Johnny Ludlow, Fifth Series. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      After dinner, over the coffee, Monsieur Henri Dupuis suddenly spoke of the soirée at Miss Bosanquet’s the previous Friday, regretting that he and his wife had been unable to attend it. He was engaged the whole evening with a patient dangerously ill, and his wife did not like to appear at it without him. Nancy—Nancy!—then began to tell about the “fortune” which had been forecast for her by Signor Talcke, thinking possibly that her husband could not reproach her for it before company. She was very gay over it; a proof that it had left no bad impression on her mind.

      “What’s that, Nancy?” cried Captain Fennel, who had listened as if he disbelieved his ears. “The fellow told you we had something evil in our house?”

      “Yes, he did,” assented Nancy. “An evil influence, he said, which was destined to bring forth something dark and dreadful.”

      “I am sorry you did not tell this before,” returned the captain stiffly. “I should have requested you not again to allude to such folly. It was downright insolence.”

      “I—you—you were out on Saturday, you know, Edwin, and in bed with your headache all Sunday; and to-day I forgot it,” said Nancy in less brave tones.

      “Suppose we have a game at wholesome card-playing,” interposed Mary Carimon, bringing forth a new pack. “Open them, will you, Jules? Do you remember, mon ami, having your fortune told once by a gipsy woman when we were in Sir John Whitney’s coppice with the two Peckham girls? She told you you would fall into a rich inheritance and marry a Frenchwoman.”

      “Neither of which agreeable promises is yet fulfilled,” said little Monsieur Carimon with his happy smile. Monsieur Carimon had heard the account of Nancy’s “forecast” from his wife; he was not himself present, but taking a hand at whist in the card-room.

      They sat down to a round game—spin. Monsieur Henri Dupuis and his pretty young wife had never played it before, but they soon learned it and liked it much. Both of them spoke English well; she with the prettiest accent imaginable. Thus the evening passed, and no more allusion was made to the fortune-telling at Miss Bosanquet’s.

      That was Monday. On Tuesday, Miss Preen was dispensing the coffee at breakfast in the Petite Maison Rouge to her sister and Mr. Fennel, when Flore came bustling in with a letter in her hand.

      “Tenez, madame,” she said, putting it beside Mrs. Fennel. “I laid it down in the kitchen when the facteur brought it, whilst I was preparing the déjeûner, and forgot it afterwards.”

      Before Nancy could touch the letter, her husband caught it up. He gazed at the address, at the postmark, and turned it about to look at the seal. The letters of gentlefolk were generally fastened with a seal in those days: this had one in transparent bronze wax.

      Mr. Fennel put the letter down with a remark peevishly uttered. “It is not from London; it is from Buttermead.”

      “And from your old friend, Jane Peckham, Nancy,” struck in Lavinia. “I recognize her handwriting.”

      “I am glad,” exclaimed Nancy. “I have not heard from them for ages. Why now—is it not odd?—that Madame Carimon should mention the Peckhams last night, and I receive a letter from them this morning?”

      “I supposed it might be from London, with your remittance,” said Mr. Fennel to his wife. “It is due, is it not?”

      “Oh, that came on Saturday, Edwin,” she said, as she opened her letter.

      “Came on Saturday!” echoed Captain Fennel ungraciously, as if disputing the assertion.

      “By the afternoon post; you were at Drecques, you know.”

      “The money came? Your money?”

      “Yes,” said Nancy, who had stepped to the window to read her letter, for it was a dark day, and stood there with her back to the room.

      “And where is it?” demanded he.

      “I gave it to Lavinia. I always give it to her.”

      Captain Fennel glared at his wife for a moment, then smoothed his face to its ordinary placidity, and turned to Lavinia.

      “Will you be good enough to hand over to me my wife’s money, Miss Preen?”

      “No,” she answered quietly.

      “I must trouble you to do so, when breakfast shall be finished.”

      “I cannot,” pursued Lavinia. “I have paid it away.”

      “That I do not believe. I claim it from you in right of my wife; and I shall enforce the claim.”

      “The money is Nancy’s, not yours,” said Lavinia. “In consequence of your having stopped her share last quarter in London, I was plunged here into debt and great inconvenience. Yesterday morning I went out to settle the debts—and it has taken the whole of her money to do it. That is the state of things, Captain Fennel.”

      “I am in debt here myself,” retorted he, but not angrily. “I owe money to my tailor and bootmaker; I owe an account at the chemist’s; I want money in my pockets—and I must indeed have it.”

      “Not from me,” returned Lavinia.

      Edwin Fennel broke into a little access of temper. He dashed his serviette on the table, strode to the window, and roughly caught his wife by the arm. She cried out.

      “How dared you hand your money to any one but me?” he asked in a low voice of passion.

      “But how are we to live if I don’t give it to Lavinia for the housekeeping?” returned Nancy, bursting into tears. “It takes all we have; her share and mine; every farthing of it.”

      “Let my sister alone, Mr. Fennel,” spoke up Lavinia with authority. “She is responsible for the debts we contract in this house, just as much as I am, and she must contribute her part to pay them. You ought to be aware that the expenses are now increased by nearly a third; I assure you I hardly like to face the difficulties I see before me.”

      “Do you suppose I can stop in the place without some loose cash to keep me going?” he asked calmly. “Is that reasonable, Miss Lavinia?”

      “And do you suppose I can keep you and Ann here without her money to help me to do it?” she rejoined. “Perhaps the better plan will be for me to take up my abode elsewhere, and leave the house to you and Ann to do as you please in it.”

      Captain Fennel dropped his argument, returned to the table, and went on with his breakfast. The last words had startled him. Without Lavinia, which meant without her money, they could not live in the house at all.

      Matters were partly patched up in the course of the day. Nancy came upstairs to Lavinia, begging and praying, as if she were praying for her life, for a little ready money for her husband—just a hundred francs. Trembling and sobbing, she confessed that she dared not return to him without it; she should be too frightened at his anger.

      And Lavinia gave it to her.

      IX

      Matters went on to the spring. There were no outward differences in the Petite Maison Rouge, but it was full of an undercurrent of discomfort. At least for Lavinia. Captain Fennel was simply to her an incubus; and now and again petty accounts of his СКАЧАТЬ