The Palace Hotel, appealing for encouragement mainly to English and
American travellers, celebrated the opening of its doors, as a matter
of course, by the giving of a grand banquet, and the delivery of a long
succession of speeches.
Delayed on his journey, Henry Westwick only reached Venice in time to
join the guests over their coffee and cigars. Observing the splendour
of the reception rooms, and taking note especially of the artful
mixture of comfort and luxury in the bedchambers, he began to share the
old nurse’s view of the future, and to contemplate seriously the coming
dividend of ten per cent. The hotel was beginning well, at all events.
So much interest in the enterprise had been aroused, at home and
abroad, by profuse advertising, that the whole accommodation of the
building had been secured by travellers of all nations for the opening
night. Henry only obtained one of the small rooms on the upper floor,
by a lucky accident—the absence of the gentleman who had written to
engage it. He was quite satisfied, and was on his way to bed, when
another accident altered his prospects for the night, and moved him
into another and a better room.
Ascending on his way to the higher regions as far as the first floor of
the hotel, Henry’s attention was attracted by an angry voice
protesting, in a strong New England accent, against one of the greatest
hardships that can be inflicted on a citizen of the United States—the
hardship of sending him to bed without gas in his room.
The Americans are not only the most hospitable people to be found on
the face of the earth—they are (under certain conditions) the most
patient and good-tempered people as well. But they are human; and the
limit of American endurance is found in the obsolete institution of a
bedroom candle. The American traveller, in the present case, declined
to believe that his bedroom was in a complete finished state without a
gas-burner. The manager pointed to the fine antique decorations
(renewed and regilt) on the walls and the ceiling, and explained that
the emanations of burning gas-light would certainly spoil them in the
course of a few months. To this the traveller replied that it was
possible, but that he did not understand decorations. A bedroom with
gas in it was what he was used to, was what he wanted, and was what he
was determined to have. The compliant manager volunteered to ask some
other gentleman, housed on the inferior upper storey (which was lit
throughout with gas), to change rooms. Hearing this, and being quite
willing to exchange a small bedchamber for a large one, Henry
volunteered to be the other gentleman. The excellent American shook
hands with him on the spot. “You are a cultured person, sir,” he said;
“and you will no doubt understand the decorations.”
Henry looked at the number of the room on the door as he opened it. The
number was Fourteen.
Tired and sleepy, he naturally anticipated a good night’s rest. In the
thoroughly healthy state of his nervous system, he slept as well in a
bed abroad as in a bed at home. Without the slightest assignable
reason, however, his just expectations were disappointed. The luxurious
bed, the well-ventilated room, the delicious tranquillity of Venice by
night, all were in favour of his sleeping well. He never slept at all.
An indescribable sense of depression and discomfort kept him waking
through darkness and daylight alike. He went down to the coffee-room as
soon as the hotel was astir, and ordered some breakfast. Another
unaccountable change in himself appeared with the appearance of the
meal. He was absolutely without appetite. An excellent omelette, and
cutlets cooked to perfection, he sent away untasted—he, whose appetite
never failed him, whose digestion was still equal to any demands on it!
The day was bright and fine. He sent for a gondola, and was rowed to
the Lido.
Out on the airy Lagoon, he felt like a new man. He had not left the
hotel ten minutes before he was fast asleep in the gondola. Waking, on
reaching the landing-place, he crossed the Lido, and enjoyed a
morning’s swim in the Adriatic. There was only a poor restaurant on the
island, in those days; but his appetite was now ready for anything; he
ate whatever was offered to him, like a famished man. He could hardly
believe, when he reflected on it, that he had sent away untasted his
excellent breakfast at the hotel.
Returning to Venice, he spent the rest of the day in the
picture-galleries and the churches. Towards six o’clock his gondola
took him back, with another fine appetite, to meet some travelling
acquaintances with whom he had engaged to dine at the table d’hote.
The dinner was deservedly rewarded with the highest approval by every
guest in the hotel but one. To Henry’s astonishment, the appetite with
which he had entered the house mysteriously and completely left him
when he sat down to table. He could drink some wine, but he could
literally eat nothing. “What in the world is the matter with you?” his
travelling acquaintances asked. He could honestly answer, “I know no
more than you do.”
When night came, he gave his comfortable and beautiful bedroom another
trial. The result of the second experiment was a repetition of the
result of the first. Again he felt the all-pervading sense of
depression and discomfort. Again he passed a sleepless night. And once
more, when he tried to eat his breakfast, his appetite completely
failed him!
This personal experience of the new hotel was too extraordinary to be
passed over in silence. Henry mentioned it to his friends in the public
room, in the hearing of the manager. The manager, naturally zealous in
defence of the hotel, was a little hurt at the implied reflection cast
on Number Fourteen. He invited the travellers present to judge for
themselves whether Mr. Westwick’s bedroom was to blame for Mr.
Westwick’s sleepless nights; and he especially appealed to a
grey-headed gentleman, a guest at the breakfast-table of an English
traveller, to take the lead in the investigation. “This is Doctor
Bruno, our first physician in Venice,” he explained. “I appeal to him
to say if there are any unhealthy influences in Mr. Westwick’s room.”
Introduced to Number Fourteen, the doctor looked round him with a
certain appearance of interest which was noticed by everyone present.
“The last time I was in this room,” he said, “was on a melancholy
occasion. It was before the palace was changed into an hotel. I was in
professional attendance on an English nobleman who died here.” One of
the persons present inquired the name of the nobleman. Doctor Bruno
answered (without the slightest suspicion that he was speaking before a
brother of the dead man), “Lord Montbarry.”
Henry quietly left the room, without saying a word to anybody.
He was not, in any sense of the term, a superstitious man. But he felt,
nevertheless, an insurmountable reluctance to remaining in the hotel.
He decided on leaving Venice. To ask for another room would be, as he
could plainly see, an offence in the eyes of the manager. To remove to
another hotel, would be to openly abandon an establishment in the
success of which he had a pecuniary interest. Leaving a note for Arthur
Barville, on his arrival in Venice, in which he merely mentioned that
he had gone to look at the Italian lakes, and that a line addressed to
his hotel at Milan would bring him back again, he took the afternoon
train to Padua—and dined with his usual appetite, and slept as well as
ever that night.
The next day, a gentleman and his wife (perfect strangers to the
Montbarry family), returning to England by way of Venice, arrived at
the hotel and occupied Number Fourteen.
Still mindful of the slur that had been cast on one of his best
bedchambers, the manager took occasion to ask the travellers the next
morning how they liked their room. They left him to judge for himself
how well they were satisfied, by remaining a day longer in Venice than
they had originally planned to do, solely for the purpose of enjoying
the excellent accommodation offered to them by the new hotel. “We have
met with nothing like it in Italy,” they said; “you may rely on our
recommending you to all our friends.”
On the day when Number Fourteen was again vacant, an English lady
travelling alone with her maid arrived at the hotel, saw the room, and
at once engaged it.
The lady was Mrs. Norbury. She had left Francis Westwick at Milan,
occupied in negotiating for the appearance at his theatre of the new
dancer at the Scala. Not having heard to the contrary, Mrs. Norbury
supposed that Arthur Barville and his wife had already arrived at
Venice. She was more interested in meeting the young married couple
than in awaiting the result of the hard bargaining which delayed the
engagement of the new dancer; and she volunteered to make her brother’s
apologies, if his theatrical business caused him to be late in keeping
his appointment at the honeymoon festival.
Mrs. Norbury’s experience of Number Fourteen differed entirely from her
brother Henry’s experience of the room.
Falling asleep as readily as usual, her repose was disturbed by a
succession of frightful dreams; the central figure in every one of them
being the figure of her dead brother, the first Lord Montbarry. She saw
him starving in a loathsome prison; she saw him pursued by assassins,
and dying under their knives; she saw him drowning in immeasurable
depths of dark water; she saw him in a bed on fire, burning to death in
the flames; she saw him tempted by a shadowy creature to drink, and
dying of the poisonous draught. The reiterated horror of these dreams
had such an effect on her that she rose with the dawn of day, afraid to
trust herself again in bed. In the old times, she had been noted in the
family as the one member of it who lived on affectionate terms with
Montbarry. His other sister and his brothers were constantly
quarrelling with him. Even his mother owned that her eldest son was of
all her children the child whom she least liked. Sensible and resolute
woman as she was, Mrs. Norbury shuddered with terror as she sat at the
window of her room, watching the sunrise, and thinking of her dreams.
She made the first excuse that occurred to her, when her maid came in
at the usual hour, and noticed how ill she looked. The woman was of so
superstitious a temperament that it would have been in the last degree
indiscreet to trust her with the truth. Mrs. Norbury merely remarked
that she had not found the bed quite to her liking, on account of the
large size of it. She was accustomed at home, as her maid knew, to
sleep in a small bed. Informed of this objection later in the day, the
manager regretted that he could only offer to the lady the choice of
one other bedchamber, numbered Thirty-eight, and situated immediately
over the bedchamber which she desired to leave. Mrs. Norbury accepted
the proposed change of quarters. She was now about to pass her second
night in the room occupied in the old days of the palace by Baron
Rivar.
Once more, she fell asleep as usual. And, once more, the frightful
dreams of the first night terrified her, following each other in the
same succession. This time her nerves, already shaken, were not equal
to the renewed torture of terror inflicted on them. She threw on her
dressing-gown, and rushed out of her room in the middle of the night.
The porter, alarmed by the banging of the door, met her hurrying
headlong down the stairs, in search of the first human being she could
find to keep her company. Considerably surprised at this last new
manifestation of the famous “English eccentricity,” the man looked at
the hotel register, and led the lady upstairs again to the room
occupied by her maid. The maid was not asleep, and, more wonderful
still, was not even undressed. She received her mistress quietly. When
they were alone, and when Mrs. Norbury had, as a matter of necessity,
taken her attendant into her confidence, the woman made a very strange
reply.
“I have been asking about the hotel, at the servants’ supper to-night,”
she said. “The valet of one of the gentlemen staying here has heard
that the late Lord Montbarry was the last person who lived in the
palace, before it was made into an hotel. The room he died in, ma’am,
was the room you slept in last night. Your room tonight is the room
just above it. I said nothing for fear of frightening you. For my own
part, I have passed the night as you see, keeping my light on, and
reading my Bible. In my opinion, no member of your family can hope to
be happy or comfortable in this house.”
“What do you mean?”
“Please to let me explain myself, ma’am. When Mr. Henry Westwick was
here (I have this from the valet, too) he occupied the room his brother
died in (without knowing it), like you. For two nights he never closed
his eyes. Without any reason for it (the valet heard him tell the
gentlemen in the coffee-room) he could not sleep; he felt so low and so
wretched in himself. And what is more, when daytime came, he couldn’t
even eat while he was under this roof. You may laugh at me, ma’am—but
even a servant may draw her own conclusions. It’s my conclusion that
something happened to my lord, which we none of us know about, when he
died in this house. His ghost walks in torment until he can tell it—and
the living persons related to him are the persons who feel he is near
them. Those persons may yet see him in the time to come. Don’t, pray
don’t stay any longer in this dreadful place! I wouldn’t stay another
night here myself—no, not for anything that could be offered me!”
Mrs. Norbury at once set her servant’s mind at ease on this last point.
“I don’t think about it as you do,” she said gravely. “But I should
like to speak to my brother of what has happened. We will go back to
Milan.”
Some hours necessarily elapsed before they could leave the hotel, by
the first train in the forenoon.
In that interval, Mrs. Norbury’s maid found an opportunity of
confidentially informing the valet of what had passed between her
mistress and herself. The valet had other friends to whom he related
the circumstances in his turn. In due course of time, the narrative,
passing from mouth to mouth, reached the ears of the manager. He
instantly saw that the credit of the hotel was in danger, unless
something was done to retrieve the character of the room numbered
Fourteen. English travellers, well acquainted with the peerage of their
native country, informed him that Henry Westwick and Mrs. Norbury were
by no means the only members of the Montbarry family. Curiosity might
bring more of them to the hotel, after hearing what had happened. The
manager’s ingenuity easily hit on the obvious means of misleading them,
in this case. The numbers of all the rooms were enamelled in blue, on
white china plates, screwed to the doors. He ordered a new plate to be
prepared, bearing the number, “13 A”; and he kept the room empty, after
its tenant for the time being had gone away, until the plate was ready.
He then re-numbered the room; placing the removed Number Fourteen on
the door of his own room (on the second floor), which, not being to
let, had not previously been numbered at all. By this device, Number
Fourteen disappeared at once and for ever from the books of the hotel,
as the number of a bedroom to let.
Having warned the servants to beware of gossiping with travellers, on
the subject of the changed numbers, under penalty of being dismissed,
the manager composed his mind with the reflection that he had done his
duty to his employers. “Now,” he thought to himself, with an excusable
sense of triumph, “let the whole family come here if they like! The
hotel is a match for them.”