Having closed and secured the door on Lady Montbarry’s departure, Agnes
put on her dressing-gown, and, turning to her open boxes, began the
business of unpacking. In the hurry of making her toilet for dinner,
she had taken the first dress that lay uppermost in the trunk, and had
thrown her travelling costume on the bed. She now opened the doors of
the wardrobe for the first time, and began to hang her dresses on the
hooks in the large compartment on one side.
After a few minutes only of this occupation, she grew weary of it, and
decided on leaving the trunks as they were, until the next morning. The
oppressive south wind, which had blown throughout the day, still
prevailed at night. The atmosphere of the room felt close; Agnes threw
a shawl over her head and shoulders, and, opening the window, stepped
into the balcony to look at the view.
The night was heavy and overcast: nothing could be distinctly seen. The
canal beneath the window looked like a black gulf; the opposite houses
were barely visible as a row of shadows, dimly relieved against the
starless and moonless sky. At long intervals, the warning cry of a
belated gondolier was just audible, as he turned the corner of a
distant canal, and called to invisible boats which might be approaching
him in the darkness. Now and then, the nearer dip of an oar in the
water told of the viewless passage of other gondolas bringing guests
back to the hotel. Excepting these rare sounds, the mysterious
night-silence of Venice was literally the silence of the grave.
Leaning on the parapet of the balcony, Agnes looked vacantly into the
black void beneath. Her thoughts reverted to the miserable man who had
broken his pledged faith to her, and who had died in that house. Some
change seemed to have come over her since her arrival in Venice; some
new influence appeared to be at work. For the first time in her
experience of herself, compassion and regret were not the only emotions
aroused in her by the remembrance of the dead Montbarry. A keen sense
of the wrong that she had suffered, never yet felt by that gentle and
forgiving nature, was felt by it now. She found herself thinking of the
bygone days of her humiliation almost as harshly as Henry Westwick had
thought of them—she who had rebuked him the last time he had spoken
slightingly of his brother in her presence! A sudden fear and doubt of
herself, startled her physically as well as morally. She turned from
the shadowy abyss of the dark water as if the mystery and the gloom of
it had been answerable for the emotions which had taken her by
surprise. Abruptly closing the window, she threw aside her shawl, and
lit the candles on the mantelpiece, impelled by a sudden craving for
light in the solitude of her room.
The cheering brightness round her, contrasting with the black gloom
outside, restored her spirits. She felt herself enjoying the light like
a child!
Would it be well (she asked herself) to get ready for bed? No! The
sense of drowsy fatigue that she had felt half an hour since was gone.
She returned to the dull employment of unpacking her boxes. After a few
minutes only, the occupation became irksome to her once more. She sat
down by the table, and took up a guide-book. “Suppose I inform myself,”
she thought, “on the subject of Venice?”
Her attention wandered from the book, before she had turned the first
page of it.
The image of Henry Westwick was the presiding image in her memory now.
Recalling the minutest incidents and details of the evening, she could
think of nothing which presented him under other than a favourable and
interesting aspect. She smiled to herself softly, her colour rose by
fine gradations, as she felt the full luxury of dwelling on the perfect
truth and modesty of his devotion to her. Was the depression of spirits
from which she had suffered so persistently on her travels
attributable, by any chance, to their long separation from each
other—embittered perhaps by her own vain regret when she remembered her
harsh reception of him in Paris? Suddenly conscious of this bold
question, and of the self-abandonment which it implied, she returned
mechanically to her book, distrusting the unrestrained liberty of her
own thoughts. What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find
their hiding-places in a woman’s dressing-gown, when she is alone in
her room at night! With her heart in the tomb of the dead Montbarry,
could Agnes even think of another man, and think of love? How shameful!
how unworthy of her! For the second time, she tried to interest herself
in the guide-book—and once more she tried in vain. Throwing the book
aside, she turned desperately to the one resource that was left, to her
luggage—resolved to fatigue herself without mercy, until she was weary
enough and sleepy enough to find a safe refuge in bed.
For some little time, she persisted in the monotonous occupation of
transferring her clothes from her trunk to the wardrobe. The large
clock in the hall, striking mid-night, reminded her that it was getting
late. She sat down for a moment in an arm-chair by the bedside, to
rest.
The silence in the house now caught her attention, and held it—held it
disagreeably. Was everybody in bed and asleep but herself? Surely it
was time for her to follow the general example? With a certain
irritable nervous haste, she rose again and undressed herself. “I have
lost two hours of rest,” she thought, frowning at the reflection of
herself in the glass, as she arranged her hair for the night. “I shall
be good for nothing to-morrow!”
She lit the night-light, and extinguished the candles—with one
exception, which she removed to a little table, placed on the side of
the bed opposite to the side occupied by the arm-chair. Having put her
travelling-box of matches and the guide-book near the candle, in case
she might be sleepless and might want to read, she blew out the light,
and laid her head on the pillow.
The curtains of the bed were looped back to let the air pass freely
over her. Lying on her left side, with her face turned away from the
table, she could see the arm-chair by the dim night-light. It had a
chintz covering—representing large bunches of roses scattered over a
pale green ground. She tried to weary herself into drowsiness by
counting over and over again the bunches of roses that were visible
from her point of view. Twice her attention was distracted from the
counting, by sounds outside—by the clock chiming the half-hour past
twelve; and then again, by the fall of a pair of boots on the upper
floor, thrown out to be cleaned, with that barbarous disregard of the
comfort of others which is observable in humanity when it inhabits an
hotel. In the silence that followed these passing disturbances, Agnes
went on counting the roses on the arm-chair, more and more slowly.
Before long, she confused herself in the figures—tried to begin
counting again—thought she would wait a little first—felt her eyelids
drooping, and her head reclining lower and lower on the pillow—sighed
faintly—and sank into sleep.
How long that first sleep lasted, she never knew. She could only
remember, in the after-time, that she woke instantly.
Every faculty and perception in her passed the boundary line between
insensibility and consciousness, so to speak, at a leap. Without
knowing why, she sat up suddenly in the bed, listening for she knew not
what. Her head was in a whirl; her heart beat furiously, without any
assignable cause. But one trivial event had happened during the
interval while she had been asleep. The night-light had gone out; and
the room, as a matter of course, was in total darkness.
She felt for the match-box, and paused after finding it. A vague sense
of confusion was still in her mind. She was in no hurry to light the
match. The pause in the darkness was, for the moment, agreeable to her.
In the quieter flow of her thoughts during this interval, she could ask
herself the natural question:—What cause had awakened her so suddenly,
and had so strangely shaken her nerves? Had it been the influence of a
dream? She had not dreamed at all—or, to speak more correctly, she had
no waking remembrance of having dreamed. The mystery was beyond her
fathoming: the darkness began to oppress her. She struck the match on
the box, and lit her candle.
As the welcome light diffused itself over the room, she turned from the
table and looked towards the other side of the bed.
In the moment when she turned, the chill of a sudden terror gripped her
round the heart, as with the clasp of an icy hand.
She was not alone in her room!
There—in the chair at the bedside—there, suddenly revealed under the
flow of light from the candle, was the figure of a woman, reclining.
Her head lay back over the chair. Her face, turned up to the ceiling,
had the eyes closed, as if she was wrapped in a deep sleep.
The shock of the discovery held Agnes speechless and helpless. Her
first conscious action, when she was in some degree mistress of herself
again, was to lean over the bed, and to look closer at the woman who
had so incomprehensibly stolen into her room in the dead of night. One
glance was enough: she started back with a cry of amazement. The person
in the chair was no other than the widow of the dead Montbarry—the
woman who had warned her that they were to meet again, and that the
place might be Venice!
Her courage returned to her, stung into action by the natural sense of
indignation which the presence of the Countess provoked.
“Wake up!” she called out. “How dare you come here? How did you get in?
Leave the room—or I will call for help!”
She raised her voice at the last words. It produced no effect. Leaning
farther over the bed, she boldly took the Countess by the shoulder and
shook her. Not even this effort succeeded in rousing the sleeping
woman. She still lay back in the chair, possessed by a torpor like the
torpor of death—insensible to sound, insensible to touch. Was she
really sleeping? Or had she fainted?
Agnes looked closer at her. She had not fainted. Her breathing was
audible, rising and falling in deep heavy gasps. At intervals she
ground her teeth savagely. Beads of perspiration stood thickly on her
forehead. Her clenched hands rose and fell slowly from time to time on
her lap. Was she in the agony of a dream? or was she spiritually
conscious of something hidden in the room?
The doubt involved in that last question was unendurable. Agnes
determined to rouse the servants who kept watch in the hotel at night.
The bell-handle was fixed to the wall, on the side of the bed by which
the table stood.
She raised herself from the crouching position which she had assumed in
looking close at the Countess; and, turning towards the other side of
the bed, stretched out her hand to the bell. At the same instant, she
stopped and looked upward. Her hand fell helplessly at her side. She
shuddered, and sank back on the pillow.
What had she seen?
She had seen another intruder in her room.
Midway between her face and the ceiling, there hovered a human
head—severed at the neck, like a head struck from the body by the
guillotine.
Nothing visible, nothing audible, had given her any intelligible
warning of its appearance. Silently and suddenly, the head had taken
its place above her. No supernatural change had passed over the room,
or was perceptible in it now. The dumbly-tortured figure in the chair;
the broad window opposite the foot of the bed, with the black night
beyond it; the candle burning on the table—these, and all other objects
in the room, remained unaltered. One object more, unutterably horrid,
had been added to the rest. That was the only change—no more, no less.
By the yellow candlelight she saw the head distinctly, hovering in
mid-air above her. She looked at it steadfastly, spell-bound by the
terror that held her.
The flesh of the face was gone. The shrivelled skin was darkened in
hue, like the skin of an Egyptian mummy—except at the neck. There it
was of a lighter colour; there it showed spots and splashes of the hue
of that brown spot on the ceiling, which the child’s fanciful terror
had distorted into the likeness of a spot of blood. Thin remains of a
discoloured moustache and whiskers, hanging over the upper lip, and
over the hollows where the cheeks had once been, made the head just
recognisable as the head of a man. Over all the features death and time
had done their obliterating work. The eyelids were closed. The hair on
the skull, discoloured like the hair on the face, had been burnt away
in places. The bluish lips, parted in a fixed grin, showed the double
row of teeth. By slow degrees, the hovering head (perfectly still when
she first saw it) began to descend towards Agnes as she lay beneath. By
slow degrees, that strange doubly-blended odour, which the
Commissioners had discovered in the vaults of the old palace—which had
sickened Francis Westwick in the bed-chamber of the new hotel—spread
its fetid exhalations over the room. Downward and downward the hideous
apparition made its slow progress, until it stopped close over
Agnes—stopped, and turned slowly, so that the face of it confronted the
upturned face of the woman in the chair.
There was a pause. Then, a supernatural movement disturbed the rigid
repose of the dead face.
The closed eyelids opened slowly. The eyes revealed themselves, bright
with the glassy film of death—and fixed their dreadful look on the
woman in the chair.
Agnes saw that look; saw the eyelids of the living woman open slowly
like the eyelids of the dead; saw her rise, as if in obedience to some
silent command—and saw no more.
Her next conscious impression was of the sunlight pouring in at the
window; of the friendly presence of Lady Montbarry at the bedside; and
of the children’s wondering faces peeping in at the door.