Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1839 page)

‘I am afraid I have hardly made myself understood,’ said Agnes. ‘I am not speaking to you out of any interest in Ferrari. Are you aware that he is married?’

‘I pity his wife,’ said Mrs. Rolland.

‘She is naturally in great grief about him,’ Agnes proceeded.

‘She ought to thank God she is rid of him,’ Mrs. Rolland interposed.

Agnes still persisted. ‘I have known Mrs. Ferrari from her childhood, and I am sincerely anxious to help her in this matter. Did you notice anything, while you were at Venice, that would account for her husband’s extraordinary disappearance? On what sort of terms, for instance, did he live with his master and mistress?’

‘On terms of familiarity with his mistress,’ said Mrs. Rolland, ‘which were simply sickening to a respectable English servant. She used to encourage him to talk to her about all his affairs — how he got on with his wife, and how pressed he was for money, and such like — just as if they were equals. Contemptible — that’s what I call it.’

‘And his master?’ Agnes continued. ‘How did Ferrari get on with Lord Montbarry?’

‘My lord used to live shut up with his studies and his sorrows,’ Mrs. Rolland answered, with a hard solemnity expressive of respect for his lordship’s memory. Mr. Ferrari got his money when it was due; and he cared for nothing else. “If I could afford it, I would leave the place too; but I can’t afford it.” Those were the last words he said to me, on the morning when I left the palace. I made no reply. After what had happened (on that other occasion) I was naturally not on speaking terms with Mr. Ferrari.’

‘Can you really tell me nothing which will throw any light on this matter?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mrs. Rolland, with an undisguised relish of the disappointment that she was inflicting.

‘There was another member of the family at Venice,’ Agnes resumed, determined to sift the question to the bottom while she had the chance. ‘There was Baron Rivar.’

Mrs. Rolland lifted her large hands, covered with rusty black gloves, in mute protest against the introduction of Baron Rivar as a subject of inquiry. ‘Are you aware, Miss,’ she began, ‘that I left my place in consequence of what I observed — ?’

Agnes stopped her there. ‘I only wanted to ask,’ she explained, ‘if anything was said or done by Baron Rivar which might account for Ferrari’s strange conduct.’

‘Nothing that I know of,’ said Mrs. Rolland. ‘The Baron and Mr. Ferrari (if I may use such an expression) were “birds of a feather,” so far as I could see — I mean, one was as unprincipled as the other. I am a just woman; and I will give you an example. Only the day before I left, I heard the Baron say (through the open door of his room while I was passing along the corridor), “Ferrari, I want a thousand pounds. What would you do for a thousand pounds?” And I heard Mr. Ferrari answer, “Anything, sir, as long as I was not found out.” And then they both burst out laughing. I heard no more than that. Judge for yourself, Miss.’

Agnes reflected for a moment. A thousand pounds was the sum that had been sent to Mrs. Ferrari in the anonymous letter. Was that enclosure in any way connected, as a result, with the conversation between the Baron and Ferrari? It was useless to press any more inquiries on Mrs. Rolland. She could give no further information which was of the slightest importance to the object in view. There was no alternative but to grant her dismissal. One more effort had been made to find a trace of the lost man, and once again the effort had failed.

They were a family party at the dinner-table that day. The only guest left in the house was a nephew of the new Lord Montbarry — the eldest son of his sister, Lady Barrville. Lady Montbarry could not resist telling the story of the first (and last) attack made on the virtue of Mrs. Rolland, with a comically-exact imitation of Mrs. Rolland’s deep and dismal voice. Being asked by her husband what was the object which had brought that formidable person to the house, she naturally mentioned the expected visit of Miss Haldane. Arthur Barville, unusually silent and pre-occupied so far, suddenly struck into the conversation with a burst of enthusiasm. ‘Miss Haldane is the most charming girl in all Ireland!’ he said. ‘I caught sight of her yesterday, over the wall of her garden, as I was riding by. What time is she coming to-morrow? Before two? I’ll look into the drawing-room by accident — I am dying to be introduced to her!’

Agnes was amused by his enthusiasm. ‘Are you in love with Miss Haldane already?’ she asked.

Arthur answered gravely, ‘It’s no joking matter. I have been all day at the garden wall, waiting to see her again! It depends on Miss Haldane to make me the happiest or the wretchedest man living.’

‘You foolish boy! How can you talk such nonsense?’

He was talking nonsense undoubtedly. But, if Agnes had only known it, he was doing something more than that. He was innocently leading her another stage nearer on the way to Venice.

CHAPTER XIV

As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetian palace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.

The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front looking on the canal, was wisely left unaltered. Inside, as a matter of necessity, the rooms were almost rebuilt — so far at least as the size and the arrangement of them were concerned. The vast saloons were partitioned off into ‘apartments’ containing three or four rooms each. The broad corridors in the upper regions afforded spare space enough for rows of little bedchambers, devoted to servants and to travellers with limited means. Nothing was spared but the solid floors and the finely-carved ceilings. These last, in excellent preservation as to workmanship, merely required cleaning, and regilding here and there, to add greatly to the beauty and importance of the best rooms in the hotel. The only exception to the complete re-organisation of the interior was at one extremity of the edifice, on the first and second floors. Here there happened, in each case, to be rooms of such comparatively moderate size, and so attractively decorated, that the architect suggested leaving them as they were. It was afterwards discovered that these were no other than the apartments formerly occupied by Lord Montbarry (on the first floor), and by Baron Rivar (on the second). The room in which Montbarry had died was still fitted up as a bedroom, and was now distinguished as Number Fourteen. The room above it, in which the Baron had slept, took its place on the hotel-register as Number Thirty-Eight. With the ornaments on the walls and ceilings cleaned and brightened up, and with the heavy old-fashioned beds, chairs, and tables replaced by bright, pretty, and luxurious modern furniture, these two promised to be at once the most attractive and the most comfortable bedchambers in the hotel. As for the once-desolate and disused ground floor of the building, it was now transformed, by means of splendid dining-rooms, reception-rooms, billiard-rooms, and smoking-rooms, into a palace by itself. Even the dungeon-like vaults beneath, now lighted and ventilated on the most approved modern plan, had been turned as if by magic into kitchens, servants’ offices, ice-rooms, and wine cellars, worthy of the splendour of the grandest hotel in Italy, in the now bygone period of seventeen years since.

Passing from the lapse of the summer months at Venice, to the lapse of the summer months in Ireland, it is next to be recorded that Mrs. Rolland obtained the situation of attendant on the invalid Mrs. Carbury; and that the fair Miss Haldane, like a female Caesar, came, saw, and conquered, on her first day’s visit to the new Lord Montbarry’s house.

The ladies were as loud in her praises as Arthur Barville himself. Lord Montbarry declared that she was the only perfectly pretty woman he had ever seen, who was really unconscious of her own attractions. The old nurse said she looked as if she had just stepped out of a picture, and wanted nothing but a gilt frame round her to make her complete. Miss Haldane, on her side, returned from her first visit to the Montbarrys charmed with her new acquaintances. Later on the same day, Arthur called with an offering of fruit and flowers for Mrs. Carbury, and with instructions to ask if she was well enough to receive Lord and Lady Montbarry and Miss Lockwood on the morrow. In a week’s time, the two households were on the friendliest terms. Mrs. Carbury, confined to the sofa by a spinal malady, had been hitherto dependent on her niece for one of the few pleasures she could enjoy, the pleasure of having the best new novels read to her as they came out. Discovering this, Arthur volunteered to relieve Miss Haldane, at intervals, in the office of reader. He was clever at mechanical contrivances of all sorts, and he introduced improvements in Mrs. Carbury’s couch, and in the means of conveying her from the bedchamber to the drawing-room, which alleviated the poor lady’s sufferings and brightened her gloomy life. With these claims on the gratitude of the aunt, aided by the personal advantages which he unquestionably possessed, Arthur advanced rapidly in the favour of the charming niece. She was, it is needless to say, perfectly well aware that he was in love with her, while he was himself modestly reticent on the subject — so far as words went. But she was not equally quick in penetrating the nature of her own feelings towards Arthur. Watching the two young people with keen powers of observation, necessarily concentrated on them by the complete seclusion of her life, the invalid lady discovered signs of roused sensibility in Miss Haldane, when Arthur was present, which had never yet shown themselves in her social relations with other admirers eager to pay their addresses to her. Having drawn her own conclusions in private, Mrs. Carbury took the first favourable opportunity (in Arthur’s interests) of putting them to the test.

‘I don’t know what I shall do,’ she said one day, ‘when Arthur goes away.’

Miss Haldane looked up quickly from her work. ‘Surely he is not going to leave us!’ she exclaimed.

‘My dear! he has already stayed at his uncle’s house a month longer than he intended. His father and mother naturally expect to see him at home again.’

Miss Haldane met this difficulty with a suggestion, which could only have proceeded from a judgment already disturbed by the ravages of the tender passion. ‘Why can’t his father and mother go and see him at Lord Montbarry’s?’ she asked. ‘Sir Theodore’s place is only thirty miles away, and Lady Barville is Lord Montbarry’s sister. They needn’t stand on ceremony.’

‘They may have other engagements,’ Mrs. Carbury remarked.

‘My dear aunt, we don’t know that! Suppose you ask Arthur?’

‘Suppose you ask him?’

Miss Haldane bent her head again over her work. Suddenly as it was done, her aunt had seen her face — and her face betrayed her.

When Arthur came the next day, Mrs. Carbury said a word to him in private, while her niece was in the garden. The last new novel lay neglected on the table. Arthur followed Miss Haldane into the garden. The next day he wrote home, enclosing in his letter a photograph of Miss Haldane. Before the end of the week, Sir Theodore and Lady Barville arrived at Lord Montbarry’s, and formed their own judgment of the fidelity of the portrait. They had themselves married early in life — and, strange to say, they did not object on principle to the early marriages of other people. The question of age being thus disposed of, the course of true love had no other obstacles to encounter. Miss Haldane was an only child, and was possessed of an ample fortune. Arthur’s career at the university had been creditable, but certainly not brilliant enough to present his withdrawal in the light of a disaster. As Sir Theodore’s eldest son, his position was already made for him. He was two-and-twenty years of age; and the young lady was eighteen. There was really no producible reason for keeping the lovers waiting, and no excuse for deferring the wedding-day beyond the first week in September. In the interval, while the bride and bridegroom would be necessarily absent on the inevitable tour abroad, a sister of Mrs. Carbury volunteered to stay with her during the temporary separation from her niece. On the conclusion of the honeymoon, the young couple were to return to Ireland, and were to establish themselves in Mrs. Carbury’s spacious and comfortable house.

These arrangements were decided upon early in the month of August. About the same date, the last alterations in the old palace at Venice were completed. The rooms were dried by steam; the cellars were stocked; the manager collected round him his army of skilled servants; and the new hotel was advertised all over Europe to open in October.

CHAPTER XV

(MISS AGNES LOCKWOOD TO MRS. FERRARI)

‘I promised to give you some account, dear Emily, of the marriage of Mr. Arthur Barville and Miss Haldane. It took place ten days since. But I have had so many things to look after in the absence of the master and mistress of this house, that I am only able to write to you to-day.