'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.
