“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.”
In spite of her better sense, in spite of her natural superiority to
superstitions of all kinds, Agnes was impressed by the terrible
earnestness with which those words were spoken. She turned pale as she
looked at Henry. “Do _you_ understand her?” she asked.
“Nothing is easier than to understand her,” he replied contemptuously.
“She knows what has become of Ferrari; and she is confusing you in a
cloud of nonsense, because she daren’t own the truth. Let her go!”
If a dog had been under one of the chairs, and had barked, Lady
Montbarry could not have proceeded more impenetrably with the last
words she had to say to Agnes.
“Advise your interesting Mrs. Ferrari to wait a little longer,” she
said. “_You_ will know what has become of her husband, and you will
tell her. There will be nothing to alarm you. Some trifling event will
bring us together the next time—as trifling, I dare say, as the
engagement of Ferrari. Sad nonsense, Mr. Westwick, is it not? But you
make allowances for women; we all talk nonsense. Good morning, Miss
Lockwood.”
She opened the door—suddenly, as if she was afraid of being called back
for the second time—and left them.