"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 embarra.s.sment--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 n.o.body 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 soiree, 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 pa.s.sage 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 b.u.t.termead? 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."
VIII.
Winter that year had quite set in when Sainteville found itself honoured with rather a remarkable visitor; one Signor Talcke, who descended, one morning at the beginning of December, at the Hotel des Princes. Though he called himself "Signor," it seemed uncertain to what country he owed his birth. He spoke five or six languages as a native, including Hindustani. Signor Talcke was a professor of occult sciences; he was a great astronomer; astrology he had at his fingers" ends. He was a powerful mesmerist; he would foretell the events of your life by your hands, or your fortune by the cards.
For a fee of twenty-five francs, he would attend an evening party, and exhibit some of his powers. Amidst others who engaged him were the Miss Bosanquets, in the Rue Lamartine. A relative of theirs, Sir George Bosanquet, K.C.B., had come over with his wife to spend Christmas with them. Sir George laughed at what he heard of Signor Talcke"s powers of reading the future, and said he should much like to witness a specimen of it. So Miss Bosanquet and her sisters hastily arranged an evening entertainment, engaged the mystical man, and invited their friends and acquaintances, those of the Pet.i.te Maison Rouge included.
It took place on the Friday after Christmas-Day. Something that occurred during the evening was rather remarkable. Miss Preen"s diary gives a full account of it, and that shall be transcribed here. And I, Johnny Ludlow, take this opportunity of a.s.suring the reader that what she wrote was in faithful accordance with the facts of the case.
_From Miss Preen"s Diary._
_Sat.u.r.day morning._--I feel very tired; fit for nothing. Nancy has undertaken to do the marketing, and is gone out for that purpose with her husband. It is to be hoped she will be moderate, and not attempt to buy up half the market.
I lay awake all night, after the evening at Miss Bosanquet"s, thinking how foolish Ann was to have had her "future cast," as that Italian (if he is Italian) called it, and how worse than foolish I was to let what he said worry me. "As if there could be anything in it!" laughed Ann, as we were coming home; fortunately she is not as I am in temperament--nervously anxious. "It is only nonsense," said Miss Anna Bosanquet to me when the signor"s predictions were at an end; "he will tell some one else just the same next time." But _I_ did not think so. Of course, one is at a loss how to trust this kind of man. Take him for all in all, I rather like him; and he appears to believe implicitly in what he says: or, rather, in what he tell us the cards say.
They are charming women, these three sisters--Grace, Rose, and Anna Bosanquet; good, considerate, high-bred ladies. I wonder how it is they have lived to middle life without any one of them marrying? And I often wonder how they came to take up their residence at Sainteville, for they are very well off, and have great connections. I remember, though, Anna once said to me that the dry, pure air of the place suited her sister Rose, who has bad health, better than any other they had tried.
When seven o"clock struck, the hour named, Nancy and I appeared together in the sitting-room, ready to start, for we observe punctuality at Sainteville. I wore my black satin, handsome yet, trimmed with the rich white lace that Mrs. Selby gave me. Nancy looked very nice and young in her lilac silk. She wore a white rose in her hair, and her gold chain and locket round her neck. Captain Fennel surprised us by saying he was not going--his neuralgia had come on. I fancied it was an excuse--that he did not wish to meet Sir George Bosanquet. He had complained of the same thing on Christmas-Day, so it might be true. Ann and I set off together, leaving him nursing his cheek at the table.
It was a large gathering for Sainteville--forty guests, I should think; but the rooms are large. Professor Talcke exhibited some wonderful feats in--what shall I call it?--necromancy?--as good a word, perhaps, as any other. He mesmerized some people, and put one of them into a state of clairvoyance, and her revelations took my breath away. Signor Talcke a.s.sured us that what she said would be found minutely true. I think he has the strangest eyes I ever saw: grey eyes, with a sort of light in their depths. His features are fair and delicate, his voice is gentle as a woman"s, his manner retiring; Sir George seemed much taken with him.
Later, when the evening was pa.s.sing, he asked if any one present would like to have their future cast, for he had cards which would do it.
Three of his listeners pressed forward at once; two of them with gay laughter, the other pale and awestruck. The signor went into the recess in the small room, and sat down behind the little table there, and as many as could crowd round to look on, did so. I don"t know what pa.s.sed; there was no room for me; or whether the "Futures" he disclosed were good or bad. I had sat on the sofa at a distance, talking with Anna Bosanquet and Madame Carimon.
Suddenly, as we were for a moment silent, Ann"s voice was heard, eager and laughing:
"Will you tell my fortune, Signor Talcke? I should like to have mine revealed."
"With pleasure, madame," he answered.
We got up and drew near. I felt vexed that Ann should put herself forward in any such matter, and whispered to her; but she only shook her curls, laughed at me, and persisted. Signor Talcke put the cards in her hands, telling her to shuffle them.
"It is all fun, Lavinia," she whispered to me. "Did you hear him tell Miss Peet she was going to have money left her?"
After Ann had shuffled the cards, he made her cut them into three divisions, and he then turned them up on the table himself, faces upwards, and laid them out in three rows. They were not like the cards we play with; quite different from those; nearly all were picture-cards, and the plain ones bore cabalistic characters. We stood looking on with two or three other people; the rest had dispersed, and had gone into the next room to listen to the singing.
At first Signor Talcke never spoke a word. He looked at the cards, and looked at Nancy; looked, and looked again. "They are not propitious," he said in low tones, and picked them up, and asked Nancy to shuffle and cut them again. Then he laid them as before, and we stood waiting in silence.
Chancing at that moment to look at Signor Talcke, his face startled me.
He was frowning at the cards in so painful a manner as to quite alter its expression. But he did not speak. He still only gazed at the cards with bent eyes, and glanced up at Ann occasionally. Then, with an impatient sweep of the hand, he pushed the cards together.
"I must trouble you to shuffle and cut them once more, madame," he said.
"Shuffle them well."
"Are they still unpropitious?" asked a jesting voice at my elbow.
Turning, I saw Charley Palliser"s smiling face. He must have been standing there, and heard Signor Talcke"s previous remark.
"Yes, sir, they are," replied the signor, with marked emphasis. "I never saw the cards so unpropitious in my life."
Nancy took up the cards, shuffled them well, and cut them three times.
Signor Talcke laid them out as before, bent his head, and looked attentively at them. He did not speak, but there was no mistaking the vexed, pained, and puzzled look on his face.
I do not think he knew Nancy, even by name. I do not think he knew me, or had the least notion that we were related. Neither of us had ever met him before. He put his hand to his brow, still gazing at the cards.
"But when are you going to begin my fortune, sir?" broke in Nancy.
"I would rather not tell it at all, madame," he answered.
"_Cannot_ you tell it?--have your powers of forecasting inconveniently run away?" said she incautiously, her tone mocking in her disappointment.
"I could tell it, all too surely; but you might not like to hear it,"
returned he.