It was a fine, frosty day, and the first of December. The sun shone on
the fair streets of Sainteville and on the small congregation turning
out of the English Protestant Church after morning service.
Lavinia Preen went straight home. There she found that Madame Carimon,
who was to spend the rest of the day with her--monsieur having gone to
Lille--had not yet arrived, though the French Church Evangélique was
always over before the English. After glancing at Flore in the kitchen,
busy over the fine ducks, Lavinia set off for the Rue Pomme Cuite.
She met Mary Carimon turning out of it. "Let us go and sit under the
wall in the sun," said Mary. "It is too early yet for the boat."
This was a high wall belonging to the strong north gates of the town,
near Madame Carimon's. The sun shone full upon the benches beneath it,
which it sheltered from the bleak winds; in front was a patch of green
grass, on which the children ran about amidst the straight poplar trees.
It was very pleasant sitting there, even on this December day--bright
and cheerful; the wall behind them was quite warm, the sunshine rested
upon all.
Sitting there, Lavinia Preen told Madame Carimon of the curious dread
of entering her house at night, which had pursued her for the past two
months that she had been alone in it, and which she had never spoken of
to any one before. She went on to speak of the belief that she had seen
Captain Fennel the previous night in the passage, and of the dream
which had visited her when at length she fell asleep.
Madame Carimon turned her kindly, sensible face and her quiet, dark,
surprised eyes upon Lavinia. "I cannot understand you," she said.
"You mean, I suppose, that you cannot understand the facts, Mary.
Neither can I. Why this fear of going into the house should lie upon me
is most strange. 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."
"He appeared to be standing there, and was quite visible to me. The
expression on his face, which seemed to be looking straight into mine,
was most malicious. I never saw such an expression upon it in reality."
Mary Carimon laughed a little, saying she had never been troubled with
nervous fears herself; she was too practical for anything of the sort.
"And I have been practical hitherto," returned Lavinia. "When the first
surprise of seeing him there, or fancying I saw him there, was over, I
began to think, Mary, that he might be dead; that it was his apparition
which had stood there looking at me."
Mary Carimon shook her head. "Had anything of that sort happened, Nancy
would have telegraphed to you. Rely upon it, Lavinia, it was pure
fancy. You have been disagreeably exercised in mind lately, you know,
about that man; hearing he was coming home, your brain was somewhat
thrown off its balance."
"It may be so. The dream followed on it; and I did not like the dream."
"We all have bad dreams now and then. You say you do not remember much
of this one."
"I think I did not know much of it when dreaming it," quaintly spoke
Lavinia. "I was in a sea of trouble, throughout which I seemed to be
striving to escape some evil menaced me by Captain Fennel, and could not
do so. Whichever way I turned, there he was at a distance, scowling at
me with a threatening, evil countenance. Mary," she added in impassioned
tones, "I am sure some ill awaits me from that man."
"I am sure, were I you, I would put these foolish notions from me,"
calmly spoke Madame Carimon. "If Nancy set up a vocation for seeing
ghosts and dreaming dreams, one would not so much wonder at it. _You_
have always been reasonable, Lavinia; be so now."
Miss Preen took out her watch and looked at it. "We may as well be
walking towards the port, Mary," she remarked. "It is past two. The boat
ought to be in sight."
Not only in sight was the steamer, but rapidly nearing the port. She had
made a calm and quick passage. When at length she was in and about to
swing round, and the two ladies were looking down at it, with a small
crowd of other assembled spectators, the first passengers they saw on
board were Nancy and Captain Fennel, who began to wave their hands in
greeting and to nod their heads.
"Any way, Lavinia, it could not have been his ghost last night,"
whispered Mary Carimon.
* * * * *
Far from presenting an evil countenance to Lavinia, as the days passed
on, Captain Fennel appeared to wish to please her, and was all suavity.
So at present nothing disturbed the peace of the Petite Maison Rouge.
"What people were they that you stayed with in London, Nancy?" Lavinia
inquired of her sister on the first favourable opportunity.
Nancy glanced round the salon before answering, as if to make sure they
were alone; but Captain Fennel had gone out for a stroll.
"We were at James Fennel's, Lavinia."
"What--the brother's! And has he a wife?"
"Yes; a wife, but no children. Mrs. James Fennel has money of her own,
which she receives weekly."
"Receives weekly!" echoed Lavinia.
"She owns some little houses which are let out in weekly tenements;
an agent collects the rents, and brings her the money every Tuesday
morning. She dresses in the shabbiest things sometimes, and does her own
housework, and altogether is not what I should call quite a lady, but
she is very good-hearted. She did her best to make us comfortable,
and never grumbled at our staying so long. I expect Edwin paid her
something. James only came home by fits and starts. I think he was in
some embarrassment--debt, you know. He used to dash into the house like
a whirlwind when he did come, and steal out of it when he left, peering
about on all sides."
"Have they a nice house?" asked Lavinia.
"Oh, good gracious, no! It's not a house at all, only small lodgings.
And Mrs. James changed them twice over whilst we were there. When we
first went they were at a place called Ball's Pond."
"Why did you remain all that time?"
Mrs. Edwin Fennel shook her head helplessly; she could not answer the
question. "I should have liked to come back before," she said; "it was
very wearisome, knowing nobody and having nothing to do. Did you find it
dull here, Lavinia, all by yourself?"
"'Dull' is not the right word for it," answered Lavinia, catching her
breath with a sigh. "I felt more lonely, Ann, than I shall ever care
to feel again. Especially when I had to come home at night from some
soirée, or from spending the evening quietly with Mary Carimon or any
other friend." And she went on to tell of the feeling of terror which
had so tried her.
"I never heard of such a thing!" exclaimed Ann. "How silly you must be,
Lavinia! What could there have been in the house to frighten you?"
"I don't know; I wish I did know," sighed Lavinia, just as she had said
more than once before.
Nancy, who was attired in a bright ruby cashmere robe, with a gold chain
and locket, some blue ribbons adorning her light ringlets, for she had
made a point of dressing more youthfully than ever since her marriage,
leaned back in her chair, as she sat staring at her sister and thinking.
"Lavinia," she said huskily, "you remember the feeling you had the
day we were about to look at the house with Mary Carimon, and which
you thought was through the darkness of the passage striking you
unpleasantly? Well, my opinion is that it must have given you a scare."
"Why, of course it did."
"Ah, but I mean a scare which lasts," said Ann; "one of those scares
which affect the mind and take very long to get rid of. You recollect
poor Mrs. Hunt, at Buttermead? She was frightened at a violent
thunderstorm, though she never had been before; and for years
afterwards, whenever it thundered, she became so alarmingly ill and
agitated that Mr. Featherston had to be run for. He called it a scare.
I think the fear you felt that past day must have left that sort of
scare upon you. How else can you account for what you tell me?"
Truth to say, the same idea had more than once struck Lavinia. She knew
how devoid of reason some of these "scares" are, and yet how terribly
they disturb the mind on which they fasten.
"But I had quite forgotten that fear, Ann," she urged in reply. "We had
lived in the house eighteen months when you went away, and I had never
recalled it."
"All the same, I think you received the scare; it had only lain
dormant," persisted Ann.
"Well, well; you are back again now, and it is over," said Lavinia. "Let
us forget it. Do not speak of it again at all to any one, Nancy love."