'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 Ishould 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.'
With these motives (worthy of the single-hearted devotion to dramatic business which made Francis a successful manager)he related, without further hesitation, what his own experience had been, and what the experience of his relatives had been, in the haunted hotel. He even described the outbreak of superstitious terror which had escaped Mrs. Norbury's ignorant maid.
'Sad stuff, if you look at it reasonably,' he remarked.
'But there is something dramatic in the notion of the ghostly influence making itself felt by the relations in succession, as they one after another enter the fatal room--until the one chosen relative comes who will see the Unearthly Creature, and know the terrible truth.
Material for a play, Countess--first-rate material for a play!'
There he paused. She neither moved nor spoke. He stooped and looked closer at her.
What impression had he produced? It was an impression which his utmost ingenuity had failed to anticipate. She stood by his side--just as she had stood before Agnes when her question about Ferrari was plainly answered at last--like a woman turned to stone.
Her eyes were vacant and rigid; all the life in her face had faded out of it. Francis took her by the hand. Her hand was as cold as the pavement that they were standing on. He asked her if she was ill.
Not a muscle in her moved. He might as well have spoken to the dead.
'Surely,' he said, 'you are not foolish enough to take what Ihave been telling you seriously?'
Her lips moved slowly. As it seemed, she was making an effort to speak to him.
'Louder,' he said. 'I can't hear you.'
She struggled to recover possession of herself. A faint light began to soften the dull cold stare of her eyes. In a moment more she spoke so that he could hear her.
'I never thought of the other world,' she murmured, in low dull tones, like a woman talking in her sleep.
Her mind had gone back to the day of her last memorable interview with Agnes; she was slowly recalling the confession that had escaped her, the warning words which she had spoken at that past time.
Necessarily incapable of understanding this, Francis looked at her in perplexity. She went on in the same dull vacant tone, steadily following out her own train of thought, with her heedless eyes on his face, and her wandering mind far away from him.
'I said some trifling event would bring us together the next time.
I was wrong. No trifling event will bring us together.
I said I might be the person who told her what had become of Ferrari, if she forced me to it. Shall I feel some other influence than hers?
Will he force me to it? When she sees him, shall I see him too?'
Her head sank a little; her heavy eyelids dropped slowly;she heaved a long low weary sigh. Francis put her arm in his, and made an attempt to rouse her.
'Come, Countess, you are weary and over-wrought. We have had enough talking to-night. Let me see you safe back to your hotel.
Is it far from here?'
She started when he moved, and obliged her to move with him, as if he had suddenly awakened her out of a deep sleep.
'Not far,' she said faintly. 'The old hotel on the quay.
My mind's in a strange state; I have forgotten the name.'
'Danieli's?'
'Yes!'
He led her on slowly. She accompanied him in silence as far as the end of the Piazzetta. There, when the full view of the moonlit Lagoon revealed itself, she stopped him as he turned towards the Riva degli Schiavoni. 'I have something to ask you.
I want to wait and think.'
She recovered her lost idea, after a long pause.
'Are you going to sleep in the room to-night?' she asked.
