opera, and the flash of jewels, tired one’s eyes and gave one a headache.

The next morning, when taking leave of her acquaintances, Ambrosia had the curiosity to enquire of them if they knew anything of Madame de Marsac; and she was told that that brilliant and erratic lady had left Paris early that morning.

“She seldom stays long anywhere, and now, I believe, she is to return to South America after spending the winter in the South.”

They would not, then, meet again; and she must be careful. In no other woman must she see a likeness to Fanny Caldini. For when she had looked at that lovely woman last night, and then at her husband’s face, expressionless, composed, alien, she had felt as if someone had knocked on the lone structure of her life and sounded the hollowness of all her supposed happiness, echoing in that hollowness the name of Fanny Caldini.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. fisherfolk/fisher-folk, Jefferies/Jeffries, newel-post/newel post, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add ToC.

Fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings.

[Chapter III]

Change “The _stanger_ was not in the least shy or self-conscious” to _stranger_.

[Chapter V]

“their estate was on too lonely. too wild, and too unproductive” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter VII]

“She stretched out her hand gracefully. and said, still with that” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter IX]

“Well. that was before my time, then the place was bought” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter X]

“nay, in a fashion more than _perculiar_; a fashion indecorous” to _peculiar_.

(“Don’t carry these petty quarrels too far” she said.) add a comma at the end of the quoted passage.

[Chapter XII]

“a _hugh_ tank for the accommodation of oil” to _huge_.

“As clearly as as if she now spoke the words” delete the third _as_.

[Chapter XIV]

“defend herself against this invective. but, rising, said” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter XIX]

“She was a very radiant and gay and lovely creature. my dear” change the period to a comma.

“She didn’t come here, I hope. Amy, for protection.” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter XX]

“the sombre personality of Ambrosia. in her dark dress” change the period to a comma.

“Yet she found herself saying, almost against her own volition;” change the semicolon to a colon.

[Chapter XXII]

(“Very well”; assented Oliver, “we’ll begin on the ground floor”) delete the semicolon and place a comma at the end of the first quoted passage.

[Chapter XXV]

“_They’r_ only standing out for a higher price” to _They’re_.

“bitterly resented by the _independen_ spirit of the Cornishmen” to _independent_.

“going to take the watch on the lighthouse. and you can go with him” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter XXVI]

“to have children. and her place in the ordinary world” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter XXVII]

“with the late dawn, the bitter, chill, the stormy winter dawn” delete the comma after _bitter_.

“bringing with her from Rome. and which had cost Oliver so much” change the period to a comma.

[Chapter XXIX]

(“Yes, yes,” they both said at once “we saw the rockets.”) add a comma after _once_.

[Epilogue]

(were hardly aware that they played it--custom, “deep as life,”) change the final comma to a period.

“as she looked at her husband. so remote and cool” change the period to a comma.

[End of text]