Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1843 page)

It was not easy to throw Francis off his balance, but that extraordinary question did it. ‘How the devil did you know that Miss Lockwood was coming to Venice?’ he exclaimed.

She laughed — a bitter mocking laugh. ‘Say, I guessed it!’

Something in her tone, or perhaps something in the audacious defiance of her eyes as they rested on him, roused the quick temper that was in Francis Warwick. ‘Lady Montbarry — !’ he began.

‘Stop there!’ she interposed. ‘Your brother Stephen’s wife calls herself Lady Montbarry now. I share my title with no woman. Call me by my name before I committed the fatal mistake of marrying your brother. Address me, if you please, as Countess Narona.’

‘Countess Narona,’ Francis resumed, ‘if your object in claiming my acquaintance is to mystify me, you have come to the wrong man. Speak plainly, or permit me to wish you good evening.’

‘If your object is to keep Miss Lockwood’s arrival in Venice a secret,’ she retorted, ‘speak plainly, Mr. Westwick, on your side, and say so.’

Her intention was evidently to irritate him; and she succeeded. ‘Nonsense!’ he broke out petulantly. ‘My brother’s travelling arrangements are secrets to nobody. He brings Miss Lockwood here, with Lady Montbarry and the children. As you seem so well informed, perhaps you know why she is coming to Venice?’

The Countess had suddenly become grave and thoughtful. She made no reply. The two strangely associated companions, having reached one extremity of the square, were now standing before the church of St. Mark. The moonlight was bright enough to show the architecture of the grand cathedral in its wonderful variety of detail. Even the pigeons of St. Mark were visible, in dark closely packed rows, roosting in the archways of the great entrance doors.

‘I never saw the old church look so beautiful by moonlight,’ the Countess said quietly; speaking, not to Francis, but to herself. ‘Good-bye, St. Mark’s by moonlight! I shall not see you again.’

She turned away from the church, and saw Francis listening to her with wondering looks. ‘No,’ she resumed, placidly picking up the lost thread of the conversation, ‘I don’t know why Miss Lockwood is coming here, I only know that we are to meet in Venice.’

‘By previous appointment?’

‘By Destiny,’ she answered, with her head on her breast, and her eyes on the ground. Francis burst out laughing. ‘Or, if you like it better,’ she instantly resumed, ‘by what fools call Chance.’ Francis answered easily, out of the depths of his strong common sense. ‘Chance seems to be taking a queer way of bringing the meeting about,’ he said. ‘We have all arranged to meet at the Palace Hotel. How is it that your name is not on the Visitors’ List? Destiny ought to have brought you to the Palace Hotel too.’

She abruptly pulled down her veil. ‘Destiny may do that yet!’ she said. ‘The Palace Hotel?’ she repeated, speaking once more to herself. ‘The old hell, transformed into the new purgatory. The place itself! Jesu Maria! the place itself!’ She paused and laid her hand on her companion’s arm. ‘Perhaps Miss Lockwood is not going there with the rest of you?’ she burst out with sudden eagerness. ‘Are you positively sure she will be at the hotel?’

‘Positively! Haven’t I told you that Miss Lockwood travels with Lord and Lady Montbarry? and don’t you know that she is a member of the family? You will have to move, Countess, to our hotel.’

She was perfectly impenetrable to the bantering tone in which he spoke. ‘Yes,’ she said faintly, ‘I shall have to move to your hotel.’ Her hand was still on his arm — he could feel her shivering from head to foot while she spoke. Heartily as he disliked and distrusted her, the common instinct of humanity obliged him to ask if she felt cold.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Cold and faint.’

‘Cold and faint, Countess, on such a night as this?’

‘The night has nothing to do with it, Mr. Westwick. How do you suppose the criminal feels on the scaffold, while the hangman is putting the rope around his neck? Cold and faint, too, I should think. Excuse my grim fancy. You see, Destiny has got the rope round my neck — and I feel it.’

She looked about her. They were at that moment close to the famous cafe known as ‘Florian’s.’ ‘Take me in there,’ she said; ‘I must have something to revive me. You had better not hesitate. You are interested in reviving me. I have not said what I wanted to say to you yet. It’s business, and it’s connected with your theatre.’

Wondering inwardly what she could possibly want with his theatre, Francis reluctantly yielded to the necessities of the situation, and took her into the cafe. He found a quiet corner in which they could take their places without attracting notice. ‘What will you have?’ he inquired resignedly. She gave her own orders to the waiter, without troubling him to speak for her.

‘Maraschino. And a pot of tea.’

The waiter stared; Francis stared. The tea was a novelty (in connection with maraschino) to both of them. Careless whether she surprised them or not, she instructed the waiter, when her directions had been complied with, to pour a large wine-glass-full of the liqueur into a tumbler, and to fill it up from the teapot. ‘I can’t do it for myself,’ she remarked, ‘my hand trembles so.’ She drank the strange mixture eagerly, hot as it was. ‘Maraschino punch — will you taste some of it?’ she said. ‘I inherit the discovery of this drink. When your English Queen Caroline was on the Continent, my mother was attached to her Court. That much injured Royal Person invented, in her happier hours, maraschino punch. Fondly attached to her gracious mistress, my mother shared her tastes. And I, in my turn, learnt from my mother. Now, Mr. Westwick, suppose I tell you what my business is. You are manager of a theatre. Do you want a new play?’

‘I always want a new play — provided it’s a good one.’

‘And you pay, if it’s a good one?’

‘I pay liberally — in my own interests.’

‘If I write the play, will you read it?’

Francis hesitated. ‘What has put writing a play into your head?’ he asked.

‘Mere accident,’ she answered. ‘I had once occasion to tell my late brother of a visit which I paid to Miss Lockwood, when I was last in England. He took no interest at what happened at the interview, but something struck him in my way of relating it. He said, “You describe what passed between you and the lady with the point and contrast of good stage dialogue. You have the dramatic instinct — try if you can write a play. You might make money.” That put it into my head.’

Those last words seemed to startle Francis. ‘Surely you don’t want money!’ he exclaimed.

‘I always want money. My tastes are expensive. I have nothing but my poor little four hundred a year — and the wreck that is left of the other money: about two hundred pounds in circular notes — no more.’

Francis knew that she was referring to the ten thousand pounds paid by the insurance offices. ‘All those thousands gone already!’ he exclaimed.

She blew a little puff of air over her fingers. ‘Gone like that!’ she answered coolly.

‘Baron Rivar?’

She looked at him with a flash of anger in her hard black eyes.

‘My affairs are my own secret, Mr. Westwick. I have made you a proposal — and you have not answered me yet. Don’t say No, without thinking first. Remember what a life mine has been. I have seen more of the world than most people, playwrights included. I have had strange adventures; I have heard remarkable stories; I have observed; I have remembered. Are there no materials, here in my head, for writing a play — if the opportunity is granted to me?’ She waited a moment, and suddenly repeated her strange question about Agnes.

‘When is Miss Lockwood expected to be in Venice?’

‘What has that to do with your new play, Countess?’

The Countess appeared to feel some difficulty in giving that question its fit reply. She mixed another tumbler full of maraschino punch, and drank one good half of it before she spoke again.

‘It has everything to do with my new play,’ was all she said. ‘Answer me.’ Francis answered her.

‘Miss Lockwood may be here in a week. Or, for all I know to the contrary, sooner than that.’

‘Very well. If I am a living woman and a free woman in a week’s time — or if I am in possession of my senses in a week’s time (don’t interrupt me; I know what I am talking about) — I shall have a sketch or outline of my play ready, as a specimen of what I can do. Once again, will you read it?’

‘I will certainly read it. But, Countess, I don’t understand — ’

She held up her hand for silence, and finished the second tumbler of maraschino punch.

‘I am a living enigma — and you want to know the right reading of me,’ she said. ‘Here is the reading, as your English phrase goes, in a nutshell. There is a foolish idea in the minds of many persons that the natives of the warm climates are imaginative people. There never was a greater mistake. You will find no such unimaginative people anywhere as you find in Italy, Spain, Greece, and the other Southern countries. To anything fanciful, to anything spiritual, their minds are deaf and blind by nature. Now and then, in the course of centuries, a great genius springs up among them; and he is the exception which proves the rule. Now see! I, though I am no genius — I am, in my little way (as I suppose), an exception too. To my sorrow, I have some of that imagination which is so common among the English and the Germans — so rare among the Italians, the Spaniards, and the rest of them! And what is the result? I think it has become a disease in me. I am filled with presentiments which make this wicked life of mine one long terror to me. It doesn’t matter, just now, what they are. Enough that they absolutely govern me — they drive me over land and sea at their own horrible will; they are in me, and torturing me, at this moment! Why don’t I resist them? Ha! but I do resist them. I am trying (with the help of the good punch) to resist them now. At intervals I cultivate the difficult virtue of common sense. Sometimes, sound sense makes a hopeful woman of me. At one time, I had the hope that what seemed reality to me was only mad delusion, after all — I even asked the question of an English doctor! At other times, other sensible doubts of myself beset me. Never mind dwelling on them now — it always ends in the old terrors and superstitions taking possession of me again. In a week’s time, I shall know whether Destiny does indeed decide my future for me, or whether I decide it for myself. In the last case, my resolution is to absorb this self-tormenting fancy of mine in the occupation that I have told you of already. Do you understand me a little better now? And, our business being settled, dear Mr. Westwick, shall we get out of this hot room into the nice cool air again?’

They rose to leave the cafe. Francis privately concluded that the maraschino punch offered the only discoverable explanation of what the Countess had said to him.

CHAPTER XX

‘Shall I see you again?’ she asked, as she held out her hand to take leave. ‘It is quite understood between us, I suppose, about the play?’

Francis recalled his extraordinary experience of that evening in the re-numbered room. ‘My stay in Venice is uncertain,’ he replied. ‘If you have anything more to say about this dramatic venture of yours, it may be as well to say it now. Have you decided on a subject already? I know the public taste in England better than you do — I might save you some waste of time and trouble, if you have not chosen your subject wisely.’

‘I don’t care what subject I write about, so long as I write,’ she answered carelessly. ‘If you have got a subject in your head, give it to me. I answer for the characters and the dialogue.’

‘You answer for the characters and the dialogue,’ Francis repeated. ‘That’s a bold way of speaking for a beginner! I wonder if I should shake your sublime confidence in yourself, if I suggested the most ticklish subject to handle which is known to the stage? What do you say, Countess, to entering the lists with Shakespeare, and trying a drama with a ghost in it? A true story, mind! founded on events in this very city in which you and I are interested.’

She caught him by the arm, and drew him away from the crowded colonnade into the solitary middle space of the square. ‘Now tell me!’ she said eagerly. ‘Here, where nobody is near us. How am I interested in it? How? how?’

Still holding his arm, she shook him in her impatience to hear the coming disclosure. For a moment he hesitated. Thus far, amused by her ignorant belief in herself, he had merely spoken in jest. Now, for the first time, impressed by her irresistible earnestness, he began to consider what he was about from a more serious point of view. With her knowledge of all that had passed in the old palace, before its transformation into an hotel, it was surely possible that she might suggest some explanation of what had happened to his brother, and sister, and himself. Or, failing to do this, she might accidentally reveal some event in her own experience which, acting as a hint to a competent dramatist, might prove to be the making of a play. The prosperity of his theatre was his one serious object in life. ‘I may be on the trace of another “Corsican Brothers,”‘ he thought. ‘A new piece of that sort would be ten thousand pounds in my pocket, at least.’