It was the forenoon of the day after we arrived. David Preen had gone in first, her kinsman and distant cousin, to the Pet.i.te 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 b.u.t.termead again; David Preen giving sc.r.a.ps 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 a.s.sured her plainly that what she was chiefly suffering from was a disorder of the nerves, and that she must state to him explicitly the circ.u.mstances 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 pract.i.tioner 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 a.s.sure 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage, as if it wanted to get out by the front-door."
We were gathered together in the salon of the Pet.i.te 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 a.s.sure 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 medecin 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 a.s.suming 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 confrere, 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 Pet.i.te 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!