Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1836 page)

‘I look more than half dead already, don’t I?’ she said with a grim outburst of irony. ‘Give me your arm.’

She took Mrs. Ferrari’s arm, and left the room. ‘You have nothing to fear, so long as you obey,’ she whispered, on the way downstairs. ‘You leave me at Miss Lockwood’s door, and never see me again.’

In the hall they were met by the landlady of the hotel. Lady Montbarry graciously presented her companion. ‘My good friend Mrs. Ferrari; I am so glad to have seen her.’ The landlady accompanied them to the door. The cab was waiting. ‘Get in first, good Mrs. Ferrari,’ said her ladyship; ‘and tell the man where to go.’

They were driven away. Lady Montbarry’s variable humour changed again. With a low groan of misery, she threw herself back in the cab. Lost in her own dark thoughts, as careless of the woman whom she had bent to her iron will as if no such person sat by her side, she preserved a sinister silence, until they reached the house where Miss Lockwood lodged. In an instant, she roused herself to action. She opened the door of the cab, and closed it again on Mrs. Ferrari, before the driver could get off his box.

‘Take that lady a mile farther on her way home!’ she said, as she paid the man his fare. The next moment she had knocked at the house-door. ‘Is Miss Lockwood at home?’ ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She stepped over the threshold — the door closed on her.

‘Which way, ma’am?’ asked the driver of the cab.

Mrs. Ferrari put her hand to her head, and tried to collect her thoughts. Could she leave her friend and benefactress helpless at Lady Montbarry’s mercy? She was still vainly endeavouring to decide on the course that she ought to follow — when a gentleman, stopping at Miss Lockwood’s door, happened to look towards the cab-window, and saw her.

‘Are you going to call on Miss Agnes too?’he asked.

It was Henry Westwick. Mrs. Ferrari clasped her hands in gratitude as she recognised him.

‘Go in, sir!’ she cried. ‘Go in, directly. That dreadful woman is with Miss Agnes. Go and protect her!’

‘What woman?’ Henry asked.

The answer literally struck him speechless. With amazement and indignation in his face, he looked at Mrs. Ferrari as she pronounced the hated name of ‘Lady Montbarry.’ ‘I’ll see to it,’ was all he said. He knocked at the house-door; and he too, in his turn, was let in.

CHAPTER XI

‘Lady Montbarry, Miss.’

Agnes was writing a letter, when the servant astonished her by announcing the visitor’s name. Her first impulse was to refuse to see the woman who had intruded on her. But Lady Montbarry had taken care to follow close on the servant’s heels. Before Agnes could speak, she had entered the room.

‘I beg to apologise for my intrusion, Miss Lockwood. I have a question to ask you, in which I am very much interested. No one can answer me but yourself.’ In low hesitating tones, with her glittering black eyes bent modestly on the ground, Lady Montbarry opened the interview in those words.

Without answering, Agnes pointed to a chair. She could do this, and, for the time, she could do no more. All that she had read of the hidden and sinister life in the palace at Venice; all that she had heard of Montbarry’s melancholy death and burial in a foreign land; all that she knew of the mystery of Ferrari’s disappearance, rushed into her mind, when the black-robed figure confronted her, standing just inside the door. The strange conduct of Lady Montbarry added a new perplexity to the doubts and misgivings that troubled her. There stood the adventuress whose character had left its mark on society all over Europe — the Fury who had terrified Mrs. Ferrari at the hotel — inconceivably transformed into a timid, shrinking woman! Lady Montbarry had not once ventured to look at Agnes, since she had made her way into the room. Advancing to take the chair that had been pointed out to her, she hesitated, put her hand on the rail to support herself, and still remained standing. ‘Please give me a moment to compose myself,’ she said faintly. Her head sank on her bosom: she stood before Agnes like a conscious culprit before a merciless judge.

The silence that followed was, literally, the silence of fear on both sides. In the midst of it, the door was opened once more — and Henry Westwick appeared.

He looked at Lady Montbarry with a moment’s steady attention — bowed to her with formal politeness — and passed on in silence. At the sight of her husband’s brother, the sinking spirit of the woman sprang to life again. Her drooping figure became erect. Her eyes met Westwick’s look, brightly defiant. She returned his bow with an icy smile of contempt.

Henry crossed the room to Agnes.

‘Is Lady Montbarry here by your invitation?’ he asked quietly.

‘No.’

‘Do you wish to see her?’

‘It is very painful to me to see her.’

He turned and looked at his sister-in-law. ‘Do you hear that?’ he asked coldly.

‘I hear it,’ she answered, more coldly still.

‘Your visit is, to say the least of it, ill-timed.’

‘Your interference is, to say the least of it, out of place.’

With that retort, Lady Montbarry approached Agnes. The presence of Henry Westwick seemed at once to relieve and embolden her. ‘Permit me to ask my question, Miss Lockwood,’ she said, with graceful courtesy. ‘It is nothing to embarrass you. When the courier Ferrari applied to my late husband for employment, did you — ’ Her resolution failed her, before she could say more. She sank trembling into the nearest chair, and, after a moment’s struggle, composed herself again. ‘Did you permit Ferrari,’ she resumed, ‘to make sure of being chosen for our courier by using your name?’

Agnes did not reply with her customary directness. Trifling as it was, the reference to Montbarry, proceeding from that woman of all others, confused and agitated her.

‘I have known Ferrari’s wife for many years,’ she began. ‘And I take an interest — ’

Lady Montbarry abruptly lifted her hands with a gesture of entreaty. ‘Ah, Miss Lockwood, don’t waste time by talking of his wife! Answer my

plain question, plainly!’

‘Let me answer her,’ Henry whispered. ‘I will undertake to speak plainly enough.’

Agnes refused by a gesture. Lady Montbarry’s interruption had roused her sense of what was due to herself. She resumed her reply in plainer terms.

‘When Ferrari wrote to the late Lord Montbarry,’ she said, ‘he did certainly mention my name.’

Even now, she had innocently failed to see the object which her visitor had in view. Lady Montbarry’s impatience became ungovernable. She started to her feet, and advanced to Agnes.

‘Was it with your knowledge and permission that Ferrari used your name?’ she asked. ‘The whole soul of my question is in that. For God’s sake answer me — Yes, or No!’

‘Yes.’

That one word struck Lady Montbarry as a blow might have struck her. The fierce life that had animated her face the instant before, faded out of it suddenly, and left her like a woman turned to stone. She stood, mechanically confronting Agnes, with a stillness so wrapt and perfect that not even the breath she drew was perceptible to the two persons who were looking at her.

Henry spoke to her roughly. ‘Rouse yourself,’ he said. ‘You have received your answer.’

She looked round at him. ‘I have received my Sentence,’ she rejoined — and turned slowly to leave the room.

To Henry’s astonishment, Agnes stopped her. ‘Wait a moment, Lady Montbarry. I have something to ask on my side. You have spoken of Ferrari. I wish to speak of him too.’

Lady Montbarry bent her head in silence. Her hand trembled as she took out her handkerchief, and passed it over her forehead. Agnes detected the trembling, and shrank back a step. ‘Is the subject painful to you?’ she asked timidly.

Still silent, Lady Montbarry invited her by a wave of the hand to go on. Henry approached, attentively watching his sister-in-law. Agnes went on.

‘No trace of Ferrari has been discovered in England,’ she said. ‘Have you any news of him? And will you tell me (if you have heard anything), in mercy to his wife?’

Lady Montbarry’s thin lips suddenly relaxed into their sad and cruel smile.

‘Why do you ask me about the lost courier?’ she said. ‘You will know what has become of him, Miss Lockwood, when the time is ripe for it.’

Agnes started. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said. ‘How shall I know? Will some one tell me?’

‘Some one will tell you.’

Henry could keep silence no longer. ‘Perhaps, your ladyship may be the person?’ he interrupted with ironical politeness.

She answered him with contemptuous ease. ‘You may be right, Mr. Westwick. One day or another, I may be the person who tells Miss Lockwood what has become of Ferrari, if — ’ She stopped; with her eyes fixed on Agnes.

‘If what?’ Henry asked.

‘If Miss Lockwood forces me to it.’

Agnes listened in astonishment. ‘Force you to it?’ she repeated. ‘How can I do that? Do you mean to say my will is stronger than yours?’

‘Do you mean to say that the candle doesn’t burn the moth, when the moth flies into it?’ Lady Montbarry rejoined. ‘Have you ever heard of such a thing as the fascination of terror? I am drawn to you by a fascination of terror. I have no right to visit you, I have no wish to visit you: you are my enemy. For the first time in my life, against my own will, I submit to my enemy. See! I am waiting because you told me to wait — and the fear of you (I swear it!) creeps through me while I stand here. Oh, don’t let me excite your curiosity or your pity! Follow the example of Mr. Westwick. Be hard and brutal and unforgiving, like him. Grant me my release. Tell me to go.’

The frank and simple nature of Agnes could discover but one intelligible meaning in this strange outbreak.

‘You are mistaken in thinking me your enemy,’ she said. ‘The wrong you did me when you gave your hand to Lord Montbarry was not intentionally done. I forgave you my sufferings in his lifetime. I forgive you even more freely now that he has gone.’

Henry heard her with mingled emotions of admiration and distress. ‘Say no more!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are too good to her; she is not worthy of it.’

The interruption passed unheeded by Lady Montbarry. The simple words in which Agnes had replied seemed to have absorbed the whole attention of this strangely-changeable woman. As she listened, her face settled slowly into an expression of hard and tearless sorrow. There was a marked change in her voice when she spoke next. It expressed that last worst resignation which has done with hope.

‘You good innocent creature,’ she said, ‘what does your amiable forgiveness matter? What are your poor little wrongs, in the reckoning for greater wrongs which is demanded of me? I am not trying to frighten you, I am only miserable about myself. Do you know what it is to have a firm presentiment of calamity that is coming to you — and yet to hope that your own positive conviction will not prove true? When I first met you, before my marriage, and first felt your influence over me, I had that hope. It was a starveling sort of hope that lived a lingering life in me until to-day. You struck it dead, when you answered my question about Ferrari.’

‘How have I destroyed your hopes?’ Agnes asked. ‘What connection is there between my permitting Ferrari to use my name to Lord Montbarry, and the strange and dreadful things you are saying to me now?’

‘The time is near, Miss Lockwood, when you will discover that for yourself. In the mean while, you shall know what my fear of you is, in the plainest words I can find. On the day when I took your hero from you and blighted your life — I am firmly persuaded of it! — you were made the instrument of the retribution that my sins of many years had deserved. Oh, such things have happened before to-day! One person has, before now, been the means of innocently ripening the growth of evil in another. You have done that already — and you have more to do yet. You have still to bring me to the day of discovery, and to the punishment that is my doom. We shall meet again — here in England, or there in Venice where my husband died — and meet for the last time.’