A curious phase, taken in conjunction with what was to follow, now
occurred in the history. Miss Preen began to experience a nervous dread
at going into the Petite Maison Rouge at night.
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. Opening the door with her latch-key, she was
stepping into the passage when a sharp horror of entering it seized her.
A dread, as it seemed to her, of going into the empty house, up the
long, dark, narrow passage. It was the same sort of sensation that had
struck her the first time she attempted to enter it under the escort of
Monsieur Gustave Sauvage, and it came on now with as little reason as it
had come on then. For Lavinia this night had not a thought in her mind
of fear or loneliness, or anything else unpleasant. Mrs. Hardy had been
relating a laughable adventure that Charley Palliser met with on board
the boat when going over, the account of which he had written to her,
and Lavinia was thinking brightly of it all the way home. She was
smiling to herself as she unlatched the door and opened it. And then,
without warning, arose the horrible fear.
How she conquered it sufficiently to enter the passage and reach the
slab, where her candle and matches were always placed, she did not know.
It had to be done, for Lavinia Preen could not remain in the dark yard
all night, or patrol the streets; but her face had turned moist, and her
hands trembled.
That was the beginning of it. Never since had she come home in the
same way at night but the same terror assailed her; and I must beg the
reader to understand that this is no invention. Devoid of reason and
unaccountable though the terror was, Lavinia Preen experienced it.
She went out often--two or three times a-week, perhaps--either to dine
or to spend the evening. Captain Fennel and Nancy were still away, and
friends, remembering Miss Preen's solitary position, invited her.
October had passed, November was passing, and as yet no news came to
Lavinia of the return of the travellers. At first they did not write to
her at all, leaving her to infer that as the boat reached London safely
they had done the same. After the lapse of a fortnight she received a
short letter from Nancy telling her really nothing, and not giving any
address. The next letter came towards the end of November, and was as
follows:
"MY DEAR LAVINIA,
"I have not written to you, for, truly, there is nothing to write
about, and almost every day I expect Edwin to tell me we are going
home. Will you _kindly_ lend me a ten-pound note? Please send it in
a letter. We are staying at Camberwell, and I enclose you the
address in strict confidence. Do not repeat it to any one--not even
to Mary Carimon. It is a relation of Edwin's we are staying with,
but he is not well off. I like his wife. Edwin desires his best
regards.
"Your loving sister,
"NANCY."
Miss Preen did not send the ten-pound note. She wrote to tell Nancy that
she could not do it, and was uncomfortably pressed for money herself in
consequence of Nancy's own action.
The five-pound note borrowed from Lavinia by Nancy on her departure had
not been repaid; neither had Nancy's share of the previous quarter's
money been remitted. On the usual day of payment at the end of
September, Lavinia's quarterly income came to her at Sainteville, as was
customary; not Nancy's. For Nancy there came neither money nor letter.
The fact was, Nancy, escorted by her husband, had presented herself
at Colonel Selby's bank--he was junior partner and manager of a small
private bank in the City--the day before the dividends were due, and
personally claimed the quarterly payment, which was paid to her.
But now, the summary docking of just half their income was a matter
of embarrassment to Miss Preen, as may readily be imagined. The house
expenses had to go on, with only half the money to meet them. Lavinia
had a little nest-egg of her own, it has been said before, saved in
earlier years; and this she drew upon, and so kept debt down. But it was
very inconvenient, as well as vexatious. Lavinia told the whole truth
now to Mary Carimon and her husband, with Nancy's recent application for
a ten-pound note, and her refusal. Little Monsieur Carimon muttered a
word between his closed lips which sounded like "Rat," and was no doubt
applied to Edwin Fennel.
Pretty close upon this, Lavinia received a blowing-up letter from
Colonel Selby. Having known Lavinia when she was in pinafores, the
colonel, a peppery man, considered he had a right to take her to task at
will. He was brother to Paul Selby, of Selby Court, and heir presumptive
to it. The colonel had a wife and children, and much ado at times to
keep them, for his income was not large at present, and growing-up sons
are expensive.
"DEAR LAVINIA,
"What in the name of common sense could have induced you to imagine
that I should pay the two quarterly incomes some weeks before they
were due, and to send Ann and that man Fennel here with your orders
that I should do so? Pretty ideas of trusteeship you must have! If
you are over head and ears in debt, as they tell me, and for that
reason wish to forestall the time for payment, _I_ can't help it. It
is no reason with me. Your money will be forwarded to Sainteville,
at the proper period, to _yourself_. Do not ask me again to pay it
into Ann's hands, and to accept her receipt for it. I can do nothing
of the kind. Ann's share will be sent at the same time. She tells me
she is returning to you. She must give me her own receipt for it,
and you must give me yours.
"Your affectionate kinsman,
"WILLIAM SELBY."
Just for a few minutes Lavinia Preen did not understand this letter.
What could it mean? Why had Colonel Selby written it to her? Then the
truth flashed into her mind.
Nancy (induced, of course, by Edwin Fennel) had gone with him to Colonel
Selby, purporting to have been sent by Lavinia, to ask him to pay them
the quarter's money not due until the end of December, and not only
Nancy's share but Lavinia's as well.
"Why, it would have been nothing short of swindling!" cried Lavinia, as
she gazed in dismay at the colonel's letter.
In the indignation of the moment, she took pen and ink and wrote an
answer to William Selby. Partly enlightening him--not quite--but telling
him that her money must never be paid to any one but herself, and that
the present matter had better be hushed up for Ann's sake, who was as a
reed in the hands of the man she had married.
Colonel Selby exploded a little when he received this answer. Down he
sat in his turn, and wrote a short, sharp note to Edwin Fennel, giving
that estimable man a little of his mind, and warning him that he must
not be surprised if the police were advised to look after him.
When Edward Fennel received this decisive note through an address he had
given to Colonel Selby, but not the one at Camberwell, he called Miss
Lavinia Preen all the laudatory names in the thieves' dictionary.
And on the feast of St. Andrew, which as every one knows is the last day
of November, the letters came to an end with the following one from
Nancy:
"All being well, my dear Lavinia, we propose to return home by next
Sunday's boat, which ought to get in before three o'clock in the
afternoon. On Wednesday, Edwin met Charley Palliser in the Strand,
and had a chat with him, and heard all the Sainteville news; not
that there seemed much to hear. Charley says he runs over to London
pretty often now, his mother being ill. Of course you will not mind
waiting dinner for us on Sunday.
"Ever your loving sister,
"ANN."
So at length they were coming! Either that threat of being looked after
by the police had been too much for Captain Fennel, or the failure to
obtain funds was cutting short his stay in London. Any way, they were
coming. Lavinia laid the letter beside her breakfast-plate and fell into
thought. She resolved to welcome them graciously, and to say nothing
about bygones.
Flore was told the news, and warned that instead of dining at half-past
one on the morrow, the usual Sunday hour, it would be delayed until
three. Flore did not much like the prospect of her afternoon's holiday
being shortened, but there was no help for it. Lavinia provided a couple
of ducks for dinner, going into the market after breakfast to buy them;
the dish was an especial favourite of the captain's. She invited Mary
Carimon to partake of it, for Monsieur Carimon was going to spend Sunday
at Lille with an old friend of his, who was now master of the college
there.
On this evening, Saturday, Lavinia dined out herself. Some ladies named
Bosanquet, three sisters, with whom she had become pretty intimate,
called at the Petite Maison Rouge, and carried her off to their home in
the Rue Lamartine, where they had lived for years. After a very pleasant
evening with them, Lavinia left at ten o'clock.
And when she reached her own door, and was putting the latch-key into
the lock, the old fear came over her. Dropping her hands, she stood
there trembling. She looked round at the silent, deserted yard, she
looked up at the high encircling walls; she glanced at the frosty sky
and the bright stars; and she stood there shivering.
But she must go in. Throwing the door back with an effort of will, she
turned sick and faint: to enter that dark, lonely, empty house seemed
beyond her strength and courage. What could this strange feeling
portend?--why should it thus attack her? It was just as if some fatality
were in the house waiting to destroy her, and a subtle power would keep
her from entering it.
Her heart beating wildly, her breath laboured, Lavinia went in; she shut
the door behind her and sped up the passage. Feeling for the match-box
on the slab, put ready to her hand, she struck a match and lighted the
candle. At that moment, when turning round, she saw, or thought she saw,
Captain Fennel. He was standing just within the front-door, which she
had now come in at, staring at her with a fixed gaze, and with the most
malignant expression on his usually impassive face. Lavinia's terror
partly gave place to astonishment. Was it he himself? How had he come
in?
Turning to take the candle from the slab in her bewilderment, when she
looked again he was gone. What had become of him? Lavinia called to him
by name, but he did not answer. She took the candle into the salon,
though feeling sure he could not have come up the passage; but he was
not there. Had he slipped out again? Had she left the door open when
thinking she closed it, and had he followed her in, and was now gone
again? Lavinia carried her lighted candle to the door, and found it was
fastened. She had _not_ left it open.
Then, as she undressed in her room, trying all the while to solve the
problem, an idea crept into her mind that the appearance might have been
supernatural. Yet--supernatural visitants of the living do not appear to
us, but of the dead. Was Edwin Fennel dead?
So disturbed was the brain of Lavinia Preen that she could not get to
sleep; but tossed and turned about the bed almost until daybreak. At six
o'clock she fell into an uneasy slumber, and into a most distressing
dream.
It was a confused dream; nothing in it was clear. All she knew when
she awoke, was that she had appeared to be in a state of inexplicable
terror, of most intense apprehension throughout it, arising from some
evil threatened her by Captain Fennel.