The Fate of Fenella. Various Authors

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      "Well, whether his aunt, old Lady Grizel, put it into his head, or whether he saw something for himself that he didn't like—the fact is, Frank made a scene one night when they came home from a ball at the Austrian Embassy, and Fenella—who is the Tartar's own daughter when she's roused, I can tell you, dynamite isn't in it!—flared up tremendously, and there was, in short, the devil to pay. Fenella, it seems, had been secretly bottling up a little private jealousy on her own part. There was a certain Madame—her name don't matter; and she has returned to Mongolia or wherever she came from long ago—a certain woman, pretty nearly old enough to be Frank's mother, but a fascinating sort of Jezebel, whom you met about everywhere that season. And Fenella turned round and declared that Frank had been making her miserable by his goings-on with that vile woman!"

      "All her foolish fancy, of course!" said Jacynth, suddenly looking at the other man with ​a penetrating gaze from beneath his frowning black brows.

      "Oh—well—you know—oh, I dare say Frank had, to some extent, been making an ass of himself. But, of course, the case was totally different."

      "Oh, of course."

      "Fenella talked like a wild Indian, you know. It couldn't be supposed that because Lord Francis Onslow kicked up his heels rather more than was exactly pretty. Lady Francis Onslow was to be allowed to follow suit. He had taken exception to a certain man—military attaché to one of the Embassies—and forbade Fenella to dance with him or receive him in her drawing room. Needless to say that Fenella made a point of waltzing with him the next night, and of giving him a standing invitation to five o'clock tea. More rows. Family consultations. Aunt Grizel volunteering as peace-maker; I think that was the last straw. Fenella insisted on a separation; she was as obstinate as possible. She would take her boy and leave him. As to the money, he might keep it all. And that sort of wild nonsense."

      "But she carried her point? She left him? How was it possible that he let her go?"

      "My dear friend, the idea of talking of 'letting' or not letting Fenella Onslow do anything she had set her will on is refreshingly naïf. She ​threatened them that if they did not consent to an amicable arrangement she would bring legal proceedings (on account of the Mongolian fascinator!) and make a scandal. Well, the Onslows hate the name of a scandal as a mad dog hates water."

      "Or as a burnt child dreads the fire," put in Jacynth.

      "At any rate, among them they cobbled up the deed of separation; and there is poor Frank with a wife and no wife, and the boy—he was devoted to the little chap—taken away from him, at any rate for some years."

      "And there is Lady Francis Onslow with a husband and no husband."

      "Upon my soul I believe she's happier without him, upon my soul I do! All she cares for in life is to flirt; to decoy some wretched fellow into a desperate state about her, and then to turn him off with an impudent little assumption of innocence, and declare she meant nothing. People said there was more in that affair of the military attaché, than her usual coquetries. But I don't know. I don't believe she has it in her power to care for any man. However, very few of those who saw the little drama being acted before their eyes take a lenient view of Fenella's conduct. I felt bound to open your eyes, Jacynth. The woman is as dangerous as a rattlesnake. Of course she's gone and made a hideous hash of ​her own life; but she has done worse than that to other people's lives, and she'll go on doing it. I saw her just now sitting up on the box-seat of the coach beside her husband, and——"

      "Beside whom?"

      "Beside her husband, Frank Onslow. There's nothing she hasn't impudence enough for! It wouldn't surprise me if they were to come together again."

      "And that," said Jacynth, walking away by himself, "is what Castleton calls telling me 'all about that woman!' I don't know whom she loves, nor whether she loves anyone at this present moment. But that there are depths of feeling in that girl of which old Castleton is about as well able to judge as a mole of the solar system—but what's the good of it! I have played my stake and lost it. I—I must get out of this place if I'm to keep any hold over myself at all. How could a raw lad like Frank Onslow value her or understand her? Of course, he was selfish and unreasonable and dull to all the finer part of her nature, like a boy as he is—or was, at any rate, when he married her!" He went up to his room and dragged out a portmanteau. He must get away. There was no use in parleying or delay. Flight, instant flight, was the only thing for him. But when he had opened the portmanteau, and dragged out a few clothes from the chest of drawers, he sat down by the bedside and ​buried his face in the pillow. "I love her! I love her!" he moaned out. And then he hated himself for his folly.

      At this moment a little childish footstep was heard tramping up the stairs; tap—tap—tap—tap, climbing up with much exertion, but with eager haste, and then a sweet little childish voice said, "Mr. Jacymf, Mr. Jacymf, are you there?"

      Jacynth opened the door with a wildly beating heart. Could she have sent him a message? "What is it, Ronny, my man?" he said, looking down upon the child's curly, tawny hair and bright, innocent, hazel eyes that were so like his mother's.

      "Hulloa!" cried Ronny, surveying the portmanteau and the litter of clothes on the floor, "are you going away?"

      "Yes, old boy."

      "Is Grandison going too?"

      "No; not Grandison. What do you want, Ronny?"

      "I want you not to go away!"

      "Anything else?"

      "Yes. Why can't you come with us, if you are going away?"

      "Come with you? Where?"

      "With me and Mummy. Mummy says we shall go to a nicer place than this. And I may play cricket. I wanted you to come and play with me and Grandison. But I s'pose you can't ​if you're packing your clothes. Aint they in a jolly mess?"

      Jacynth lifted the child up in his arms and kissed him. "Good-by, Ronny," he said, in a queer, choking voice; and then he set the little fellow outside the door and shut it.

      Ronny prepared to make the descent of the staircase, holding tight to the banisters. He put one little chubby finger up to his cheek and looked at it. "Hulloa!" said he very gravely, "my face is all wet!"

      ​

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

BY A. CONAN DOYLE.

       Table of Contents

      "BETWEEN TWO FIRES."

      Happier is he who standeth betwixt the fire and the flood, than he who hath a jealous woman on either side of him.—Fourth Veddah.

      The single short drive on the Harrogate coach had re-awakened all Frank Onslow's dormant passion for the capricious and beautiful woman whom he had made his wife. His weak and pliant nature was one which could readily forget, and after a few weeks of dull pain his separation had ceased to be a grief to him, and he had devoted himself to the turf and the green table with an energy which had driven his matrimonial troubles from his mind. That Fenella had at the least СКАЧАТЬ