The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice / Отель с привидениями: Тайна Венеции

‘I stand alone in my opinion,’ he said, ‘and I am not ashamed of repeating it in anybody’s hearing. I consider the Countess Narona to be a cruelly-treated woman. Why shouldn’t she be Lord Montbarry’s wife? Who can say she has a mercenary motive in marrying him?’

Montbarry’s brother turned sharply on the speaker. ‘I say it!’ he answered.

The reply might have shaken some men. The lawyer stood on his ground as firmly as ever.

‘I believe I am right,’ he rejoined, ‘in stating that his lordship’s income is not more than sufficient to support his station in life; also that it is an income derived almost entirely from landed property in Ireland, every acre of which is entailed.’

Montbarry’s brother made a sign, admitting that he had no objection to offer so far.

‘If his lordship dies first,’ the lawyer proceeded, ‘I have been informed that the only provision he can make for his widow consists in a rent-charge on the property of no more than four hundred a year. His retiring pension and allowances, it is well known, die with him. Four hundred a year is therefore all that he can leave to the Countess, if he leaves her a widow.’

‘Four hundred a year is not all,’ was the reply to this. ‘My brother has insured his life for ten thousand pounds; and he has settled the whole of it on the Countess, in the event of his death.’

This announcement produced a strong sensation. Men looked at each other, and repeated the three startling words, ‘Ten thousand pounds!’ Driven fairly to the wall, the lawyer made a last effort to defend his position.

‘May I ask who made that settlement a condition of the marriage?’ he said. ‘Surely it was not the Countess herself?’

Henry Westwick answered, ‘It was the Countess’s brother’; and added, ‘which comes to the same thing.’

After that, there was no more to be said-so long, at least, as Montbarry’s brother was present. The talk flowed into other channels; and the Doctor went home.

But his morbid curiosity about the Countess was not set at rest yet. In his leisure moments he found himself wondering whether Lord Montbarry’s family would succeed in stopping the marriage after all. And more than this, he was conscious of a growing desire to see the infatuated man himself. Every day during the brief interval before the wedding, he looked in at the club, on the chance of hearing some news. Nothing had happened, so far as the club knew. The Countess’s position was secure; Montbarry’s resolution to be her husband was unshaken. They were both Roman Catholics, and they were to be married at the – el in Spanish Place. So much the Doctor discovered about them-and no more.

On the day of the wedding, after a feeble struggle with himself, he actually sacrificed his patients and their guineas, and slipped away secretly to see the marriage. To the end of his life, he was angry with anybody who reminded him of what he had done on that day!

The wedding was strictly private.

A close carriage stood at the church door; a few people, mostly of the lower class, and mostly old women, were scattered about the interior of the building. Here and there Doctor Wybrow detected the faces of some of his brethren of the club, attracted by curiosity, like himself. Four persons only stood before the altar-the bride and bridegroom and their two witnesses. One of these last was an elderly woman, who might have been the Countess’s companion or maid; the other was undoubtedly her brother, Baron Rivar. The bridal party (the bride herself included) wore their ordinary morning costume. Lord Montbarry, personally viewed, was a middle-aged military man of the ordinary type: nothing in the least remarkable distinguished him either in face or figure. Baron Rivar, again, in his way was another conventional representative of another well-known type. One sees his finely-pointed moustache, his bold eyes, his crisply-curling hair, and his dashing carriage of the head, repeated hundreds of times over on the Boulevards of Paris. The only noteworthy point about him was of the negative sort-he was not in the least like his sister. Even the officiating priest was only a harmless, humble-looking old man, who went through his duties resignedly, and felt visible rheumatic difficulties every time he bent his knees. The one remarkable person, the Countess herself, only raised her veil at the beginning of the ceremony, and presented nothing in her plain dress that was worth a second look. Never, on the face of it, was there a less interesting and less romantic marriage than this. From time to time the Doctor glanced round at the door or up at the galleries, vaguely anticipating the appearance of some protesting stranger, in possession of some terrible secret, commissioned to forbid the progress of the service. Nothing in the shape of an event occurred-nothing extraordinary, nothing dramatic. Bound fast together as man and wife, the two disappeared, followed by their witnesses, to sign the registers; and still Doctor Wybrow waited, and still he cherished the obstinate hope that something worth seeing must certainly happen yet.

The interval passed, and the married couple, returning to the church, walked together down the nave to the door. Doctor Wybrow drew back as they approached. To his confusion and surprise, the Countess discovered him. He heard her say to her husband, ‘One moment; I see a friend.’ Lord Montbarry bowed and waited. She stepped up to the Doctor, took his hand, and wrung it hard. He felt her overpowering black eyes looking at him through her veil. ‘One step more, you see, on the way to the end!’ She whispered those strange words, and returned to her husband. Before the Doctor could recover himself and follow her, Lord and Lady Montbarry had stepped into their carriage, and had driven away.

Outside the church door stood the three or four members of the club who, like Doctor Wybrow, had watched the ceremony out of curiosity. Near them was the bride’s brother, waiting alone. He was evidently bent on seeing the man whom his sister had spoken to, in broad daylight. His bold eyes rested on the Doctor’s face, with a momentary flash of suspicion in them. The cloud suddenly cleared away; the Baron smiled with charming courtesy, lifted his hat to his sister’s friend, and walked off.

The members constituted themselves into a club conclave on the church steps. They began with the Baron. ‘Damned ill-looking rascal!’ They went on with Montbarry. ‘Is he going to take that horrid woman with him to Ireland?’ ‘Not he! he can’t face the tenantry; they know about Agnes Lockwood.’ ‘Well, but where is he going?’ ‘To Scotland.’ ‘Does she like that?’ ‘It’s only for a fortnight; they come back to London, and go abroad.’ ‘And they will never return to England, eh?’ ‘Who can tell? Did you see how she looked at Montbarry, when she had to lift her veil at the beginning of the service? In his place, I should have bolted. Did you see her, Doctor?’ By this time, Doctor Wybrow had remembered his patients, and had heard enough of the club gossip. He followed the example of Baron Rivar, and walked off.

‘One step more, you see, on the way to the end,’ he repeated to himself, on his way home. ‘What end?’

Chapter IV

On the day of the marriage Agnes Lockwood sat alone in the little drawing-room of her London lodgings, burning the letters which had been written to her by Montbarry in the bygone time.

The Countess’s maliciously smart description of her, addressed to Doctor Wybrow, had not even hinted at the charm that most distinguished Agnes-the artless expression of goodness and purity which instantly attracted everyone who approached her. She looked by many years younger than she really was. With her fair complexion and her shy manner, it seemed only natural to speak of her as ‘a girl,’ although she was now really advancing towards thirty years of age. She lived alone with an old nurse devoted to her, on a modest little income which was just enough to support the two. There were none of the ordinary signs of grief in her face, as she slowly tore the letters of her false lover in two, and threw the pieces into the small fire which had been lit to consume them. Unhappily for herself, she was one of those women who feel too deeply to find relief in tears. Pale and quiet, with cold trembling fingers, she destroyed the letters one by one without daring to read them again. She had torn the last of the series, and was still shrinking from throwing it after the rest into the swiftly destroying flame, when the old nurse came in, and asked if she would see ‘Master Henry,’-meaning that youngest member of the Westwick family, who had publicly declared his contempt for his brother in the smoking-room of the club.

Agnes hesitated. A faint tinge of colour stole over her face.

There had been a long past time when Henry Westwick had owned that he loved her. She had made her confession to him, acknowledging that her heart was given to his eldest brother. He had submitted to his disappointment; and they had met thenceforth as cousins and friends. Never before had she associated the idea of him with embarrassing recollections. But now, on the very day when his brother’s marriage to another woman had consummated his brother’s treason towards her, there was something vaguely repellent in the prospect of seeing him. The old nurse (who remembered them both in their cradles) observed her hesitation; and sympathising of course with the man, put in a timely word for Henry. ‘He says, he’s going away, my dear; and he only wants to shake hands, and say good-bye.’ This plain statement of the case had its effect. Agnes decided on receiving her cousin.

He entered the room so rapidly that he surprised her in the act of throwing the fragments of Montbarry’s last letter into the fire. She hurriedly spoke first.

‘You are leaving London very suddenly, Henry. Is it business? or pleasure?’

Instead of answering her, he pointed to the flaming letter, and to some black ashes of burnt paper lying lightly in the lower part of the fireplace.

‘Are you burning letters?’

‘Yes.’

‘His letters?’

‘Yes.’

He took her hand gently. ‘I had no idea I was intruding on you, at a time when you must wish to be alone. Forgive me, Agnes-I shall see you when I return.’

She signed to him, with a faint smile, to take a chair.

‘We have known one another since we were children,’ she said. ‘Why should I feel a foolish pride about myself in your presence? why should I have any secrets from you? I sent back all your brother’s gifts to me some time ago. I have been advised to do more, to keep nothing that can remind me of him-in short, to burn his letters. I have taken the advice; but I own I shrank a little from destroying the last of the letters. No-not because it was the last, but because it had this in it.’ She opened her hand, and showed him a lock of Montbarry’s hair, tied with a morsel of golden cord. ‘Well! well! let it go with the rest.’

She dropped it into the flame. For a while, she stood with her back to Henry, leaning on the mantel-piece, and looking into the fire. He took the chair to which she had pointed, with a strange contradiction of expression in his face: the tears were in his eyes, while the brows above were knit close in an angry frown. He muttered to himself, ‘Damn him!’

She rallied her courage, and looked at him again when she spoke. ‘Well, Henry, and why are you going away?’

‘I am out of spirits, Agnes, and I want a change.’

She paused before she spoke again. His face told her plainly that he was thinking of her when he made that reply. She was grateful to him, but her mind was not with him: her mind was still with the man who had deserted her. She turned round again to the fire.

‘Is it true,’ she asked, after a long silence, ‘that they have been married to-day?’

He answered ungraciously in the one necessary word:-’Yes.’

‘Did you go to the church?’

He resented the question with an expression of indignant surprise. ‘Go to the church?’ he repeated. ‘I would as soon go to-’ He checked himself there. ‘How can you ask?’ he added in lower tones. ‘I have never spoken to Montbarry, I have not even seen him, since he treated you like the scoundrel and the fool that he is.’

She looked at him suddenly, without saying a word. He understood her, and begged her pardon. But he was still angry. ‘The reckoning comes to some men,’ he said, ‘even in this world. He will live to rue the day when he married that woman!’

Agnes took a chair by his side, and looked at him with a gentle surprise.

‘Is it quite reasonable to be so angry with her, because your brother preferred her to me?’ she asked.

Henry turned on her sharply. ‘Do you defend the Countess, of all the people in the world?’

‘Why not?’ Agnes answered. ‘I know nothing against her. On the only occasion when we met, she appeared to be a singularly timid, nervous person, looking dreadfully ill; and being indeed so ill that she fainted under the heat of my room. Why should we not do her justice? We know that she was innocent of any intention to wrong me; we know that she was not aware of my engagement-’

Henry lifted his hand impatiently, and stopped her. ‘There is such a thing as being too just and too forgiving!’ he interposed. ‘I can’t bear to hear you talk in that patient way, after the scandalously cruel manner in which you have been treated. Try to forget them both, Agnes. I wish to God I could help you to do it!’

Agnes laid her hand on his arm. ‘You are very good to me, Henry; but you don’t quite understand me. I was thinking of myself and my trouble in quite a different way, when you came in. I was wondering whether anything which has so entirely filled my heart, and so absorbed all that is best and truest in me, as my feeling for your brother, can really pass away as if it had never existed. I have destroyed the last visible things that remind me of him. In this world I shall see him no more. But is the tie that once bound us, completely broken? Am I as entirely parted from the good and evil fortune of his life as if we had never met and never loved? What do you think, Henry? I can hardly believe it.’

‘If you could bring the retribution on him that he has deserved,’ Henry Westwick answered sternly, ‘I might be inclined to agree with you.’