Johnny Ludlow, Fifth Series

“Oh, quarterly,” said Nancy. “It is paid punctually to us by the acting-trustee, Colonel Selby.”

“Ah, yes. Then you have thirty-five pounds every quarter?”

“Between us, we do,” assented Nancy. “Lavinia has seventeen pounds ten, and I have the same; and the colonel makes us each give a receipt for our own share.”

Captain Fennel turned his head and gazed at her with a hard stare.

“You told me your income was a hundred and forty pounds a-year.”

“Yes, it is that exactly,” said she quietly; “mine and Lavinia’s together. We do not each have that, Edwin; I never meant to imply–”

Mrs. Fennel broke off, frightened. On the captain’s face, cruel enough just then, there sat an expression which she might have thought diabolical had it been any one else’s face. Any way, it scared her.

“What is it?” she gasped.

Rising rapidly, Captain Fennel walked forward, caught up some pebbles, flung them from him and waited, apparently watching to see where they fell. Then he strolled back again.

“Were you angry with me?” faltered Nancy. “Had I done anything?”

“My dear, what should you have done? Angry?” repeated he, in a light tone, as if intensely amused. “You must not take up fancies, Mrs. Fennel.”

“I suppose Mrs. Selby thought it would be sufficient income for us, both living together,” remarked Nancy. “If either of us should die it all lapses to the other. We found it quite enough last year, I assure you, Edwin; Sainteville is so cheap a place.”

“Oh, delightfully cheap!” agreed the captain.

It was this conversation that Nancy repeated to Lavinia; but she did not speak of the queer look which had frightened her. Lavinia saw that Mr. Edwin Fennel had taken up a wrong idea of their income. Of course the disappointment angered him.

An aspect of semi-courtesy was outwardly maintained in the intercourse of home life. Lavinia was a gentlewoman; she had not spoken unpleasant things to the captain’s face, or hinted that he was a weight upon the housekeeping pocket; whilst he, as yet, was quite officiously civil to her. But there was no love lost between them; and Lavinia could not divest her mind of an undercurrent of conviction that he was, in some way or other, a man to be dreaded.

Thus Captain Fennel (as he was mostly called), being domiciled with the estimable ladies in the Petite Maison Rouge, grew to be considered one of the English colony of Sainteville, and was received as such. As nobody knew aught against him, nobody thought anything. Major Smith had not spoken of antecedents, neither had Miss Preen; the Carimons, who were in the secret, never spoke ill of any one: and as the captain could assume pleasing manners at will, he became fairly well liked by his country-people in a passing sort of way.

Lavinia Preen sat one day upon the low edge of the pier, her back to the sun and the sea. She had called in at the little shoe-shop on the port, just as you turn out of the Rue Tessin, and had left her parasol there. The sun was not then out in the grey sky, and she did not miss it. Now that the sun was shining, and the grey canopy above had become blue, she said to herself that she had been stupid. It was September weather, so the sun was not unbearable.

Lavinia Preen was thinner; the thraldom of the past three months had made her so. Now and then it would cross her mind to leave the Petite Maison Rouge to its married inmates; but for Nancy’s sake she hesitated. Nancy had made the one love of her life, and Nancy had loved her in return. Now, the love was chiefly given to the new tie she had formed; Lavinia was second in every respect.

“They go their way now, and I have to go mine,” sighed Lavinia, as she sat this morning on the pier. “Even my walks have to be solitary.”

A cloud came sailing up and the sun went in again. Lavinia rose; she walked onwards till she came to the end of the pier, where she again sat down. The next moment, chancing to look the way she had come, she saw a lady and gentleman advancing arm-in-arm.

“Oh, they are on the pier, are they!” mentally spoke Lavinia. For it was Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Fennel.

Nancy sat down beside her. “It is a long walk!” cried she, drawing a quick breath or two. “Lavinia, what do you think we have just heard?”

“How can I tell?” returned the elder sister.

“You know those queer people, an old English aunt and three nieces, who took Madame Gibon’s rooms in the Rue Ménar? They have all disappeared and have paid nobody,” continued Nancy. “Charley Palliser told us just how; he was laughing like anything over it.”

“I never thought they looked like people to be trusted,” remarked Lavinia. “Dear me! here’s the sun coming out again.”

“Where is your parasol?”

Lavinia recounted her negligence in having left it at the shoe-mart. Captain Fennel had brought out a small silk umbrella; he turned from the end of the pier, where he stood looking out to sea, opened the umbrella, and offered it.

“It is not much larger than a good-sized parasol,” remarked he. “Pray take it, Miss Lavinia.”

Lavinia did so after a moment’s imperceptible hesitation, and thanked him. She hated to be under the slightest obligation to him, but the sun was now full in her eyes, and might make her head ache.

The pleasant smell of a cigar caused them to look up. A youngish man, rather remarkably tall, with a shepherd’s plaid across his broad shoulders, was striding up the pier. He sat down near Miss Preen, and she glanced round at him. Appearing to think that she looked at his cigar, he immediately threw it into the sea behind him.

“Oh, I am sorry you did that,” said Lavinia, speaking impulsively. “I like the smell of a cigar.”

“Oh, thank you; thank you very much,” he answered. “I had nearly smoked it out.”

Voice and manner were alike pleasant and easy, and Lavinia spoke again—some trivial remark about the fine expanse of sea; upon which they drifted into conversation. We are reserved enough with strangers at home, we Islanders, as the world knows, but most of us are less ungracious abroad.

“Sainteville seems a clean, healthy place,” remarked the new-comer.

“Very,” said Miss Lavinia. “Do you know it well?”

“I never saw it before to-day,” he replied. “I have come here from Douai to meet a friend, having two or three days to spare.”

“Douai is a fine town,” remarked Captain Fennel, turning to speak, for he was still looking out over the sea, and had his opera-glasses in his hand. “I spent a week there not long ago.”

“Douai!” exclaimed Nancy. “That’s the place where the great Law Courts are, is it not? Don’t you remember the man last year, Lavinia, who committed some dreadful crime, and was taken up to Douai to be tried at the Assizes there?”

“We have a great case coming on there as soon as the Courts meet,” said the stranger, who seemed a talkative man; “and that’s what I am at Douai for. A case of extensive swindling.”

“You are a lawyer, I presume?” said Miss Preen.

The stranger nodded. “Being the only one of our London firm who can speak French readily, and we are four of us in it, I had to come over and watch this affair and wait for the trial. For the young fellow is an Englishman, I am sorry to say, and his people, worthy and well-to-do merchants, are nearly mad over it.”

“But did he commit it in England?” cried Miss Preen.

“Oh no; in France, within the arrondissement of the Douai Courts. He is in prison there. I dare say you get some swindling in a petty way even at Sainteville,” added the speaker.

“That we do,” put in Nancy. “An English family of ladies ran away only yesterday, owing twenty pounds at least, it is said.”

“Ah,” said the stranger, with a smile. “I think the ladies are sometimes more clever at that game than the men. By the way,” he went on briskly, “do you know a Mr. Dangerfield at Sainteville?”

“No,” replied Lavinia.

“He is staying here, I believe, or has been.”

“Not that I know of,” said Lavinia. “I never heard his name.”

“Changed it again, probably,” carelessly observed the young man.

“Is Dangerfield not his true name, then?”