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The Haunted Hotel-Part16_WILKIE COLLINS (1824-1899)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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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 openlyabandon 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.

Failing 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




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