June 19th.—The events of yesterday warned me to be ready, sooner or
later, to meet the worst. To-day is not yet at an end, and the worst
has come.
Judging by the closest calculation of time that Laura and I could
make, we arrived at the conclusion that Anne Catherick must have
appeared at the boat-house at half-past two o’clock on the afternoon
of yesterday. I accordingly arranged that Laura should just show
herself at the luncheon-table to-day, and should then slip out at the
first opportunity, leaving me behind to preserve appearances, and to
follow her as soon as I could safely do so. This mode of proceeding,
if no obstacles occurred to thwart us, would enable her to be at the
boat-house before half-past two, and (when I left the table, in my
turn) would take me to a safe position in the plantation before three.
The change in the weather, which last night’s wind warned us to expect,
came with the morning. It was raining heavily when I got up, and it
continued to rain until twelve o’clock—when the clouds dispersed, the
blue sky appeared, and the sun shone again with the bright promise of a
fine afternoon.
My anxiety to know how Sir Percival and the Count would occupy the
early part of the day was by no means set at rest, so far as Sir
Percival was concerned, by his leaving us immediately after breakfast,
and going out by himself, in spite of the rain. He neither told us
where he was going nor when we might expect him back. We saw him
pass the breakfast-room window hastily, with his high boots and his
waterproof coat on—and that was all.
The Count passed the morning quietly indoors, some part of it in the
library, some part in the drawing-room, playing odds and ends of music
on the piano, and humming to himself. Judging by appearances, the
sentimental side of his character was persistently inclined to betray
itself still. He was silent and sensitive, and ready to sigh and
languish ponderously (as only fat men CAN sigh and languish) on the
smallest provocation.
Luncheon-time came and Sir Percival did not return. The Count took his
friend’s place at the table, plaintively devoured the greater part of a
fruit tart, submerged under a whole jugful of cream, and explained the
full merit of the achievement to us as soon as he had done. “A taste
for sweets,” he said in his softest tones and his tenderest manner,
“is the innocent taste of women and children. I love to share it with
them—it is another bond, dear ladies, between you and me.”
Laura left the table in ten minutes’ time. I was sorely tempted to
accompany her. But if we had both gone out together we must have
excited suspicion, and worse still, if we allowed Anne Catherick to
see Laura, accompanied by a second person who was a stranger to her,
we should in all probability forfeit her confidence from that moment,
never to regain it again.
I waited, therefore, as patiently as I could, until the servant came in
to clear the table. When I quitted the room, there were no signs, in
the house or out of it, of Sir Percival’s return. I left the Count with
a piece of sugar between his lips, and the vicious cockatoo scrambling
up his waistcoat to get at it, while Madame Fosco, sitting opposite
to her husband, watched the proceedings of his bird and himself as
attentively as if she had never seen anything of the sort before in her
life. On my way to the plantation I kept carefully beyond the range of
view from the luncheon-room window. Nobody saw me and nobody followed
me. It was then a quarter to three o’clock by my watch.
Once among the trees I walked rapidly, until I had advanced more than
half-way through the plantation. At that point I slackened my pace and
proceeded cautiously, but I saw no one, and heard no voices. By little
and little I came within view of the back of the boat-house—stopped
and listened—then went on, till I was close behind it, and must have
heard any persons who were talking inside. Still the silence was
unbroken—still far and near no sign of a living creature appeared
anywhere.
After skirting round by the back of the building, first on one side and
then on the other, and making no discoveries, I ventured in front of
it, and fairly looked in. The place was empty.
I called, “Laura!”—at first softly, then louder and louder. No one
answered and no one appeared. For all that I could see and hear, the
only human creature in the neighbourhood of the lake and the plantation
was myself.
My heart began to beat violently, but I kept my resolution, and
searched, first the boat-house and then the ground in front of it, for
any signs which might show me whether Laura had really reached the
place or not. No mark of her presence appeared inside the building, but
I found traces of her outside it, in footsteps on the sand.
I detected the footsteps of two persons—large footsteps like a man’s,
and small footsteps, which, by putting my own feet into them and
testing their size in that manner, I felt certain were Laura’s. The
ground was confusedly marked in this way just before the boat-house.
Close against one side of it, under shelter of the projecting roof, I
discovered a little hole in the sand—a hole artificially made, beyond a
doubt. I just noticed it, and then turned away immediately to trace the
footsteps as far as I could, and to follow the direction in which they
might lead me.
They led me, starting from the left-hand side of the boat-house, along
the edge of the trees, a distance, I should think, of between two and
three hundred yards, and then the sandy ground showed no further trace
of them. Feeling that the persons whose course I was tracking must
necessarily have entered the plantation at this point, I entered it
too. At first I could find no path, but I discovered one afterwards,
just faintly traced among the trees, and followed it. It took me, for
some distance, in the direction of the village, until I stopped at a
point where another foot-track crossed it. The brambles grew thickly
on either side of this second path. I stood looking down it, uncertain
which way to take next, and while I looked I saw on one thorny branch
some fragments of fringe from a woman’s shawl. A closer examination of
the fringe satisfied me that it had been torn from a shawl of Laura’s,
and I instantly followed the second path. It brought me out at last, to
my great relief, at the back of the house. I say to my great relief,
because I inferred that Laura must, for some unknown reason, have
returned before me by this roundabout way. I went in by the court-yard
and the offices. The first person whom I met in crossing the servants’
hall was Mrs. Michelson, the housekeeper.
“Do you know,” I asked, “whether Lady Glyde has come in from her walk
or not?”
“My lady came in a little while ago with Sir Percival,” answered the
housekeeper. “I am afraid, Miss Halcombe, something very distressing
has happened.”
My heart sank within me. “You don’t mean an accident?” I said faintly.
“No, no—thank God, no accident. But my lady ran upstairs to her own
room in tears, and Sir Percival has ordered me to give Fanny warning to
leave in an hour’s time.”
Fanny was Laura’s maid—a good affectionate girl who had been with her
for years—the only person in the house whose fidelity and devotion we
could both depend upon.
“Where is Fanny?” I inquired.
“In my room, Miss Halcombe. The young woman is quite overcome, and I
told her to sit down and try to recover herself.”
I went to Mrs. Michelson’s room, and found Fanny in a corner, with her
box by her side, crying bitterly.
She could give me no explanation whatever of her sudden dismissal. Sir
Percival had ordered that she should have a month’s wages, in place of
a month’s warning, and go. No reason had been assigned—no objection
had been made to her conduct. She had been forbidden to appeal to her
mistress, forbidden even to see her for a moment to say good-bye. She
was to go without explanations or farewells, and to go at once.
After soothing the poor girl by a few friendly words, I asked where she
proposed to sleep that night. She replied that she thought of going to
the little inn in the village, the landlady of which was a respectable
woman, known to the servants at Blackwater Park. The next morning, by
leaving early, she might get back to her friends in Cumberland without
stopping in London, where she was a total stranger.
I felt directly that Fanny’s departure offered us a safe means of
communication with London and with Limmeridge House, of which it might
be very important to avail ourselves. Accordingly, I told her that she
might expect to hear from her mistress or from me in the course of the
evening, and that she might depend on our both doing all that lay in
our power to help her, under the trial of leaving us for the present.
Those words said, I shook hands with her and went upstairs.
The door which led to Laura’s room was the door of an ante-chamber
opening on to the passage. When I tried it, it was bolted on the inside.
I knocked, and the door was opened by the same heavy, overgrown
housemaid whose lumpish insensibility had tried my patience so severely
on the day when I found the wounded dog.
I had, since that time, discovered that her name was Margaret Porcher,
and that she was the most awkward, slatternly, and obstinate servant in
the house.
On opening the door she instantly stepped out to the threshold, and
stood grinning at me in stolid silence.
“Why do you stand there?” I said. “Don’t you see that I want to come
in?”
“Ah, but you mustn’t come in,” was the answer, with another and a
broader grin still.
“How dare you talk to me in that way? Stand back instantly!”
She stretched out a great red hand and arm on each side of her, so as
to bar the doorway, and slowly nodded her addle head at me.
“Master’s orders,” she said, and nodded again.
I had need of all my self-control to warn me against contesting the
matter with HER, and to remind me that the next words I had to say must
be addressed to her master. I turned my back on her, and instantly
went downstairs to find him. My resolution to keep my temper under all
the irritations that Sir Percival could offer was, by this time, as
completely forgotten—I say so to my shame—as if I had never made it. It
did me good, after all I had suffered and suppressed in that house—it
actually did me good to feel how angry I was.
The drawing-room and the breakfast-room were both empty. I went on to
the library, and there I found Sir Percival, the Count, and Madame
Fosco. They were all three standing up, close together, and Sir
Percival had a little slip of paper in his hand. As I opened the door I
heard the Count say to him, “No—a thousand times over, no.”