Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1838 page)

‘I wonder who reminded my lord of the old servants?’ she said. ‘He would never have heart enough to remember them himself!’

Agnes suddenly interposed. Nature, always abhorring monotony, institutes reserves of temper as elements in the composition of the gentlest women living. Even Agnes could, on rare occasions, be angry. The nurse’s view of Montbarry’s character seemed to have provoked her beyond endurance.

‘If you have any sense of shame in you,’ she broke out, ‘you ought to be ashamed of what you have just said! Your ingratitude disgusts me. I leave you to speak with her, Henry — you won’t mind it!’ With this significant intimation that he too had dropped out of his customary place in her good opinion, she left the room.

The nurse received the smart reproof administered to her with every appearance of feeling rather amused by it than not. When the door had closed, this female philosopher winked at Henry.

‘There’s a power of obstinacy in young women,’ she remarked. ‘Miss Agnes wouldn’t give my lord up as a bad one, even when he jilted her. And now she’s sweet on him after he’s dead. Say a word against him, and she fires up as you see. All obstinacy! It will wear out with time. Stick to her, Master Henry — stick to her!’

‘She doesn’t seem to have offended you,’ said Henry.

‘She?’ the nurse repeated in amazement — ’she offend me? I like her in her tantrums; it reminds me of her when she was a baby. Lord bless you! when I go to bid her good-night, she’ll give me a big kiss, poor dear — and say, Nurse, I didn’t mean it! About this money, Master Henry? If I was younger I should spend it in dress and jewellery. But I’m too old for that. What shall I do with my legacy when I have got it?’

‘Put it out at interest,’ Henry suggested. ‘Get so much a year for it, you know.’ ‘How much shall I get?’ the nurse asked.

‘If you put your hundred pounds into the Funds, you will get between three and four pounds a year.’

The nurse shook her head. ‘Three or four pounds a year? That won’t do! I want more than that. Look here, Master Henry. I don’t care about this bit of money — I never did like the man who has left it to me, though he was your brother. If I lost it all to-morrow, I shouldn’t break my heart; I’m well enough off, as it is, for the rest of my days. They say you’re a speculator. Put me in for a good thing, there’s a dear! Neck-or-nothing — and that for the Funds!’ She snapped her fingers to express her contempt for security of investment at three per cent.

Henry produced the prospectus of the Venetian Hotel Company. ‘You’re a funny old woman,’ he said. ‘There, you dashing speculator — there is neck-or-nothing for you! You must keep it a secret from Miss Agnes, mind. I’m not at all sure that she would approve of my helping you to this investment.’

The nurse took out her spectacles. ‘Six per cent. guaranteed,’ she read; ‘and the Directors have every reason to believe that ten per cent., or more, will be ultimately realised to the shareholders by the hotel.’ ‘Put me into that, Master Henry! And, wherever you go, for Heaven’s sake recommend the hotel to your friends!’

So the nurse, following Henry’s mercenary example, had her pecuniary interest, too, in the house in which Lord Montbarry had died.

Three days passed before Henry was able to visit Agnes again. In that time, the little cloud between them had entirely passed away. Agnes received him with even more than her customary kindness. She was in better spirits than usual. Her letter to Mrs. Stephen Westwick had been answered by return of post; and her proposal had been joyfully accepted, with one modification. She was to visit the Westwicks for a month — and, if she really liked teaching the children, she was then to be governess, aunt, and cousin, all in one — and was only to go away in an event which her friends in Ireland persisted in contemplating, the event of her marriage.

‘You see I was right,’ she said to Henry.

He was still incredulous. ‘Are you really going?’ he asked.

‘I am going next week.’

‘When shall I see you again?’

‘You know you are always welcome at your brother’s house. You can see me when you like.’ She held out her hand. ‘Pardon me for leaving you — I am beginning to pack up already.’

Henry tried to kiss her at parting. She drew back directly.

‘Why not? I am your cousin,’ he said.

‘I don’t like it,’ she answered.

Henry looked at her, and submitted. Her refusal to grant him his privilege as a cousin was a good sign — it was indirectly an act of encouragement to him in the character of her lover.

On the first day in the new week, Agnes left London on her way to Ireland. As the event proved, this was not destined to be the end of her journey. The way to Ireland was only the first stage on a roundabout road — the road that led to the palace at Venice.

THE THIRD PART

CHAPTER XIII

In the spring of the year 1861, Agnes was established at the country-seat of her two friends — now promoted (on the death of the first lord, without offspring) to be the new Lord and Lady Montbarry. The old nurse was not separated from her mistress. A place, suited to her time of life, had been found for her in the pleasant Irish household. She was perfectly happy in her new sphere; and she spent her first half-year’s dividend from the Venice Hotel Company, with characteristic prodigality, in presents for the children.

Early in the year, also, the Directors of the life insurance offices submitted to circumstances, and paid the ten thousand pounds. Immediately afterwards, the widow of the first Lord Montbarry (otherwise, the dowager Lady Montbarry) left England, with Baron Rivar, for the United States. The Baron’s object was announced, in the scientific columns of the newspapers, to be investigation into the present state of experimental chemistry in the great American republic. His sister informed inquiring friends that she accompanied him, in the hope of finding consolation in change of scene after the bereavement that had fallen on her. Hearing this news from Henry Westwick (then paying a visit at his brother’s house), Agnes was conscious of a certain sense of relief. ‘With the Atlantic between us,’ she said, ‘surely I have done with that terrible woman now!’

Barely a week passed after those words had been spoken, before an event happened which reminded Agnes of ‘the terrible woman’ once more.

On that day, Henry’s engagements had obliged him to return to London. He had ventured, on the morning of his departure, to press his suit once more on Agnes; and the children, as he had anticipated, proved to be innocent obstacles in the way of his success. On the other hand, he had privately secured a firm ally in his sister-in-law. ‘Have a little patience,’ the new Lady Montbarry had said, ‘and leave me to turn the influence of the children in the right direction. If they can persuade her to listen to you — they shall!’

The two ladies had accompanied Henry, and some other guests who went away at the same time, to the railway station, and had just driven back to the house, when the servant announced that ‘a person of the name of Rolland was waiting to see her ladyship.’

‘Is it a woman?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

Young Lady Montbarry turned to Agnes.

‘This is the very person,’ she said, ‘whom your lawyer thought likely to help him, when he was trying to trace the lost courier.’

‘You don’t mean the English maid who was with Lady Montbarry at Venice?’

‘My dear! don’t speak of Montbarry’s horrid widow by the name which is my name now. Stephen and I have arranged to call her by her foreign title, before she was married. I am “Lady Montbarry,” and she is “the Countess.” In that way there will be no confusion. — Yes, Mrs. Rolland was in my service before she became the Countess’s maid. She was a perfectly trustworthy person, with one defect that obliged me to send her away — a sullen temper which led to perpetual complaints of her in the servants’ hall. Would you like to see her?’

Agnes accepted the proposal, in the faint hope of getting some information for the courier’s wife. The complete defeat of every attempt to trace the lost man had been accepted as final by Mrs. Ferrari. She had deliberately arrayed herself in widow’s mourning; and was earning her livelihood in an employment which the unwearied kindness of Agnes had procured for her in London. The last chance of penetrating the mystery of Ferrari’s disappearance seemed to rest now on what Ferrari’s former fellow-servant might be able to tell. With highly-wrought expectations, Agnes followed her friend into the room in which Mrs. Rolland was waiting.

A tall bony woman, in the autumn of life, with sunken eyes and iron-grey hair, rose stiffly from her chair, and saluted the ladies with stern submission as they opened the door. A person of unblemished character, evidently — but not without visible drawbacks. Big bushy eyebrows, an awfully deep and solemn voice, a harsh unbending manner, a complete absence in her figure of the undulating lines characteristic of the sex, presented Virtue in this excellent person under its least alluring aspect. Strangers, on a first introduction to her, were accustomed to wonder why she was not a man.

‘Are you pretty well, Mrs. Rolland?’

‘I am as well as I can expect to be, my lady, at my time of life.’

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘Your ladyship can do me a great favour, if you will please speak to my character while I was in your service. I am offered a place, to wait on an invalid lady who has lately come to live in this neighbourhood.’

‘Ah, yes — I have heard of her. A Mrs. Carbury, with a very pretty niece I am told. But, Mrs. Rolland, you left my service some time ago. Mrs. Carbury will surely expect you to refer to the last mistress by whom you were employed.’

A flash of virtuous indignation irradiated Mrs. Rolland’s sunken eyes. She coughed before she answered, as if her ‘last mistress’ stuck in her throat.

‘I have explained to Mrs. Carbury, my lady, that the person I last served — I really cannot give her her title in your ladyship’s presence! — has left England for America. Mrs. Carbury knows that I quitted the person of my own free will, and knows why, and approves of my conduct so far. A word from your ladyship will be amply sufficient to get me the situation.’

‘Very well, Mrs. Rolland, I have no objection to be your reference, under the circumstances. Mrs. Carbury will find me at home to-morrow until two o’clock.’

‘Mrs. Carbury is not well enough to leave the house, my lady. Her niece, Miss Haldane, will call and make the inquiries, if your ladyship has no objection.’

‘I have not the least objection. The pretty niece carries her own welcome with her. Wait a minute, Mrs. Rolland. This lady is Miss Lockwood — my husband’s cousin, and my friend. She is anxious to speak to you about the courier who was in the late Lord Montbarry’s service at Venice.’

Mrs. Rolland’s bushy eyebrows frowned in stern disapproval of the new topic of conversation. ‘I regret to hear it, my lady,’ was all she said.

‘Perhaps you have not been informed of what happened after you left Venice?’ Agnes ventured to add. ‘Ferrari left the palace secretly; and he has never been heard of since.’

Mrs. Rolland mysteriously closed her eyes — as if to exclude some vision of the lost courier which was of a nature to disturb a respectable woman. ‘Nothing that Mr. Ferrari could do would surprise me,’ she replied in her deepest bass tones.

‘You speak rather harshly of him,’ said Agnes.

Mrs. Rolland suddenly opened her eyes again. ‘I speak harshly of nobody without reason,’ she said. ‘Mr. Ferrari behaved to me, Miss Lockwood, as no man living has ever behaved — before or since.’

‘What did he do?’

Mrs. Rolland answered, with a stony stare of horror: —

‘He took liberties with me.’

Young Lady Montbarry suddenly turned aside, and put her handkerchief over her mouth in convulsions of suppressed laughter.

Mrs. Rolland went on, with a grim enjoyment of the bewilderment which her reply had produced in Agnes: ‘And when I insisted on an apology, Miss, he had the audacity to say that the life at the palace was dull, and he didn’t know how else to amuse himself!’