Johnny Ludlow, Fifth Series. Henry Wood
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