June 17th.—Just as my hand was on the door of my room, I heard Sir
Percival’s voice calling to me from below.
“I must beg you to come downstairs again,” he said. “It is Fosco’s
fault, Miss Halcombe, not mine. He has started some nonsensical
objection to his wife being one of the witnesses, and has obliged me to
ask you to join us in the library.”
I entered the room immediately with Sir Percival. Laura was waiting
by the writing-table, twisting and turning her garden hat uneasily in
her hands. Madame Fosco sat near her, in an arm-chair, imperturbably
admiring her husband, who stood by himself at the other end of the
library, picking off the dead leaves from the flowers in the window.
The moment I appeared the Count advanced to meet me, and to offer his
explanations.
“A thousand pardons, Miss Halcombe,” he said. “You know the character
which is given to my countrymen by the English? We Italians are all
wily and suspicious by nature, in the estimation of the good John Bull.
Set me down, if you please, as being no better than the rest of my
race. I am a wily Italian and a suspicious Italian. You have thought so
yourself, dear lady, have you not? Well! it is part of my wiliness and
part of my suspicion to object to Madame Fosco being a witness to Lady
Glyde’s signature, when I am also a witness myself.”
“There is not the shadow of a reason for his objection,” interposed
Sir Percival. “I have explained to him that the law of England allows
Madame Fosco to witness a signature as well as her husband.”
“I admit it,” resumed the Count. “The law of England says, Yes, but the
conscience of Fosco says, No.” He spread out his fat fingers on the
bosom of his blouse, and bowed solemnly, as if he wished to introduce
his conscience to us all, in the character of an illustrious addition
to the society. “What this document which Lady Glyde is about to sign
may be,” he continued, “I neither know nor desire to know. I only say
this, circumstances may happen in the future which may oblige Percival,
or his representatives, to appeal to the two witnesses, in which case
it is certainly desirable that those witnesses should represent two
opinions which are perfectly independent the one of the other. This
cannot be if my wife signs as well as myself, because we have but
one opinion between us, and that opinion is mine. I will not have it
cast in my teeth, at some future day, that Madame Fosco acted under
my coercion, and was, in plain fact, no witness at all. I speak in
Percival’s interest, when I propose that my name shall appear (as the
nearest friend of the husband), and your name, Miss Halcombe (as the
nearest friend of the wife). I am a Jesuit, if you please to think so—a
splitter of straws—a man of trifles and crochets and scruples—but you
will humour me, I hope, in merciful consideration for my suspicious
Italian character, and my uneasy Italian conscience.” He bowed again,
stepped back a few paces, and withdrew his conscience from our society
as politely as he had introduced it.
The Count’s scruples might have been honourable and reasonable enough,
but there was something in his manner of expressing them which
increased my unwillingness to be concerned in the business of the
signature. No consideration of less importance than my consideration
for Laura would have induced me to consent to be a witness at all. One
look, however, at her anxious face decided me to risk anything rather
than desert her.
“I will readily remain in the room,” I said. “And if I find no reason
for starting any small scruples on my side, you may rely on me as a
witness.”
Sir Percival looked at me sharply, as if he was about to say something.
But at the same moment, Madame Fosco attracted his attention by rising
from her chair. She had caught her husband’s eye, and had evidently
received her orders to leave the room.
“You needn’t go,” said Sir Percival.
Madame Fosco looked for her orders again, got them again, said she
would prefer leaving us to our business, and resolutely walked out.
The Count lit a cigarette, went back to the flowers in the window, and
puffed little jets of smoke at the leaves, in a state of the deepest
anxiety about killing the insects.
Meanwhile Sir Percival unlocked a cupboard beneath one of the
book-cases, and produced from it a piece of parchment, folded longwise,
many times over. He placed it on the table, opened the last fold only,
and kept his hand on the rest. The last fold displayed a strip of blank
parchment with little wafers stuck on it at certain places. Every line
of the writing was hidden in the part which he still held folded up
under his hand. Laura and I looked at each other. Her face was pale,
but it showed no indecision and no fear.
Sir Percival dipped a pen in ink, and handed it to his wife. “Sign your
name there,” he said, pointing to the place. “You and Fosco are to sign
afterwards, Miss Halcombe, opposite those two wafers. Come here, Fosco!
witnessing a signature is not to be done by mooning out of window and
smoking into the flowers.”
The Count threw away his cigarette, and joined us at the table, with
his hands carelessly thrust into the scarlet belt of his blouse, and
his eyes steadily fixed on Sir Percival’s face. Laura, who was on the
other side of her husband, with the pen in her hand, looked at him too.
He stood between them holding the folded parchment down firmly on the
table, and glancing across at me, as I sat opposite to him, with such
a sinister mixture of suspicion and embarrassment on his face that he
looked more like a prisoner at the bar than a gentleman in his own
house.
“Sign there,” he repeated, turning suddenly on Laura, and pointing once
more to the place on the parchment.
“What is it I am to sign?” she asked quietly.
“I have no time to explain,” he answered. “The dog-cart is at
the door, and I must go directly. Besides, if I had time, you
wouldn’t understand. It is a purely formal document, full of legal
technicalities, and all that sort of thing. Come! come! sign your name,
and let us have done as soon as possible.”
“I ought surely to know what I am signing, Sir Percival, before I write
my name?”
“Nonsense! What have women to do with business? I tell you again, you
can’t understand it.”
“At any rate, let me try to understand it. Whenever Mr. Gilmore had
any business for me to do, he always explained it first, and I always
understood him.”
“I dare say he did. He was your servant, and was obliged to explain.
I am your husband, and am NOT obliged. How much longer do you mean
to keep me here? I tell you again, there is no time for reading
anything—the dog-cart is waiting at the door. Once for all, will you
sign or will you not?”
She still had the pen in her hand, but she made no approach to signing
her name with it.
“If my signature pledges me to anything,” she said, “surely I have some
claim to know what that pledge is?”
He lifted up the parchment, and struck it angrily on the table.
“Speak out!” he said. “You were always famous for telling the truth.
Never mind Miss Halcombe, never mind Fosco—say, in plain terms, you
distrust me.”
The Count took one of his hands out of his belt and laid it on Sir
Percival’s shoulder. Sir Percival shook it off irritably. The Count put
it on again with unruffled composure.
“Control your unfortunate temper, Percival,” he said, “Lady Glyde is
right.”
“Right!” cried Sir Percival. “A wife right in distrusting her husband!”
“It is unjust and cruel to accuse me of distrusting you,” said Laura.
“Ask Marian if I am not justified in wanting to know what this writing
requires of me before I sign it.”
“I won’t have any appeals made to Miss Halcombe,” retorted Sir
Percival. “Miss Halcombe has nothing to do with the matter.”
I had not spoken hitherto, and I would much rather not have spoken
now. But the expression of distress in Laura’s face when she turned it
towards me, and the insolent injustice of her husband’s conduct, left
me no other alternative than to give my opinion, for her sake, as soon
as I was asked for it.
“Excuse me, Sir Percival,” I said—“but as one of the witnesses to
the signature, I venture to think that I HAVE something to do with
the matter. Laura’s objection seems to me a perfectly fair one, and
speaking for myself only, I cannot assume the responsibility of
witnessing her signature, unless she first understands what the writing
is which you wish her to sign.”
“A cool declaration, upon my soul!” cried Sir Percival. “The next time
you invite yourself to a man’s house, Miss Halcombe, I recommend you
not to repay his hospitality by taking his wife’s side against him in a
matter that doesn’t concern you.”
I started to my feet as suddenly as if he had struck me. If I had been
a man, I would have knocked him down on the threshold of his own door,
and have left his house, never on any earthly consideration to enter it
again. But I was only a woman—and I loved his wife so dearly!
Thank God, that faithful love helped me, and I sat down again without
saying a word. SHE knew what I had suffered and what I had suppressed.
She ran round to me, with the tears streaming from her eyes. “Oh,
Marian!” she whispered softly. “If my mother had been alive, she could
have done no more for me!”
“Come back and sign!” cried Sir Percival from the other side of the
table.
“Shall I?” she asked in my ear; “I will, if you tell me.”
“No,” I answered. “The right and the truth are with you—sign nothing,
unless you have read it first.”
“Come back and sign!” he reiterated, in his loudest and angriest tones.
The Count, who had watched Laura and me with a close and silent
attention, interposed for the second time.
“Percival!” he said. “I remember that I am in the presence of ladies.
Be good enough, if you please, to remember it too.”
Sir Percival turned on him speechless with passion. The Count’s firm
hand slowly tightened its grasp on his shoulder, and the Count’s steady
voice quietly repeated, “Be good enough, if you please, to remember it
too.”
They both looked at each other. Sir Percival slowly drew his shoulder
from under the Count’s hand, slowly turned his face away from the
Count’s eyes, doggedly looked down for a little while at the parchment
on the table, and then spoke, with the sullen submission of a tamed
animal, rather than the becoming resignation of a convinced man.
“I don’t want to offend anybody,” he said, “but my wife’s obstinacy
is enough to try the patience of a saint. I have told her this is
merely a formal document—and what more can she want? You may say what
you please, but it is no part of a woman’s duty to set her husband at
defiance. Once more, Lady Glyde, and for the last time, will you sign
or will you not?”
Laura returned to his side of the table, and took up the pen again.
“I will sign with pleasure,” she said, “if you will only treat me as a
responsible being. I care little what sacrifice is required of me, if
it will affect no one else, and lead to no ill results—”
“Who talked of a sacrifice being required of you?” he broke in, with a
half-suppressed return of his former violence.
“I only meant,” she resumed, “that I would refuse no concession which
I could honourably make. If I have a scruple about signing my name to
an engagement of which I know nothing, why should you visit it on me so
severely? It is rather hard, I think, to treat Count Fosco’s scruples
so much more indulgently than you have treated mine.”
This unfortunate, yet most natural, reference to the Count’s
extraordinary power over her husband, indirect as it was, set Sir
Percival’s smouldering temper on fire again in an instant.
“Scruples!” he repeated. “YOUR scruples! It is rather late in the day
for you to be scrupulous. I should have thought you had got over all
weakness of that sort, when you made a virtue of necessity by marrying
me.”
The instant he spoke those words, Laura threw down the pen—looked at
him with an expression in her eyes which, throughout all my experience
of her, I had never seen in them before, and turned her back on him in
dead silence.
This strong expression of the most open and the most bitter contempt
was so entirely unlike herself, so utterly out of her character, that
it silenced us all. There was something hidden, beyond a doubt, under
the mere surface-brutality of the words which her husband had just
addressed to her. There was some lurking insult beneath them, of which
I was wholly ignorant, but which had left the mark of its profanation
so plainly on her face that even a stranger might have seen it.
The Count, who was no stranger, saw it as distinctly as I did. When I
left my chair to join Laura, I heard him whisper under his breath to
Sir Percival, “You idiot!”
Laura walked before me to the door as I advanced, and at the same time
her husband spoke to her once more.
“You positively refuse, then, to give me your signature?” he said, in
the altered tone of a man who was conscious that he had let his own
licence of language seriously injure him.
“After what you have just said to me,” she replied firmly, “I refuse my
signature until I have read every line in that parchment from the first
word to the last. Come away, Marian, we have remained here long enough.”
“One moment!” interposed the Count before Sir Percival could speak
again—“one moment, Lady Glyde, I implore you!”
Laura would have left the room without noticing him, but I stopped her.
“Don’t make an enemy of the Count!” I whispered. “Whatever you do,
don’t make an enemy of the Count!”
She yielded to me. I closed the door again, and we stood near it
waiting. Sir Percival sat down at the table, with his elbow on the
folded parchment, and his head resting on his clenched fist. The Count
stood between us—master of the dreadful position in which we were
placed, as he was master of everything else.
“Lady Glyde,” he said, with a gentleness which seemed to address itself
to our forlorn situation instead of to ourselves, “pray pardon me if
I venture to offer one suggestion, and pray believe that I speak out
of my profound respect and my friendly regard for the mistress of this
house.” He turned sharply towards Sir Percival. “Is it absolutely
necessary,” he asked, “that this thing here, under your elbow, should
be signed to-day?”
“It is necessary to my plans and wishes,” returned the other sulkily.
“But that consideration, as you may have noticed, has no influence with
Lady Glyde.”
“Answer my plain question plainly. Can the business of the signature be
put off till to-morrow—Yes or No?”
“Yes, if you will have it so.”
“Then what are you wasting your time for here? Let the signature wait
till to-morrow—let it wait till you come back.”
Sir Percival looked up with a frown and an oath.
“You are taking a tone with me that I don’t like,” he said. “A tone I
won’t bear from any man.”
“I am advising you for your good,” returned the Count, with a smile
of quiet contempt. “Give yourself time—give Lady Glyde time. Have you
forgotten that your dog-cart is waiting at the door? My tone surprises
you—ha? I dare say it does—it is the tone of a man who can keep his
temper. How many doses of good advice have I given you in my time? More
than you can count. Have I ever been wrong? I defy you to quote me an
instance of it. Go! take your drive. The matter of the signature can
wait till to-morrow. Let it wait—and renew it when you come back.”
Sir Percival hesitated and looked at his watch. His anxiety about the
secret journey which he was to take that day, revived by the Count’s
words, was now evidently disputing possession of his mind with his
anxiety to obtain Laura’s signature. e considered for a little while,
and then got up from his chair.
“It is easy to argue me down,” he said, “when I have no time to answer
you. I will take your advice, Fosco—not because I want it, or believe
in it, but because I can’t stop here any longer.” He paused, and looked
round darkly at his wife. “If you don’t give me your signature when I
come back to-morrow—!” The rest was lost in the noise of his opening
the book-case cupboard again, and locking up the parchment once more.
He took his hat and gloves off the table, and made for the door. Laura
and I drew back to let him pass. “Remember to-morrow!” he said to his
wife, and went out.
We waited to give him time to cross the hall and drive away. The Count
approached us while we were standing near the door.
“You have just seen Percival at his worst, Miss Halcombe,” he said.
“As his old friend, I am sorry for him and ashamed of him. As his old
friend, I promise you that he shall not break out to-morrow in the same
disgraceful manner in which he has broken out to-day.”
Laura had taken my arm while he was speaking and she pressed it
significantly when he had done. It would have been a hard trial to any
woman to stand by and see the office of apologist for her husband’s
misconduct quietly assumed by his male friend in her own house—and
it was a trial to HER. I thanked the Count civilly, and let her out.
Yes! I thanked him: for I felt already, with a sense of inexpressible
helplessness and humiliation, that it was either his interest or his
caprice to make sure of my continuing to reside at Blackwater Park, and
I knew after Sir Percival’s conduct to me, that without the support of
the Count’s influence, I could not hope to remain there. His influence,
the influence of all others that I dreaded most, was actually the one
tie which now held me to Laura in the hour of her utmost need!
We heard the wheels of the dog-cart crashing on the gravel of the drive
as we came into the hall. Sir Percival had started on his journey.
“Where is he going to, Marian?” Laura whispered. “Every fresh thing he
does seems to terrify me about the future. Have you any suspicions?”
After what she had undergone that morning, I was unwilling to tell her
my suspicions.
“How should I know his secrets?” I said evasively.
“I wonder if the housekeeper knows?” she persisted.
“Certainly not,” I replied. “She must be quite as ignorant as we are.”
Laura shook her head doubtfully.
“Did you not hear from the housekeeper that there was a report of Anne
Catherick having been seen in this neighbourhood? Don’t you think he
may have gone away to look for her?”
“I would rather compose myself, Laura, by not thinking about it at all,
and after what has happened, you had better follow my example. Come
into my room, and rest and quiet yourself a little.”
We sat down together close to the window, and let the fragrant summer
air breathe over our faces.
“I am ashamed to look at you, Marian,” she said, “after what you
submitted to downstairs, for my sake. Oh, my own love, I am almost
heartbroken when I think of it! But I will try to make it up to you—I
will indeed!”
“Hush! hush!” I replied; “don’t talk so. What is the trifling
mortification of my pride compared to the dreadful sacrifice of your
happiness?”
“You heard what he said to me?” she went on quickly and vehemently.
“You heard the words—but you don’t know what they meant—you don’t know
why I threw down the pen and turned my back on him.” She rose in sudden
agitation, and walked about the room. “I have kept many things from
your knowledge, Marian, for fear of distressing you, and making you
unhappy at the outset of our new lives. You don’t know how he has used
me. And yet you ought to know, for you saw how he used me to-day. You
heard him sneer at my presuming to be scrupulous—you heard him say I
had made a virtue of necessity in marrying him.” She sat down again,
her face flushed deeply, and her hands twisted and twined together in
her lap. “I can’t tell you about it now,” she said; “I shall burst
out crying if I tell you now—later, Marian, when I am more sure of
myself. My poor head aches, darling—aches, aches, aches. Where is your
smelling-bottle? Let me talk to you about yourself. I wish I had given
him my signature, for your sake. Shall I give it to him to-morrow? I
would rather compromise myself than compromise you. After your taking
my part against him, he will lay all the blame on you if I refuse
again. What shall we do? Oh, for a friend to help us and advise us!—a
friend we could really trust!”
She sighed bitterly. I saw in her face that she was thinking of
Hartright—saw it the more plainly because her last words set me
thinking of him too. In six months only from her marriage we wanted the
faithful service he had offered to us in his farewell words. How little
I once thought that we should ever want it at all!
“We must do what we can to help ourselves,” I said. “Let us try to talk
it over calmly, Laura—let us do all in our power to decide for the
best.”
Putting what she knew of her husband’s embarrassments and what I
had heard of his conversation with the lawyer together, we arrived
necessarily at the conclusion that the parchment in the library had
been drawn up for the purpose of borrowing money, and that Laura’s
signature was absolutely necessary to fit it for the attainment of Sir
Percival’s object.
The second question, concerning the nature of the legal contract
by which the money was to be obtained, and the degree of personal
responsibility to which Laura might subject herself if she signed it in
the dark, involved considerations which lay far beyond any knowledge
and experience that either of us possessed. My own convictions led
me to believe that the hidden contents of the parchment concealed a
transaction of the meanest and the most fraudulent kind.
I had not formed this conclusion in consequence of Sir Percival’s
refusal to show the writing or to explain it, for that refusal might
well have proceeded from his obstinate disposition and his domineering
temper alone. My sole motive for distrusting his honesty sprang from
the change which I had observed in his language and his manners at
Blackwater Park, a change which convinced me that he had been acting a
part throughout the whole period of his probation at Limmeridge House.
His elaborate delicacy, his ceremonious politeness which harmonised so
agreeably with Mr. Gilmore’s old-fashioned notions, his modesty with
Laura, his candour with me, his moderation with Mr. Fairlie—all these
were the artifices of a mean, cunning, and brutal man, who had dropped
his disguise when his practised duplicity had gained its end, and had
openly shown himself in the library on that very day. I say nothing of
the grief which this discovery caused me on Laura’s account, for it is
not to be expressed by any words of mine. I only refer to it at all,
because it decided me to oppose her signing the parchment, whatever the
consequences might be, unless she was first made acquainted with the
contents.
Under these circumstances, the one chance for us when to-morrow came
was to be provided with an objection to giving the signature, which
might rest on sufficiently firm commercial or legal grounds to shake
Sir Percival’s resolution, and to make him suspect that we two women
understood the laws and obligations of business as well as himself.
After some pondering, I determined to write to the only honest man
within reach whom we could trust to help us discreetly in our forlorn
situation. That man was Mr. Gilmore’s partner, Mr. Kyrle, who conducted
the business now that our old friend had been obliged to withdraw from
it, and to leave London on account of his health. I explained to Laura
that I had Mr. Gilmore’s own authority for placing implicit confidence
in his partner’s integrity, discretion, and accurate knowledge of all
her affairs, and with her full approval I sat down at once to write
the letter, I began by stating our position to Mr. Kyrle exactly as
it was, and then asked for his advice in return, expressed in plain,
downright terms which he could comprehend without any danger of
misinterpretations and mistakes. My letter was as short as I could
possibly make it, and was, I hope, unencumbered by needless apologies
and needless details.
Just as I was about to put the address on the envelope an obstacle was
discovered by Laura, which in the effort and preoccupation of writing
had escaped my mind altogether.
“How are we to get the answer in time?” she asked. “Your letter will
not be delivered in London before to-morrow morning, and the post will
not bring the reply here till the morning after.”
The only way of overcoming this difficulty was to have the answer
brought to us from the lawyer’s office by a special messenger. I wrote
a postscript to that effect, begging that the messenger might be
despatched with the reply by the eleven o’clock morning train, which
would bring him to our station at twenty minutes past one, and so
enable him to reach Blackwater Park by two o’clock at the latest. He
was to be directed to ask for me, to answer no questions addressed to
him by any one else, and to deliver his letter into no hands but mine.
“In case Sir Percival should come back to-morrow before two o’clock,”
I said to Laura, “the wisest plan for you to adopt is to be out in
the grounds all the morning with your book or your work, and not to
appear at the house till the messenger has had time to arrive with the
letter. I will wait here for him all the morning, to guard against any
misadventures or mistakes. By following this arrangement I hope and
believe we shall avoid being taken by surprise. Let us go down to the
drawing-room now. We may excite suspicion if we remain shut up together
too long.”
“Suspicion?” she repeated. “Whose suspicion can we excite, now that Sir
Percival has left the house? Do you mean Count Fosco?”
“Perhaps I do, Laura.”
“You are beginning to dislike him as much as I do, Marian.”
“No, not to dislike him. Dislike is always more or less associated with
contempt—I can see nothing in the Count to despise.”
“You are not afraid of him, are you?”
“Perhaps I am—a little.”
“Afraid of him, after his interference in our favour to-day!”
“Yes. I am more afraid of his interference than I am of Sir Percival’s
violence. Remember what I said to you in the library. Whatever you do,
Laura, don’t make an enemy of the Count!”
We went downstairs. Laura entered the drawing-room, while I proceeded
across the hall, with my letter in my hand, to put it into the
post-bag, which hung against the wall opposite to me.
The house door was open, and as I crossed past it, I saw Count Fosco
and his wife standing talking together on the steps outside, with their
faces turned towards me.
The Countess came into the hall rather hastily, and asked if I had
leisure enough for five minutes’ private conversation. Feeling a little
surprised by such an appeal from such a person, I put my letter into
the bag, and replied that I was quite at her disposal. She took my arm
with unaccustomed friendliness and familiarity, and instead of leading
me into an empty room, drew me out with her to the belt of turf which
surrounded the large fish-pond.
As we passed the Count on the steps he bowed and smiled, and then went
at once into the house, pushing the hall door to after him, but not
actually closing it.
The Countess walked me gently round the fish-pond. I expected to
be made the depositary of some extraordinary confidence, and I was
astonished to find that Madame Fosco’s communication for my private
ear was nothing more than a polite assurance of her sympathy for me,
after what had happened in the library. Her husband had told her of all
that had passed, and of the insolent manner in which Sir Percival had
spoken to me. This information had so shocked and distressed her, on my
account and on Laura’s, that she had made up her mind, if anything of
the sort happened again, to mark her sense of Sir Percival’s outrageous
conduct by leaving the house. The Count had approved of her idea, and
she now hoped that I approved of it too.
I thought this a very strange proceeding on the part of such a
remarkably reserved woman as Madame Fosco, especially after the
interchange of sharp speeches which had passed between us during the
conversation in the boat-house on that very morning. However, it was
my plain duty to meet a polite and friendly advance on the part of one
of my elders with a polite and friendly reply. I answered the Countess
accordingly in her own tone, and then, thinking we had said all that
was necessary on either side, made an attempt to get back to the house.
But Madame Fosco seemed resolved not to part with me, and to my
unspeakable amazement, resolved also to talk. Hitherto the most silent
of women, she now persecuted me with fluent conventionalities on the
subject of married life, on the subject of Sir Percival and Laura,
on the subject of her own happiness, on the subject of the late Mr.
Fairlie’s conduct to her in the matter of her legacy, and on half a
dozen other subjects besides, until she had detained me walking round
and round the fish-pond for more than half an hour, and had quite
wearied me out. Whether she discovered this or not, I cannot say, but
she stopped as abruptly as she had begun—looked towards the house
door, resumed her icy manner in a moment, and dropped my arm of her
own accord before I could think of an excuse for accomplishing my own
release from her.
As I pushed open the door and entered the hall, I found myself suddenly
face to face with the Count again. He was just putting a letter into
the post-bag.
After he had dropped it in and had closed the bag, he asked me where
I had left Madame Fosco. I told him, and he went out at the hall door
immediately to join his wife. His manner when he spoke to me was
so unusually quiet and subdued that I turned and looked after him,
wondering if he were ill or out of spirits.
Why my next proceeding was to go straight up to the post-bag and take
out my own letter and look at it again, with a vague distrust on me,
and why the looking at it for the second time instantly suggested the
idea to my mind of sealing the envelope for its greater security—are
mysteries which are either too deep or too shallow for me to fathom.
Women, as everybody knows, constantly act on impulses which they cannot
explain even to themselves, and I can only suppose that one of those
impulses was the hidden cause of my unaccountable conduct on this
occasion.
Whatever influence animated me, I found cause to congratulate myself
on having obeyed it as soon as I prepared to seal the letter in my
own room. I had originally closed the envelope in the usual way by
moistening the adhesive point and pressing it on the paper beneath,
and when I now tried it with my finger, after a lapse of full
three-quarters of an hour, the envelope opened on the instant, without
sticking or tearing. Perhaps I had fastened it insufficiently? Perhaps
there might have been some defect in the adhesive gum?
Or, perhaps——No! it is quite revolting enough to feel that third
conjecture stirring in my mind. I would rather not see it confronting
me in plain black and white.
I almost dread to-morrow—so much depends on my discretion and
self-control. There are two precautions, at all events, which I am sure
not to forget. I must be careful to keep up friendly appearances with
the Count, and I must be well on my guard when the messenger from the
office comes here with the answer to my letter.
V
June 17th.—When the dinner hour brought us together again, Count Fosco
was in his usual excellent spirits. He exerted himself to interest
and amuse us, as if he was determined to efface from our memories all
recollection of what had passed in the library that afternoon. Lively
descriptions of his adventures in travelling, amusing anecdotes of
remarkable people whom he had met with abroad, quaint comparisons
between the social customs of various nations, illustrated by
examples drawn from men and women indiscriminately all over Europe,
humorous confessions of the innocent follies of his own early life,
when he ruled the fashions of a second-rate Italian town, and wrote
preposterous romances on the French model for a second-rate Italian
newspaper—all flowed in succession so easily and so gaily from his
lips, and all addressed our various curiosities and various interests
so directly and so delicately, that Laura and I listened to him with
as much attention and, inconsistent as it may seem, with as much
admiration also, as Madame Fosco herself. Women can resist a man’s
love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money, but
they cannot resist a man’s tongue when he knows how to talk to them.
After dinner, while the favourable impression which he had produced on
us was still vivid in our minds, the Count modestly withdrew to read in
the library.
Laura proposed a stroll in the grounds to enjoy the close of the long
evening. It was necessary in common politeness to ask Madame Fosco
to join us, but this time she had apparently received her orders
beforehand, and she begged we would kindly excuse her. “The Count will
probably want a fresh supply of cigarettes,” she remarked by way of
apology, “and nobody can make them to his satisfaction but myself.” Her
cold blue eyes almost warmed as she spoke the words—she looked actually
proud of being the officiating medium through which her lord and master
composed himself with tobacco-smoke!
Laura and I went out together alone.
It was a misty, heavy evening. There was a sense of blight in the air;
the flowers were drooping in the garden, and the ground was parched and
dewless. The western heaven, as we saw it over the quiet trees, was of
a pale yellow hue, and the sun was setting faintly in a haze. Coming
rain seemed near—it would fall probably with the fall of night.
“Which way shall we go?” I asked
“Towards the lake, Marian, if you like,” she answered.
“You seem unaccountably fond, Laura, of that dismal lake.”
“No, not of the lake but of the scenery about it. The sand and heath
and the fir-trees are the only objects I can discover, in all this
large place, to remind me of Limmeridge. But we will walk in some other
direction if you prefer it.”
“I have no favourite walks at Blackwater Park, my love. One is the same
as another to me. Let us go to the lake—we may find it cooler in the
open space than we find it here.”
We walked through the shadowy plantation in silence. The heaviness in
the evening air oppressed us both, and when we reached the boat-house
we were glad to sit down and rest inside.
A white fog hung low over the lake. The dense brown line of the trees
on the opposite bank appeared above it, like a dwarf forest floating
in the sky. The sandy ground, shelving downward from where we sat, was
lost mysteriously in the outward layers of the fog. The silence was
horrible. No rustling of the leaves—no bird’s note in the wood—no cry
of water-fowl from the pools of the hidden lake. Even the croaking of
the frogs had ceased to-night.
“It is very desolate and gloomy,” said Laura. “But we can be more alone
here than anywhere else.”
She spoke quietly and looked at the wilderness of sand and mist with
steady, thoughtful eyes. I could see that her mind was too much
occupied to feel the dreary impressions from without which had fastened
themselves already on mine.
“I promised, Marian, to tell you the truth about my married life,
instead of leaving you any longer to guess it for yourself,” she began.
“That secret is the first I have ever had from you, love, and I am
determined it shall be the last. I was silent, as you know, for your
sake—and perhaps a little for my own sake as well. It is very hard for
a woman to confess that the man to whom she has given her whole life is
the man of all others who cares least for the gift. If you were married
yourself, Marian—and especially if you were happily married—you would
feel for me as no single woman CAN feel, however kind and true she may
be.”
What answer could I make? I could only take her hand and look at her
with my whole heart as well as my eyes would let me.
“How often,” she went on, “I have heard you laughing over what you used
to call your ‘poverty!’ how often you have made me mock-speeches of
congratulation on my wealth! Oh, Marian, never laugh again. Thank God
for your poverty—it has made you your own mistress, and has saved you
from the lot that has fallen on ME.”
A sad beginning on the lips of a young wife!—sad in its quiet
plain-spoken truth. The few days we had all passed together at
Blackwater Park had been many enough to show me—to show any one—what
her husband had married her for.
“You shall not be distressed,” she said, “by hearing how soon my
disappointments and my trials began—or even by knowing what they
were. It is bad enough to have them on my memory. If I tell you how
he received the first and last attempt at remonstrance that I ever
made, you will know how he has always treated me, as well as if I
had described it in so many words. It was one day at Rome when we
had ridden out together to the tomb of Cecilia Metella. The sky was
calm and lovely, and the grand old ruin looked beautiful, and the
remembrance that a husband’s love had raised it in the old time to a
wife’s memory, made me feel more tenderly and more anxiously towards my
husband than I had ever felt yet. ‘Would you build such a tomb for ME,
Percival?’ I asked him. ‘You said you loved me dearly before we were
married, and yet, since that time——’ I could get no farther. Marian!
he was not even looking at me! I pulled down my veil, thinking it best
not to let him see that the tears were in my eyes. I fancied he had
not paid any attention to me, but he had. He said, ‘Come away,’ and
laughed to himself as he helped me on to my horse. He mounted his own
horse and laughed again as we rode away. ‘If I do build you a tomb,’ he
said, ‘it will be done with your own money. I wonder whether Cecilia
Metella had a fortune and paid for hers.’ I made no reply—how could I,
when I was crying behind my veil? ‘Ah, you light-complexioned women are
all sulky,’ he said. ‘What do you want? compliments and soft speeches?
Well! I’m in a good humour this morning. Consider the compliments paid
and the speeches said.’ Men little know when they say hard things to us
how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us. It would have
been better for me if I had gone on crying, but his contempt dried up
my tears and hardened my heart. From that time, Marian, I never checked
myself again in thinking of Walter Hartright. I let the memory of those
happy days, when we were so fond of each other in secret, come back
and comfort me. What else had I to look to for consolation? If we had
been together you would have helped me to better things. I know it was
wrong, darling, but tell me if I was wrong without any excuse.”
I was obliged to turn my face from her. “Don’t ask me!” I said. “Have I
suffered as you have suffered? What right have I to decide?”
“I used to think of him,” she pursued, dropping her voice and moving
closer to me, “I used to think of him when Percival left me alone at
night to go among the Opera people. I used to fancy what I might have
been if it had pleased God to bless me with poverty, and if I had been
his wife. I used to see myself in my neat cheap gown, sitting at home
and waiting for him while he was earning our bread—sitting at home and
working for him and loving him all the better because I had to work
for him—seeing him come in tired and taking off his hat and coat for
him, and, Marian, pleasing him with little dishes at dinner that I had
learnt to make for his sake. Oh! I hope he is never lonely enough and
sad enough to think of me and see me as I have thought of HIM and see
HIM!”
As she said those melancholy words, all the lost tenderness returned
to her voice, and all the lost beauty trembled back into her face. Her
eyes rested as lovingly on the blighted, solitary, ill-omened view
before us, as if they saw the friendly hills of Cumberland in the dim
and threatening sky.
“Don’t speak of Walter any more,” I said, as soon as I could control
myself. “Oh, Laura, spare us both the wretchedness of talking of him
now!”
She roused herself, and looked at me tenderly.
“I would rather be silent about him for ever,” she answered, “than
cause you a moment’s pain.”
“It is in your interests,” I pleaded; “it is for your sake that I
speak. If your husband heard you——”
“It would not surprise him if he did hear me.”
She made that strange reply with a weary calmness and coldness. The
change in her manner, when she gave the answer, startled me almost as
much as the answer itself.
“Not surprise him!” I repeated. “Laura! remember what you are
saying—you frighten me!”
“It is true,” she said; “it is what I wanted to tell you to-day, when
we were talking in your room. My only secret when I opened my heart to
him at Limmeridge was a harmless secret, Marian—you said so yourself.
The name was all I kept from him, and he has discovered it.”
I heard her, but I could say nothing. Her last words had killed the
little hope that still lived in me.
“It happened at Rome,” she went on, as wearily calm and cold as ever.
“We were at a little party given to the English by some friends of Sir
Percival’s—Mr. and Mrs. Markland. Mrs. Markland had the reputation
of sketching very beautifully, and some of the guests prevailed on
her to show us her drawings. We all admired them, but something I
said attracted her attention particularly to me. ‘Surely you draw
yourself?’ she asked. ‘I used to draw a little once,’ I answered, ‘but
I have given it up.’ ‘If you have once drawn,’ she said, ‘you may take
to it again one of these days, and if you do, I wish you would let
me recommend you a master.’ I said nothing—you know why, Marian—and
tried to change the conversation. But Mrs. Markland persisted. ‘I
have had all sorts of teachers,’ she went on, ‘but the best of all,
the most intelligent and the most attentive, was a Mr. Hartright. If
you ever take up your drawing again, do try him as a master. He is
a young man—modest and gentlemanlike—I am sure you will like him.’
Think of those words being spoken to me publicly, in the presence
of strangers—strangers who had been invited to meet the bride and
bridegroom! I did all I could to control myself—I said nothing, and
looked down close at the drawings. When I ventured to raise my head
again, my eyes and my husband’s eyes met, and I knew, by his look,
that my face had betrayed me. ‘We will see about Mr. Hartright,’ he
said, looking at me all the time, ‘when we get back to England. I agree
with you, Mrs. Markland—I think Lady Glyde is sure to like him.’ He
laid an emphasis on the last words which made my cheeks burn, and set
my heart beating as if it would stifle me. Nothing more was said. We
came away early. He was silent in the carriage driving back to the
hotel. He helped me out, and followed me upstairs as usual. But the
moment we were in the drawing-room, he locked the door, pushed me down
into a chair, and stood over me with his hands on my shoulders. ‘Ever
since that morning when you made your audacious confession to me at
Limmeridge,’ he said, ‘I have wanted to find out the man, and I found
him in your face to-night. Your drawing-master was the man, and his
name is Hartright. You shall repent it, and he shall repent it, to the
last hour of your lives. Now go to bed and dream of him if you like,
with the marks of my horsewhip on his shoulders.’ Whenever he is angry
with me now he refers to what I acknowledged to him in your presence
with a sneer or a threat. I have no power to prevent him from putting
his own horrible construction on the confidence I placed in him. I have
no influence to make him believe me, or to keep him silent. You looked
surprised to-day when you heard him tell me that I had made a virtue
of necessity in marrying him. You will not be surprised again when you
hear him repeat it, the next time he is out of temper——Oh, Marian!
don’t! don’t! you hurt me!”
I had caught her in my arms, and the sting and torment of my remorse
had closed them round her like a vice. Yes! my remorse. The white
despair of Walter’s face, when my cruel words struck him to the heart
in the summer-house at Limmeridge, rose before me in mute, unendurable
reproach. My hand had pointed the way which led the man my sister
loved, step by step, far from his country and his friends. Between
those two young hearts I had stood, to sunder them for ever, the one
from the other, and his life and her life lay wasted before me alike
in witness of the deed. I had done this, and done it for Sir Percival
Glyde.
For Sir Percival Glyde.
I heard her speaking, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she was
comforting me—I, who deserved nothing but the reproach of her silence!
How long it was before I mastered the absorbing misery of my own
thoughts, I cannot tell. I was first conscious that she was kissing me,
and then my eyes seemed to wake on a sudden to their sense of outward
things, and I knew that I was looking mechanically straight before me
at the prospect of the lake.
“It is late,” I heard her whisper. “It will be dark in the plantation.”
She shook my arm and repeated, “Marian! it will be dark in the
plantation.”
“Give me a minute longer,” I said—“a minute, to get better in.”
I was afraid to trust myself to look at her yet, and I kept my eyes
fixed on the view.
It WAS late. The dense brown line of trees in the sky had faded in the
gathering darkness to the faint resemblance of a long wreath of smoke.
The mist over the lake below had stealthily enlarged, and advanced on
us. The silence was as breathless as ever, but the horror of it had
gone, and the solemn mystery of its stillness was all that remained.
“We are far from the house,” she whispered. “Let us go back.”
She stopped suddenly, and turned her face from me towards the entrance
of the boat-house.
“Marian!” she said, trembling violently. “Do you see nothing? Look!”
“Where?”
“Down there, below us.”
She pointed. My eyes followed her hand, and I saw it too.
A living figure was moving over the waste of heath in the distance.
It crossed our range of view from the boat-house, and passed darkly
along the outer edge of the mist. It stopped far off, in front of
us—waited—and passed on; moving slowly, with the white cloud of mist
behind it and above it—slowly, slowly, till it glided by the edge of
the boat-house, and we saw it no more.
We were both unnerved by what had passed between us that evening. Some
minutes elapsed before Laura would venture into the plantation, and
before I could make up my mind to lead her back to the house.
“Was it a man or a woman?” she asked in a whisper, as we moved at last
into the dark dampness of the outer air.
“I am not certain.”
“Which do you think?”
“It looked like a woman.”
“I was afraid it was a man in a long cloak.”
“It may be a man. In this dim light it is not possible to be certain.”
“Wait, Marian! I’m frightened—I don’t see the path. Suppose the figure
should follow us?”
“Not at all likely, Laura. There is really nothing to be alarmed about.
The shores of the lake are not far from the village, and they are free
to any one to walk on by day or night. It is only wonderful we have
seen no living creature there before.”
We were now in the plantation. It was very dark—so dark, that we found
some difficulty in keeping the path. I gave Laura my arm, and we walked
as fast as we could on our way back.
Before we were half-way through she stopped, and forced me to stop with
her. She was listening.
“Hush,” she whispered. “I hear something behind us.”
“Dead leaves,” I said to cheer her, “or a twig blown off the trees.”
“It is summer time, Marian, and there is not a breath of wind. Listen!”