14. CHAPTER XIV
As the summer months advanced, the transformation of the Venetian
palace into the modern hotel proceeded rapidly towards completion.
The outside of the building, with its fine Palladian front looking on the
canal, was wisely left unaltered. Inside, as a matter of necessity, the rooms
were almost rebuilt — so far at least as the size and the arrangement of them
were concerned. The vast saloons were partitioned off into 'apartments'
containing three or four rooms each. The broad corridors in the upper
regions afforded spare space enough for rows of little bedchambers, devoted
to servants and to travellers with limited means. Nothing was spared
but the solid floors and the finely-carved ceilings. These last, in excellent
preservation as to workmanship, merely required cleaning, and regilding
here and there, to add greatly to the beauty and importance of the best
rooms in the hotel. The only exception to the complete re-organization of
the interior was at one extremity of the edifice, on the first and second
floors. Here there happened, in each case, to be rooms of such comparatively
moderate size, and so attractively decorated, that the architect suggested
leaving them as they were. It was afterwards discovered that these
were no other than the apartments formerly occupied by Lord Montbarry
(on the first floor), and by Baron Rivar (on the second). The room in
which Montbarry had died was still fitted up as a bedroom, and was now
distinguished as Number Fourteen. The room above it, in which the Baron
had slept, took its place on the hotel-register as Number Thirty-Eight. With
the ornaments on the walls and ceilings cleaned and brightened up, and
with the heavy old-fashioned beds, chairs, and tables replaced by bright,
pretty, and luxurious modern furniture, these two promised to be at once
the most attractive and the most comfortable bedchambers in the hotel.
As for the once-desolate and disused ground floor of the building, it was
now transformed, by means of splendid dining-rooms, reception-rooms,
billiard-rooms, and smoking-rooms, into a palace by itself. Even the
dungeon-like vaults beneath, now lighted and ventilated on the most approved
modern plan, had been turned as if by magic into kitchens, servants'
offices, ice-rooms, and wine cellars, worthy of the splendour of the grandest
hotel in Italy, in the now bygone period of seventeen years since.
Passing from the lapse of the summer months at Venice, to the lapse of
the summer months in Ireland, it is next to be recorded that Mrs. Rolland
obtained the situation of attendant on the invalid Mrs. Carbury; and that
the fair Miss Haldane, like a female Caesar, came, saw, and conquered, on
her first day's visit to the new Lord Montbarry's house.
The ladies were as loud in her praises as Arthur Barville himself. Lord
Montbarry declared that she was the only perfectly pretty woman he had
ever seen, who was really unconscious of her own attractions. The old
nurse said she looked as if she had just stepped out of a picture, and
wanted nothing but a gilt frame round her to make her complete. Miss
Haldane, on her side, returned from her first visit to the Montbarrys
charmed with her new acquaintances. Later on the same day, Arthur called
with an offering of fruit and flowers for Mrs. Carbury, and with instructions
to ask if she was well enough to receive Lord and Lady Montbarry
and Miss Lockwood on the morrow. In a week's time, the two households
were on the friendliest terms. Mrs. Carbury, confined to the sofa by a
spinal malady, had been hitherto dependent on her niece for one of the
few pleasures she could enjoy, the pleasure of having the best new novels
read to her as they came out. Discovering this, Arthur volunteered to
relieve Miss Haldane, at intervals, in the office of reader. He was clever at
mechanical contrivances of all sorts, and he introduced improvements in
Mrs. Carbury's couch, and in the means of conveying her from the bedchamber
to the drawing-room, which alleviated the poor lady's sufferings
and brightened her gloomy life. With these claims on the gratitude of the
aunt, aided by the personal advantages which he unquestionably possessed,
Arthur advanced rapidly in the favour of the charming niece. She was, it is
needless to say, perfectly well aware that he was in love with her, while he
was himself modestly reticent on the subject — so far as words went. But
she was not equally quick in penetrating the nature of her own feelings
towards Arthur. Watching the two young people with keen powers of
observation, necessarily concentrated on them by the complete seclusion
of her life, the invalid lady discovered signs of roused sensibility in Miss
Haldane, when Arthur was present, which had never yet shown themselves
in her social relations with other admirers eager to pay their addresses to
her. Having drawn her own conclusions in private, Mrs. Carbury took the
first favourable opportunity (in Arthur's interests) of putting them to the
test.
'I don't know what I shall do,'
she said one day,
'when
Arthur goes
away.'
Miss Haldane looked up quickly from her work.
'Surely he is not going
to leave us!'
she exclaimed.
'My dear! he has already stayed at his uncle's house a month longer
than he intended. His father and mother naturally expect to see him at
home again.'
Miss Haldane met this difficulty with a suggestion, which could only
have proceeded from a judgment already disturbed by the ravages of the
tender passion.
'Why can't his father and mother go and see him at Lord
Montbarry's?'
she asked.
'Sir Theodore's place is only thirty miles away,
and Lady Barville is Lord Montbarry's sister. They needn't stand on cere-mony.'
'They may have other engagements,'
Mrs. Carbury remarked.
'My dear aunt, we don't know that! Suppose you ask Arthur?'
'Suppose you ask him?'
Miss Haldane bent her head again over her work. Suddenly as it was
done, her aunt had seen her face — and her face betrayed her.
When Arthur came the next day, Mrs. Carbury said a word to him in
private, while her niece was in the garden. The last new novel lay neglected
on the table. Arthur followed Miss Haldane into the garden. The next day
he wrote home, enclosing in his letter a photograph of Miss Haldane.
Before the end of the week, Sir Theodore and Lady Barville arrived at
Lord Montbarry's, and formed their own judgment of the fidelity of the
portrait. They had themselves married early in life — and, strange to say,
they did not object on principle to the early marriages of other people.
The question of age being thus disposed of, the course of true love had no
other obstacles to encounter. Miss Haldane was an only child, and was
possessed of an ample fortune. Arthur's career at the university had been
creditable, but certainly not brilliant enough to present his withdrawal in
the light of a disaster. As Sir Theodore's eldest son, his position was
already made for him. He was two-and-twenty years of age; and the young
lady was eighteen. There was really no producible reason for keeping the
lovers waiting, and no excuse for deferring the wedding-day beyond the
first week in September. In the interval, while the bride and bridegroom
would be necessarily absent on the inevitable tour abroad, a sister of Mrs.
Carbury volunteered to stay with her during the temporary separation
from her niece. On the conclusion of the honeymoon, the young couple
were to return to Ireland, and were to establish themselves in Mrs. Car-bury's spacious and comfortable house.
These arrangements were decided upon early in the month of August.
About the same date, the last alterations in the old palace at Venice were
completed. The rooms were dried by steam; the cellars were stocked; the
manager collected round him his army of skilled servants; and the new
hotel was advertised all over Europe to open in October.