Lavinia sighed. She sat on a little while longer, and then took her departure.
The shoe-shop on the port was opposite the place in the harbour where the London steamers were generally moored. The one now there was taking in cargo. As Lavinia was turning into the shop for her parasol, she heard a stentorian English voice call out to a man who was superintending the work in his shirt-sleeves: "At what hour does this boat leave to-night?"
"At eight o"clock, sir," was the answer. "Eight sharp; we want to get away with the first o" the tide."
_From Miss Lavinia Preen"s Diary._
_September 22nd._--The town clocks have just struck eight, and I could almost fancy that I hear the faint sound of the boat steaming down the harbour in the dark night, carrying Nancy away with it, and carrying _him_. However, that is fancy and nothing else, for the sound could not penetrate to me here.
Perhaps it surprised me, perhaps it did not, when Nancy came to me this afternoon as I was sitting in my bedroom reading Scott"s "Legend of Montrose," which Mary Carimon had lent me from her little stock of English books, and said she and Captain Fennel were going to London that night by the boat. He had received a letter, he told her, calling him thither. He might tell Nancy that if he liked, but it would not do for me. He is going, I can only believe, in consequence of what that gentleman in the shepherd"s plaid said on the pier to-day. Can it be that the "Mr. Dangerfield" spoken of applies to Edwin Fennel himself and not to his brother? Is he finding himself in some dangerous strait, and is running away from the individual coming over in the approaching boat, who personally knows Mr. Dangerfield? "Can you lend me a five-pound note, Lavinia?" Nancy went on, when she had told me the news; "lend it to myself, I mean. I will repay you when I receive my next quarter"s income, which is due, you know, in a few days." I chanced to have a five-pound note by me in my own private store, and I gave it her, reminding her that unless she did let me have it again, it would be so much less in hand to meet expenses with, and that I had found difficulty enough in the past quarter. "On the other hand," said Nancy, "if I and Edwin stay away a week or two, you will be spared our housekeeping; and when our money comes, Lavinia, you can open my letter and repay yourself if I am not here. I don"t at all know where we are going to stay," she said, in answer to my question. "I was beginning to ask Edwin just now in the other room, but he was busy packing his portmanteau, and told me not to bother him."
And so, there it is: they are gone, and I am left here all alone.
I wonder whether any Mr. Dangerfield has been at Sainteville? I think we should have heard the name. Why, that is the door-bell! I must go and answer it.
It was Charley Palliser. He had come with a message from Major and Mrs. Smith. They are going to Drecques to-morrow morning by the eleven-o"clock train with a few friends and a basket of provisions, and had sent Charley to say they would be glad of my company. "Do come, Miss Preen," urged Charley as I hesitated; "you are all alone now, and I"m sure it must be dreadfully dull."
"How do you know I am alone?" I asked.
"Because," said Charley, "I have been watching the London boat out, and I saw Captain Fennel and your sister go by it. Major and Mrs. Smith were with me. It is a lovely night."
"Wait a moment," I said, as Charley was about to depart when I had accepted the invitation. "Do you know whether an Englishman named Dangerfield is living here?"
"Don"t think there is; I have not met with him," said Charley. "Why, Miss Preen?"
"Oh, only that I was asked to-day whether I knew any one of that name,"
I returned carelessly. "Good-night, Mr. Charles. Thank you for coming."
They have invited me, finding I was left alone, and I think it very kind of them. But the Smiths are both kind-hearted people.
_September 23rd._--Half-past nine o"clock, p.m. Have just returned from Drecques by the last train after spending a pleasant day. Quiet, of course, for there is not much to do at Drecques except stroll over the ruins of the old castle, or saunter about the quaint little ancient town, and go into the grand old church. It was so fine and warm that we had dinner on the gra.s.s, the people at the cottage bringing our plates and knives and forks. Later in the day we took tea indoors. In the afternoon, when all the rest were scattered about and the major sat smoking his cigar on the bench under the trees, I sat down by him to tell him what happened yesterday, and I begged him to give me his opinion. It was no betrayal of confidence, for Major Smith is better acquainted with the shady side of the Fennels than I am.
"I heard there was an English lawyer staying at the Hotel des Princes, and that he had come here from Douai," observed the major. "His name"s Lockett. It must have been he who spoke to you on the pier."
"Yes, of course. Do you know, major, whether any one has stayed at Sainteville pa.s.sing as Mr. Dangerfield?"
"I don"t think so," replied the major. "Unless he has kept himself remarkably quiet."
"Could it apply to Captain Fennel?"
"I never knew that he had gone under an a.s.sumed name. The accusation is one more likely to apply to his brother than to himself. James Fennel is unscrupulous, very incautious: notwithstanding that, I like him better than I like the other. There"s something about Edwin Fennel that repels you; at least, it does me; but one can hardly help liking James, mauvais sujet though he is," added the speaker, pausing to flirt off the ashes of his cigar.
"The doubt pointing to Edwin Fennel in the affair is his suddenly decamping," continued Major Smith. "It was quite impromptu, you say, Miss Preen?"
"Quite so. I feel sure he had no thought of going away in the morning; and he did not receive any letter from England later, which was the excuse he gave Nancy for departing. Rely upon it that what he heard about the Mr. Dangerfield on the pier drove him away."
"Well, that looks suspicious, you see."
"Oh yes, I do see it," I answered, unable to conceal the pain I felt.
"It was a bitter calamity, Major Smith, when Nancy married him."
"I"ll make a few cautious inquiries in the town, and try to find out if there"s anything against him in secret, or if any man named Dangerfield has been in the place and got into a mess. But, indeed, I don"t altogether see that it could apply to him," concluded the major after a pause. "One can"t well go under two names in the same town; and every one knows him as Edwin Fennel.--Here they are, some of them, coming back!" And when the wanderers were close up, they found Major Smith arguing with me about the architecture of the castle.
Ten o"clock. Time for bed. I am in no haste to go, for I don"t sleep as well as I used to.
A thought has lately sometimes crossed me that this miserable trouble worries me more than it ought to do. "Accept it as your cross, and _yield_ to it, Lavinia," says Mary Carimon to me. But I _cannot_ yield to it; that is, I cannot in the least diminish the anxiety which always clings to me, or forget the distress and dread that lie upon me like a shadow. I know that my life has been on the whole an easy life--that during all the years I spent at Selby Court I never had any trouble; I know that crosses do come to us all, earlier or later, and that I ought not to be surprised that "no new thing has happened to me," the world being full of such experiences. I suppose it is because I have been so exempt from care, that I feel this the more.
Half-past ten! just half-an-hour writing these last few lines and _thinking_! Time I put up. I wonder when I shall hear from Nancy?
VI.
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 Pet.i.te 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sailed 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 pa.s.sed, November was pa.s.sing, 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 embarra.s.sment 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."