"Bless me! just listen to this," he went on, reading parts of the letter
aloud for my benefit. "'It is a dreadful story, George; I dare not enter
into details here. But I may tell you this much: that she is dying
of fright as much as of fever--or whatever it may be that ails her
physically. I am sure it is not consumption, though some of the people
here think it is. It is fright and superstition. She lives in the belief
that the house is haunted: that Lavinia's ghost walks in it.'"
"Now what on earth can Mary mean by that?" demanded the doctor, looking
off to ask me. "Ann Preen's wits must have left her. And Mary's too, to
repeat so nonsensical a thing."
Turning to the next page of the letter, Featherston read on.
"'To see her dying by inches before my eyes, and not make any attempt
to, save her is what I cannot reconcile myself to, George. I should
have it on my conscience afterwards. I think there is this one chance
for her: that you, who have attended her before and must know her
constitution, would see her now. You might be able to suggest some
remedy or mode of treatment which would restore her. It might even be
that the sight of a home face, of her old home doctor, would do for her
what the strange doctors here cannot do. No one knows better than you
how marvellously in illness the mind influences the body.'
"True enough," broke off Featherston. "But it seems to me there must be
something mysterious about the sickness." He read on again.
"'Stella, who is here, was the first to suggest your seeing her, but
it was already exercising my thoughts. Do come, George! the sooner the
better. I and Jules will be delighted to have you with us.'"
Featherston slowly folded up the letter. "What do you think of all this,
Johnny Ludlow? Curious, is it not?"
"Very. Especially that hint about the house being haunted by the
dead-and-gone Miss Preen."
"I have never heard clearly what it was Lavinia Preen died of," observed
Featherston, leaving, doctor-like, the supernatural for the practical.
"Except that she was seized with some sort of illness one day and died
the next."
"But that's no reason why her ghost should walk. Is it?"
"Nancy's imagination," spoke Featherston slightingly. "She was always
foolish and fanciful."
"Shall you go to Sainteville, Mr. Featherston?"
He gave his head a slow, dubious shake, but did not speak.
"Don't I wish such a chance were offered to me!"
Featherston sat down on a high stool, which stood before the physic
shelves, to revolve the momentous question. And by the time he took over
it, he seemed to find it a difficult task.
"One hardly likes to refuse the request, put as Mary writes it,"
remarked he presently. "Yet I don't see how I can go all the way over
there; or how I could leave my patients here. What a temper some of them
would be in!"
"They wouldn't die of it. It would be a rare holiday for you. Set you up
in health for a year to come."
"I've not had a holiday since that time at Pumpwater," he rejoined
dreamily; "when I went over for a day or two to see poor John Whitney.
You remember it, Johnny; you were there."
"Ay, I remember it."
"Not that this is a question of a holiday for me or no holiday, and I
wonder you should put it so, Johnny Ludlow; it turns upon Ann Preen. Ann
Fennel, that's to say. If I thought I _could_ do her any good, and those
French doctors can't, why, I suppose I ought to make an effort to go."
"To be sure. Make one also to take me with you!"
"I dare say!" laughed Featherston. "What would the Squire say to that?"
"Bluster a bit, and then see it was the very thing for me, and ask what
the cost would be. Mr. Featherston, I shall be ready to start when you
are. Please let me go!"
Of course I said this half in jest. But it turned out to be earnest.
Whether Featherston feared he might get lost if he crossed the sea
alone, I can't say; but he said I might put the question to the Squire
if I liked, and he would see him later and second it.
Featherston did another thing. He carried Mary Carimon's letter that
evening to Selby Court. Colonel Selby was staying with his brother for
a week's shooting. Mr. Selby, a nervous valetudinarian, would not have
gone out with a gun if bribed to it, but he invited his friends to do
so. They had just finished dinner when Featherston arrived; the two
brothers, and a short, dark, younger man with a rather keen but
good-natured face and kindly dark eyes. He was introduced as Mr. David
Preen, and turned out to be a cousin, more or less removed, of all the
Preens and all the Selbys you have ever heard of, dead or living.
Featherston imparted his news to them, and showed his sister's letter.
It was pronounced to be a very curious letter, and was read over more
than once. Colonel Selby next told them what he knew and what he
thought of Edwin Fennel: how he had persistently schemed to get the
quarterly money of the two ladies into his own covetous hands, and what
a shady sort of individual he was believed to be. Mr. Selby, nervous at
the best of times, let alone the worst, became painfully impressed: he
seemed to fear poor Nancy was altogether in a hornet's nest, and gave an
impulsive opinion that some one of the family ought to go over with
Featherston to look into things.
"Lavinia can't have been murdered, can she?" cried he, his thoughts
altogether confused; "murdered by that man for her share of the money?
Why else should her ghost come back?"
"Don't make us laugh, Paul," said the colonel to his brother. "Ghosts
are all moonshine. There are no such things."
"I can tell you that there _are_, William," returned the elder. "Though
mercifully the power to see them is accorded to very few mortals on
earth. Can you go with Mr. Featherston to look into this strange
business, William?"
"No," replied the colonel, "I could not possibly spare the time. Neither
should I care to do it. Any inquiry of that kind would be quite out of
my line."
"I will go," quietly spoke David Preen.
"Do so, David," said Mr. Selby eagerly. "It shall cost you nothing, you
know." By which little speech, Featherston gathered that Mr. David Preen
was not more overdone with riches than were many of the other Preens.
"Look into it well, David. See the doctor who attended Lavinia; see all
and every one able to throw any light upon her death," urged Mr. Selby.
"As to Ann, she was lamentably, foolishly blamable to marry as she did,
but she must not be left at the villain's mercy now things have come to
this pass."
To which Mr. David Preen nodded an emphatic assent.
The Squire gave in at last. Not to my pleading--he accused me of having
lost my head only to think of it--but to Featherston. And when the
following week was wearing away, the exigencies of Featherston's
patients not releasing him sooner, we started for Sainteville; he, I,
and David Preen. Getting in at ten at night after a boisterous passage,
Featherston took up his quarters at Monsieur Carimon's, we ours at the
Hôtel des Princes.
She looked very ill. Ill and changed. I had seen Ann Preen at Buttermead
when she lived there, but the Ann Preen (or Fennel) I saw now was not
much like her. The once bright face was drawn and fallen in, and very
nearly as long and grey as Featherston's. Apart from that, a timid,
shrinking look sat upon it, as though she feared some terror lay very
near to her.
The sick have to be studied, especially when suffering from whims
and fancies. So they invented a little fable to Mrs. Fennel--that
Featherston and David Preen were taking an excursion together for their
recreation, and the doctor had extended it as far as Sainteville to see
his sister Mary; never allowing her to think that it was to see _her_. I
was with them, but I went for nobody--and in truth that's all I was in
the matter.
It was the forenoon of the day after we arrived. David Preen had gone
in first, her kinsman and distant cousin, to the Petite Maison Rouge,
paving the way, as it were, for Featherston. We went in presently. Mrs.
Fennel sat in a large armchair by the salon fire, wrapped in a grey
shawl; she was always cold now, she told us; David Preen sat on the sofa
opposite, talking pleasantly of home news. Featherston joined him on the
sofa, and I sat down near the table.
Oh, she was glad to see us! Glad to see us all. Ours were home faces,
you see. She held my hands in hers, and the tears ran down her face,
betraying her state of weakness.
"You have not been very well of late, Mary tells me," Featherston said
to her in a break of the conversation. "What has been the matter?"
"I--it came on from a bad cold I caught," she answered with some
hesitation. "And there was all the trouble about Lavinia's death. I
could not get over the grief."
"Well, I must say you don't look very robust," returned Featherston, in
a half-joking tone. "I think I had better take you in hand whilst I am
here, and set you up."
"I do not think you can set me up; I do not suppose any one can," she
replied, shaking back her curls, which fell on each side of her face in
ringlets, as of old.
Featherston smiled cheerily. "I'll try," said he. "Some of my patients
say the same when I am first called in to them; but they change their
tone after I have brought back their roses. So will you; never fear.
I'll come in this afternoon and have a professional chat with you."
That settled, they went on with Buttermead again; David Preen giving
scraps and revelations of the Preen and Selby families; Featherston
telling choice items of the rural public in general. Mrs. Fennel's
spirits went up to animation.
"Shall you be able to do anything for her, sir?" I asked the doctor as
we came away and went through the entry to the Place Ronde.
"I cannot tell," he answered gravely. "She has a look on her face that
I do not like to see there."
Betrayed into confidence, I suppose, by the presence of the old friend
of her girlhood, Ann Fennel related everything to Mr. Featherston that
afternoon, as they sat on the sofa side by side, her hand occasionally
held soothingly in his own. He assured her plainly that what she was
chiefly suffering from was a disorder of the nerves, and that she must
state to him explicitly the circumstances which brought it on before he
could decide how to treat her for it.
Nancy obeyed him. She yearned to get well, though a latent impression
lay within her that she should not do so. She told him the particulars
of Lavinia's unexpected death just when on the point of leaving
Sainteville; and she went on to declare, glancing over her shoulders
with frightened eyes, that she (Lavinia) had several times since then
appeared in the house.
"What did Lavinia die of?" inquired the doctor at this juncture.
"We could not tell," answered Mrs. Fennel. "It puzzled us. At first
Monsieur Dupuis thought it must be inflammation brought on by a chill;
but Monsieur Podevin quite put that opinion aside, saying it was
nothing of the sort. He is a younger and more energetic practitioner
than Monsieur Dupuis."
"Was it never suggested that she might, in one way or another, have
taken something which poisoned her?"
"Why, yes, it was; I believe Monsieur Dupuis did think so--I am sure
Monsieur Podevin did. But it was impossible it could have been the case,
you see, because Lavinia touched nothing either of the days that we did
not also partake of."
"There ought to have been an examination after death. You objected to
that, I fancy," continued Featherston, who had talked a little with
Madame Carimon.
"True--I did; and I have been sorry for it since," sighed Ann Fennel.
"It was through what my husband said to me that I objected. Edwin
thought it would be distasteful to me. He did not like the idea of it
either. Being dead, he held that she should be left in reverence."
Featherston coughed. She was evidently innocent as any lamb of suspicion
against _him_.
"And now," went on Mr. Featherston, "just tell me what you mean by
saying you see your sister about the house."
"We do see her," said Nancy.
"Nonsense! You don't. It is all fancy. When the nerves are unstrung, as
yours are, they play us all sorts of tricks. Why, I knew a man once who
took up a notion that he walked upon his head, and he came to me to be
cured!"
"But it is seeing Lavinia's apparition, and the constant fear of seeing
it which lies upon me, that has brought on this nervousness," pleaded
Nancy. "It is to my husband, when he is here, that she chiefly appears;
nothing but that is keeping him away. I have seen her only three or four
times."
She spoke quietly and simply, evidently grounded in the belief. Mr.
Featherston wondered how he was to deal with this: and perhaps he was
not himself so much of a sceptic in the supernatural as he thought fit
to pretend. Nancy continued:
"It was to my husband she appeared first. Exactly a week after her
death. No; a week after the evening she was first taken ill. He was
coming upstairs to bed--I had gone on--when he suddenly fancied that
some one was following him, though only he and I were in the house.
Turning quickly round, he saw Lavinia. That was the first time; and
I assure you I thought he would have died of it. Never before had I
witnessed such mortal terror in man."
"Did he tell you he had seen her?"
"No; never. I could not imagine what brought on these curious attacks of
fright, for he had others. He put it upon his health. It was only when
I saw Lavinia myself after he went to England that I knew. I knew then
what it must have been."
Mr. Featherston was silent.
"She always appears in the same dress," continued Nancy; "a silver-grey
silk that she wore at church that Sunday. It was the last gown she ever
put on: we took it off her when she was first seized with the pain. And
in her face there is always a sad, beseeching aspect, as if she wanted
something and were imploring us to get it for her. _Indeed_ we see her,
Mr. Featherston."
"Ah, well," he said, perceiving it was not from this quarter that light
could be thrown on the suspicious darkness of the past, "let us talk of
yourself. You are to obey my orders in all respects, Mistress Nancy. We
will soon have you flourishing again."
Brave words. Perhaps the doctor half believed in them himself. But he
and they received a check all too soon.
That same evening, after David Preen had left--for he went in to spend
an hour at the little red house to gossip about the folks at home--Nancy
was taken with a fit of shivering. Flore hastily mixed her a glass
of hot wine-and-water, and then went upstairs to light a fire in the
bedroom, thinking her mistress would be the better for it. Nancy, who
could hear Flore moving about overhead, suddenly remembered something
that she wanted brought down. Rising from her chair, she went to the
door of the salon, intending to call out. A sort of side light, dim and
indistinct, fell upon her as she stood in the recess at the foot of the
stairs from the lamp in the salon and from the stove in the kitchen, for
both doors were open.
"Flore," she was beginning, "will you bring down my----"
And there Ann Fennel's words ended. With a wild cry, which reached the
ears of Flore and nearly startled her into fits, Mrs. Fennel collapsed.
The servant came dashing downstairs, expecting to hear that the ghost
had appeared again.
It was not that. Her mistress was looking wild and puzzled; and when
she recovered herself sufficiently to speak, declared that she had been
startled by some animal. Either a cat or a rabbit, she could not tell
which, the glimpse she caught of it was so brief and slight; it had run
against her legs as she was calling out.
Flore did not know what to make of this. She looked about, but neither
cat nor rabbit was to be seen; and she told her mistress it could have
been nothing but fancy. Mrs. Fennel thought she knew better.
"Why, I felt it and saw it," she said. "It came right against me and ran
over my feet. It seemed to be making for the passage, as if it wanted to
get out by the front-door."
* * * * *
We were gathered together in the salon of the Petite Maison Rouge the
following morning, partly by accident. Ann Fennel, exceedingly weak and
nervous, lay in bed. Featherston and Monsieur Dupuis were both upstairs.
She put down her illness to the fright, which she talked of to them
freely. They did not assure her it was only "nerves"--to what purpose? I
waited in the salon with David Preen, and just as the doctors came down
Madame Carimon came in.
David Preen seized upon the opportunity. Fearing that one so favourable
might not again occur, unless formally planned, he opened the ball.
Drawing his chair to the table, next to that of Madame Carimon, the
two doctors sitting opposite, David Preen avowed, with straightforward
candour, that he, with some other relatives, held a sort of doubt as to
whether it might not have been something Miss Lavinia Preen took which
caused her death; and he begged Monsieur Dupuis to say if any such doubt
had crossed his own mind at the time.
The fair-faced little médecin shook his head at this appeal, as much
as to say he thought that the subject was a puzzling one. Naturally
the doubt had crossed him, and very strongly, he answered; but the
difficulty in assuming that view of the matter lay in her having
partaken solely of the food which the rest of the household had partaken
of; that and nothing else. His confrère, Monsieur Podevin, held a very
conclusive opinion--that she had died of poison.
David Preen drew towards him a writing-case which lay on the table,
took a sheet of paper from it, and a pencil from his pocket. "Let us go
over the facts quietly," said he; "it may be we shall arrive at some
decision."
So they went over the facts, the chief speakers being Madame Carimon
and Flore, who was called in. David Preen dotted down from time to
time something which I suppose particularly impressed him.
Miss Preen was in perfectly good health up to that Sunday--the first
after Easter. On the following Tuesday she was about to quit Sainteville
for Boulogne, her home at the Petite Maison Rouge having become
intolerable to her through the residence in it of Captain Fennel.
"Pardon me if I state here something which is not positively in the line
of facts; rather, perhaps, in that of imagination," said Madame Carimon,
looking up. "Lavinia had gradually acquired a most painful dread of
Captain Fennel. She had dreams which she could only believe came to warn
her against him, in which he appeared to be threatening her with some
evil that she could not escape from. Once or twice--and this I cannot
in any way account for--she saw him in the house when he was not in it,
not even at Sainteville----"
"What! saw his apparition?" cried Featherston. "When the man was living!
Come, come, Mary, that is going too far!"
"Quelle drôle d'idée!" exclaimed the little doctor.
"He appeared to her twice, she told me," continued Mary Carimon. "She
had been spending the evening out each time; had come into the house,
this house, closing the street-door behind her. When she lighted a
candle at the slab, she saw him standing just inside the door, gazing
at her with the same dreadful aspect that she saw afterwards in her
dreams. You may laugh, George; Monsieur Dupuis, I think you are already
laughing; but I fully believe that she saw what she said she did, and
dreamt what she did dream."
"But it could not have been the man's apparition when he was not dead;
and it could not have been the man himself when he was not at
Sainteville," contended Featherston.
"And I believe that it all meant one of those mysterious warnings which
are vouchsafed us from our spiritual guardians in the unseen world,"
added Madame Carimon, independently pursuing her argument. "And that it
came to Lavinia to warn her to escape from this evil house."
"And she did not do it," remarked David Preen. "She was not quick
enough. Well, let us go on."
"As Lavinia came out of church, Charles Palliser ran after her to ask
her to go home to dine with him and his aunt," resumed Madame Carimon.
"If she had only accepted it! The dinner here was a very simple one,
and they all partook of it, including Flore----"
"And it was Flore who cooked and served it?" interrupted David Preen,
looking at her.
"Mais oui, monsieur. The tart excepted; that was frangipane, and did
come from the pastrycook," added Flore, plunging into English. "Then I
had my own dinner, and I had of every dish; and I drank of the wine.
Miss Lavinia would give me a glass of wine on the Sunday, and she poured
it out for me herself that day from the bottle of Bordeaux on their own
table. Nothing was the matter with any of all that. The one thing I did
not have of was the liqueur."
"What liqueur was that?"
"It was chartreuse, I believe," said Flore. "While I was busy removing
the dinner articles from the salon, monsieur was busy at his cupboard
outside there, where he kept his bottles. He came into the kitchen just
as I had sat down to eat, and asked me for three liqueur glasses, which
I gave to him on a plate. I heard him pour the liqueur into them, and he
carried them to the ladies."
Mr. David Preen wrote something down here.
"After that the captain went out to walk, saying he would see the
English boat enter; and when I had finished washing up I carried the
tea-tray to the salon-table and went home. Miss Lavinia was quite well
then; she sat in her belle robe of grey silk talking with her sister.
Then, when I was giving my boy Dion his collation, a tartine and a
cooked apple, I was fetched back here, and found the poor lady fighting
with pain for her life."
"Did you wash those liqueur glasses?" asked Mr. Featherston.
"But yes, sir. I had taken them away when I carried in the tea-things,
and washed them at once, and put them on the shelf in their places."
"You see," observed Monsieur Dupuis, "the ill-fated lady appears to have
taken nothing that the others did not take also. I applied my remedies
when I was called to her, and the following day she had, as I believed,
recovered from the attack; nothing but the exhaustion left by the agony
was remaining. But that night she was again seized, and I was again
fetched to her. The attack was even more violent than the first one. I
made a request for another doctor, and Monsieur Podevin was brought. He
at once set aside my suggestion of inflammation from a chill, and said
it looked to him more like a case of poison."
"She had had nothing but slops all day, messieurs, which I made and
carried to her," put in Flore; "and when I left, at night, she was, as
Monsieur le Médecin put it, 'all well to look at.'"
"Flore did not make the arrowroot which she took later," said Mary
Carimon, taking up the narrative. "When Lavinia went up to bed,
towards nine o'clock, Mrs. Fennel made her a cup of arrowroot in the
kitchen----"
"And a cup for herself at the same time, as I was informed, madame,"
spoke the little doctor.
"Oh yes, I know that, Monsieur Dupuis. Mrs. Fennel brought her sister's
arrowroot, when it was ready, into this room, asking her husband whether
she might venture to put a little brandy into it. He sent her to ask
the question of Lavinia, bidding her leave the arrowroot on the table
here. She came down for it, saying Lavinia declined the brandy, carried
it up to her and saw her take it. Mrs. Fennel wished her good-night and
came down for her own portion, which she had left in the kitchen. Before
eleven o'clock, when they were going to bed, cries were heard in
Lavinia's room; she was seized with the second attack, and--and died in
it."
"This second attack was so violent, so unmanageable," said Monsieur
Dupuis, as Mary Carimon's voice faltered into silence, "that I feel
convinced I could not have saved her had I been present when it came on.
I hear that Captain Fennel says he rang several times at my door before
he could arouse me. Such was not the case. I am a very light sleeper,
waking, from habit, at the slightest sound. But in this case I had not
had time to fall asleep when I fancied I heard the bell sound very
faintly. I thought I must be mistaken, as the bell is a loud bell, and
rings easily; and people who ring me up at night generally ring pretty
sharply. I lay listening, and some time afterwards, not immediately,
it did ring. I opened my window, saw Captain Fennel outside, and was
dressed and with him in two minutes."
"That sounds as if he did not want you to go to her too quickly,
monsieur," observed Mr. Featherston, which went, as the French have it,
without saying. "And I have heard of another suspicious fact: that he
put his wife up to stop the medical examination after death."
"It amounts to this," spoke David Preen, "according to our judgment, if
anything wrong was administered to her, it was given in the glass of
liqueur on the Sunday afternoon, and in the cup of arrowroot on the
Monday evening. They were the only things affording an opportunity of
being tampered with; and in each case the pain came on about two hours
afterwards."
Grave suspicion, as I am sure they all felt it to be. But not enough, as
Featherston remarked, to accuse a man of murder. There was no proof to
be brought forward, especially now that months had elapsed.
"What became of the cup which had contained the arrowroot?" inquired
David Preen, looking at Flore. "Was it left in the bedroom?"
"That cup, sir, I found in a bowl of water in the kitchen, and also the
other one which had been used. The two were together in the wooden bowl.
I supposed Madame Fennel had put them there; but she said she had not."
"Ah!" exclaimed David Preen, drawing a deep breath.
He had come over to look into this suspicious matter; but, as it seemed,
nothing could be done. To stir in it, and fail, would be worse than
letting it alone.
"Look you," said David Preen, as he put up his note-book. "If it be true
that Lavinia cannot rest now she's dead, but shows herself here in the
house, I regard it as a pretty sure proof that she was sent out of the
world unjustly. But----"
"Then you hold the belief that spirits revisit the earth, monsieur,"
interrupted Monsieur Dupuis, "and that revenants are to be seen?"
"I do, sir," replied David. "We Preens see them. But I cannot stir
in this matter, I was about to say, and the man must be left to his
conscience."
And so the conference broke up.
The thing which lay chiefly on hand now was to try to bring health back
to Ann Fennel. It was thought well to take her out of the house for a
short time, as she had such fancies about it; so Featherston gave up his
room at Madame Carimon's, and Ann was invited to move into it, whilst he
joined us at the hotel. I thought her very ill, as we all did. But after
her removal there, she recovered her spirits wonderfully, and went out
for short walks and laughed and chatted: and when Featherston and David
Preen took the boat back to return home, she went to the port to see
them steam off.
"Will it be all right with her?" was the last question Mary Carimon
whispered to her brother.
"I'm afraid _not_," he answered. "A little time will show one way or the
other. Depends somewhat, perhaps, upon how that husband of hers allows
things to go on. I have done what I can, Mary; I could not do more."
Does the reader notice that I did not include myself in those who
steamed off? For I did not go. Good, genial little Jules Carimon, who
was pleased to say he had always liked me much at school, invited me
to make a stay at his house, if I did not mind putting up with a small
bedroom in the mansarde. I did not mind it at all; it was large enough
for me. Nancy was delighted. We had quite a gay time of it; and I made
the acquaintance of Major and Mrs. Smith, the Misses Bosanquet and
Charley Palliser, who was shortly to quit Sainteville. Charley's
impression of Mrs. Fennel was that she would quit it before he did,
but in a different manner.
One fine afternoon, when we were coming off the pier, Nancy was walking
between me and Mary Carimon, for she needed the support of two arms if
she went far--yes, she was as weak as that--some one called out that the
London boat was coming in. Turning round, we saw her gliding smoothly up
the harbour. No one in these Anglo-French towns willingly misses _that_
sight, and we drew up on the quay to watch the passengers land. There
were only eight or ten of them.
Suddenly Nancy gave a great cry, which bore a sound both of fear and of
gladness--"Oh, there's Edwin!"--and the next moment began to shake her
pocket-handkerchief frantically.
A thin, grey, weasel of a man, whose face I did not like, came stalking
up the ladder. Yes, it was the ex-captain, Edwin Fennel.
"He has not come for her sake; he has come to grab the quarter's money,"
spoke Mary, quite savagely, in my ear. No doubt. It would be due the end
of September, which was at hand.
The captain was elaborately polite; quite effusive in his greeting to
us. Nancy left us and took his arm. At the turning where we had to
branch off to the Rue Pomme Cuite, she halted to say good-bye.
"But you are coming back to us, are you not?" cried Madame Carimon to
her.
"Oh, I could not let Edwin go home alone," said she. "Nobody's there but
Flore, you know."
So she went back there and then to the Petite Maison Rouge, and never
came out of it again. I think he was kind to her, that man. He had
sometimes a scared look upon his face, and I guessed he had been seeing
sights. The man would have given his head to be off again; to remain in
that haunted house must have been to him a most intolerable penance; but
he had some regard (policy dictating it) for public opinion, and could
not well run away from his wife in her failing health.
It was curious how quickly Nancy declined. From the very afternoon she
entered the house it seemed to begin. He had grabbed the money, as Mary
Carimon called it, and brought her nice and nourishing things; but
nothing availed. And a fine way he must have been in, to see that; for
with his wife's death the money would go away from him for evermore.
Monsieur Dupuis, sometimes Monsieur Henry Dupuis, saw her daily; and
Captain Fennel hastily called in another doctor who had the reputation
of being the best in the town, next to Monsieur Podevin; one Monsieur
Lamirand. Mary Carimon spent half her time there; I went in most days.
It could not be said that she had any special complaint, but she was too
weak to live.
In less than three weeks it was all over. The end, when it came, was
quite sudden. For a day or two she had seemed so much better that we
told her she had taken a turn at last. On the Thursday evening, quite
late--it was between eight and nine o'clock--Madame Carimon asked me to
run there with some jelly which she had made, and which was only then
ready. When I arrived, Flore said she was sure her mistress would like
me to go up to her room; she was alone, monsieur having stepped out.
Nancy, wrapped in a warm dressing-gown, sat by the fire in an easy-chair
and a great shawl. Her fair curls were all put back under a small lace
cap, which was tied at the chin with grey ribbon; her pretty blue eyes
were bright. I told her what I had come for, and took the chair in front
of her.
"You look so well this evening, Nancy," I said heartily--for I had
learnt to call her so at Madame Carimon's, as they did. "We shall have
you getting well now all one way."
"It is the spurt of the candle before going out," she quietly answered.
"I have not the least pain left anywhere--but it is only that."
"You should not say or think so."
"But I know it; I cannot mistake my own feelings. Fancy any one, reduced
as I am, getting well again!"
I am a bad one to keep up "make-believes." Truth to say, I felt as sure
of it as she did.
"And it will not be very long first. Johnny," she went on, in a
half-whisper, "I saw Lavinia to-day."