Mrs. Henry Wood

“ Lavinia Preen sat one day upon the low edge of the pier, her back to the sun and the sea. She had called in at the little shoe-shop on the port, just as you turn out of the Rue Tessin, and had left her parasol there. The sun was not then out in the grey sky, and she did not miss it. Now that the sun was shining, and the grey canopy above had become blue, she said to herself that she had been stupid. It was September weather, so the sun was not unbearable. ”

“ I think—I think,” added Nancy impressively, though with some hesitation, “that she came to let me know I am going to her. I believe I have seen her for the last time. The house has, also, I fancy; she and I will shortly go out of it together.”
What could I answer to that?
“And so it is over at last,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “Very nearly over. The distress and the doubt, the terror and the pain. I brought it all on; you know that, Johnny Ludlow. I feel sure now that she has pardoned me. I humbly hope that God has.” ”

“ Edwin Fennel broke into a little access of temper. He dashed his serviette on the table, strode to the window, and roughly caught his wife by the arm. She cried out.
“How dared you hand your money to any one but me?” he asked in a low voice of passion.
“But how are we to live if I don’t give it to Lavinia for the housekeeping?” returned Nancy, bursting into tears. “It takes all we have; her share and mine; every farthing of it.”
“Let my sister alone, Mr. Fennel,” spoke up Lavinia with authority. ”

“ Madame, she avowed to me that she had seen Mademoiselle Lavinia standing near her in the moonlight.”
Madame Carimon took up her rolling-pin slowly before she spoke. “I know she has a fancy that she appears in the house.”
“Madame Carimon, I think she is in the house,” said Flore solemnly. And for a minute or two Madame Carimon rolled her paste in silence.
“Monsieur Fennel used to see her—I am sure he did—and now his wife sees her,” went on the woman. “I think that is the secret of his running away so much: he can’t bear the house and what is haunting it.” ”

“ Stay where you are, Johnny Ludlow. I choose that you shall be present at this.”
“Johnny need not fret himself that he’ll catch much harm from my iniquities,” said Tod with a sneer.
“Now listen to me, young man,” spoke Mr. Brandon. “If you persist in this insane conduct and refuse to hear reason, I’ll keep you out of danger by putting you in prison.”
Tod stared.
“You owe me a hundred pounds.”
“I am quite conscious of that, sir: and of my inability hitherto to repay it.”
“For that debt I will shut you up in prison. Headstrong young idiots like you must be saved from themselves.” ”

“ To say that George Featherston, Doctor-in-ordinary at Buttermead, felt as if he were standing on his head instead of his heels, would not in the least express his mental condition as he stood in his surgery that September afternoon and read a letter, just delivered, from his sister, Madame Carimon.
“Wants me to go to Sainteville to see Ann Preen; thinks she will die if I refuse, for the French doctors can do nothing for her!” commented Featherston, staring at the letter in intense perplexity, and then looking off it to stare at me.
I wonder whether anything in this world happens by chance? ”

“ Monsieur Dupuis shook his head. He never took anything so strong. The most calming thing, in his opinion, was a glass of eau sucrée, with a teaspoonful of orange-flower water in it.
“Sir,” he went on, “I have been conversing with my esteemed confrère. We cannot, either of us, decide what mademoiselle has died of, being unable to see any adequate cause for it; and we wish to hold a post-mortem examination. I presume you will not object to it?”
“Certainly not; I think there should be one,” briskly spoke Captain Fennel after a moment’s pause. “For our satisfaction, if for nothing else, doctor.” ”

“ Brandon. “I am here to do it once again, and to bid you for the last time give up her acquaintanceship. Yes, sir, bid you: I stand in the light of your unconscious father.”
“I wouldn’t do it for my father,” cried Tod, in his fury.
“She is leading you into a gulf of—of brimstone,” fired old Brandon. “Day by day you creep down a step lower into it, sir, like a calf that is being wiled to the shambles. Once fairly in, you’ll be smothered: the whole world won’t be able to pull you out again.” ”

“ Tod was moved. The mention of his mother softened him at all times. Mr. Brandon sat down again.
“Don’t let us play at this pitched battle, Joe. Hear a bit of truth from me, of common sense: can’t you see that I have your interest at heart? There are two roads that lie before a young man on his setting out in life, either of which he can take: you can take either, even yet. The one leads to honour, to prosperity, to a clear conscience, to a useful career, to a hale and happy old age—and, let us hope, to heaven. ”

“ The two young men, who were very intimate and often together, went up to Sam’s room above.
“I say, my good young friend,” began Chance, in a tone that might be taken for jest or earnest, “don’t you go and get into any entanglement in that quarter.”
“What d’you mean now?” demanded Sam, turning the colour of the rising sun.
“I mean Maria Parslet,” said Austin Chance, laughing. “She’s a deuced nice girl; I know that; just the one a fellow might fall in love with unawares. But it wouldn’t do, Dene.” ”

“ A keen, practical woman, of rather more than middle height, with smooth brown hair, pleasant, dark hazel eyes, and a bright glow in her cheeks. Ann (or Nancy, as she was more often called) was smaller and lighter, with a pretty face, a shower of fair ringlets, and mild, light-blue eyes; altogether not unlike a pink-and-white wax doll.
“We should have been worse off, Nancy, had she not left us anything; and sometimes I have feared she might not,” remarked Lavinia cheerfully. “It will be a hundred and forty pounds between us, dear; we can live upon that.” ”

“ Captain Fennel dropped his argument, returned to the table, and went on with his breakfast. The last words had startled him. Without Lavinia, which meant without her money, they could not live in the house at all.
Matters were partly patched up in the course of the day. Nancy came upstairs to Lavinia, begging and praying, as if she were praying for her life, for a little ready money for her husband—just a hundred francs. Trembling and sobbing, she confessed that she dared not return to him without it; she should be too frightened at his anger. ”

“ Miss Preen felt a little shaken.
“Was Ann alone?”
“No; she was with Captain Fennel.”
And, with that, a suspicion of the truth, and the full horror of it, dawned upon Lavinia Preen. She grasped Madame Carimon’s arm and turned white as death.
“It never can be,” she whispered, her lips trembling: “it never can be! She cannot have—have—run away—with that man!” ”

“ Nancy had not stirred from the spot near the butter-baskets: she and Captain Fennel had their heads together, he talking hard and fast.
They saw Lavinia looking at them; looking angry, too. “Remember,” impressively whispered Captain Fennel to Nancy: and, lifting his hat to Lavinia, over the white caps of the market-women, he disappeared across the Place.
“I wonder what that man has come back for?” cried Miss Preen, as Nancy reached her—not that she had any suspicion. “And I wonder you should stay talking with him, Nancy!” ”

“ If she is left alone to see these sights, she’ll die of it. When she got up this morning she was shivering like a leaf in the wind. Has madame noticed that she is wasting away? For the matter of that, so was Monsieur Fennel.”
Madame Carimon, beginning to line her shallow dish with paste, nodded in assent. “He ought to be here with her,” she remarked.
“Catch him,” returned Flore, in a heat. “Pardon, madame, but I must avow I trust not that gentleman. He is no good. He will never come back to stay at the house so long as there is in it—what is there. ”

“ She could go into the house ten times a-day when it was empty; she could stay in the house alone in the evening after Flore took her departure; she could be its only inmate all night long; and never at these times have the slightest sense of fear. But if she went out to spend the evening, she felt an unaccountable dread, amounting to horror, at entering it when she arrived home.
It came on suddenly. One evening when Lavinia had been at Mrs. Hardy’s, Charley Palliser having run over to London, she returned home a little before ten o’clock. ”

“ One would think the box had a demon inside it.”
“No, sergeant, you are wrong there. The demon’s inside him that took it. Listen while I whisper something in your ear—that young Dene is over head and ears in debt: he has debts here, debts there, debts everywhere. For some little time now, as I chance to know, he has been at his very wits’ end to think where or how he could pick up some money to satisfy the most pressing; fit to die of fear, lest they should travel to the knowledge of his uncle at Elm Farm.” ”

“ Gazing attentively, it seemed to assume the shadowy form of Lavinia. And with a shuddering cry Nancy Fennel fell down upon the brick floor of the kitchen.
XVI.
It was a lovely summer’s day, and Madame Carimon’s neat little slip of a kitchen was bright and hot with the morning sun. Madame, herself, stood before the paste-board, making a green-apricot tart. Of pies and tarts à la mode Anglaise, Monsieur Jules was more fond than a schoolboy; and of all tarts known to the civilized world, none can equal that of a green apricot. ”

“ I’ll ask Jules when he comes home to dinner. Would it not be English law also, Lavinia?”
Lavinia was feeling wretchedly uncomfortable. With all her plain common-sense, this phase of the matter had not struck her.
“Mary,” said she—and there stopped, for she was seized with a violent shivering, which seemed difficult to be accounted for. “Mary, if that man has to take up his abode in the house, I can never remain in it. I would rather die.”
“Look here, dear friend,” whispered Mary: “life is full of trouble—as Job tells us in the Holy Scriptures—none of us are exempt from it. ”

“ I never was nervous before.”
“I don’t know that that is so very strange,” dissented Mary Carimon, after a pause. “It must seem lonely to let one’s self into a dark, empty house in the middle of the night; and your house is in what may be called an isolated situation; I should not much like it myself. That’s nothing. What I cannot understand, Lavinia, is the fancy that you saw Captain Fennel.” ”

“ Once at Boulogne in peace and quietness, Lavinia would have leisure to decide upon her future plans. She hoped to pay a visit to Buttermead in the summer-time, for she had begun to yearn for a sight of the old place and its people. After that—well, she should see. If things went on pleasantly at Sainteville—that is, if Captain Fennel and Nancy were still in the Petite Maison Rouge, and he was enabled to find means to continue in it—then, perhaps, she might return to the town. Not to make one of the household—never again that; but she might find a little pied-à-terre in some other home. ”

“ Tod entered on a remonstrance with the pater this time; he had been planning it as we drove home, and thought he’d put it in a strongish point of view.
“It is sinful, you know, sir; awfully so. Passion Week is Passion Week. We have no right to pass it at school at our desks.”
“Well, Joe, I don’t quite see that,” returned the pater, twisting his lip. “Discipline and lessons are more in accordance with the season of Passion Week than kicking up your heels at large in all sorts of mischief; and that’s what you’d be at, you know, if you were at home. What’s the matter with Johnny.” ”

“ There’s nobody in the world he cares for as he cares for you.”
Tod sat twitching his whiskers. I could not understand his mood: all the carelessness and the fierceness had quite gone out of him.
“It’s the thought of the father that pulls me up, lad. What a cross-grained world it is! Why should a bit of pleasure be hedged in with thorns?”
“If we don’t go to bed we shall not be up for chapel.”
“You can go to bed.”
“Why do you drive her out, Tod?”
“Why does the sun shine?” was the lucid answer.
“I saw you with her in that gig to-day.” ”

“ Nancy whispered back again. “To Calais, I think, or else up to Lille. We are to be away all the week.”
“Until Mr. Lockett and his friend are gone,” thought Lavinia. “Nancy, how can he find money for it?”
“He has some napoleons in his pocket—borrowed yesterday, I think, from old Griffin.”
Lavinia understood. Old Griffin, as Nancy styled him, had been careless of his money since his very slight attack of paralysis; he would freely lend to any one who asked him. She had not the slightest doubt that Captain Fennel had borrowed of him—and not for the first time. ”

“ Tod’s steps were drawn thither by a fascination irresistible: and whether the cards or their mistress were the more subtle potion for him, or what was to be the ending of it all, no living being could tell.
As to Stagg’s Entry, my visits to it had grown nearly as much into a habit as Tod’s had to High Street. When I stayed away for a night, little Nanny would whisper to me the next that Charley had not taken his eyes off the door. Sick people always like to see visitors.
“Don’t let him want for anything, Johnny,” said Tod. “The pater would blow us up.” ”

“ May I ask”—quickly lifting his eyes to Ann—“whether you are given to superstitious fears?”
“Do you mean ghosts?” cried Ann, and Charley Palliser burst out laughing. “Not at all, sir; I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m sure there are none in our house.”
Remembering my own terror in regard to the house, and the nervous fancy of having seen Captain Fennel in it when he was miles away, a curious impression came over me that he must surely be reading my fortune as well as Nancy’s. But I was not prepared for her next words. Truly she has no more reticence than a child. ”

“ Lavinia Preen passed a night of discomfort, striving to hope against hope, as the saying runs. Not a very wise saying; it might run better, striving to hope against despair.
When Sunday did not bring back the truants, or any news of them, the three in the secret—Mary Carimon, Lavinia, and Charley Palliser—had little doubt that the disappearance meant an elopement. Monsieur Jules Carimon, not easily understanding such an escapade, so little in accordance with the customs and manners of his own country, said in his wife’s ear he hoped it would turn out that there was a marriage in the case. ”

“ Brandon. “Don’t you care for yourself?—for your good name? Is it nothing to you whether you turn out a scamp or a gentleman?”
To look at Tod just then, it was a great deal.
“Have you any reverence for your father?—for the memory of your mother? Then you will do a little violence to your own inclinations, even though it be hard and difficult—more difficult than to get a double first; harder than having the best tooth in your head drawn—and take your leave of that lady for ever. For your own sake, Joe; for your own sake!”
Tod was pulling gently at his whiskers. ”

“ The town did want to eat Sam. It is the custom of the true Briton to go to extremes. Being unable to shake Sam’s hands quite off, the city would fain have chaired him round the streets with honours, as it used to chair its newly returned members.
Captain Cockermuth, sent for post haste, came to Worcester all contrition, beseeching Sam to forgive him fifty times a-day, and wanting to press the box of guineas upon him as a peace-offering. Sam would not take it: he laughingly told the captain that the box did not seem to carry luck with it. ”