I
When I closed the last leaf of the Count’s manuscript the half-hour
during which I had engaged to remain at Forest Road had expired.
Monsieur Rubelle looked at his watch and bowed. I rose immediately,
and left the agent in possession of the empty house. I never saw him
again—I never heard more of him or of his wife. Out of the dark byways
of villainy and deceit they had crawled across our path—into the same
byways they crawled back secretly and were lost.
In a quarter of an hour after leaving Forest Road I was at home again.
But few words sufficed to tell Laura and Marian how my desperate
venture had ended, and what the next event in our lives was likely to
be. I left all details to be described later in the day, and hastened
back to St. John’s Wood, to see the person of whom Count Fosco had
ordered the fly, when he went to meet Laura at the station.
The address in my possession led me to some “livery stables,” about a
quarter of a mile distant from Forest Road. The proprietor proved to be
a civil and respectable man. When I explained that an important family
matter obliged me to ask him to refer to his books for the purpose of
ascertaining a date with which the record of his business transactions
might supply me, he offered no objection to granting my request. The
book was produced, and there, under the date of “July 26th, 1850,” the
order was entered in these words—
“Brougham to Count Fosco, 5 Forest Road. Two o’clock. (John Owen).”
I found on inquiry that the name of “John Owen,” attached to the entry,
referred to the man who had been employed to drive the fly. He was then
at work in the stable-yard, and was sent for to see me at my request.
“Do you remember driving a gentleman, in the month of July last, from
Number Five Forest Road to the Waterloo Bridge station?” I asked.
“Well, sir,” said the man, “I can’t exactly say I do.”
“Perhaps you remember the gentleman himself? Can you call to mind
driving a foreigner last summer—a tall gentleman and remarkably fat?”
The man’s face brightened directly. “I remember him, sir! The fattest
gentleman as ever I see, and the heaviest customer as ever I drove.
Yes, yes—I call him to mind, sir! We DID go to the station, and it WAS
from Forest Road. There was a parrot, or summat like it, screeching
in the window. The gentleman was in a mortal hurry about the lady’s
luggage, and he gave me a handsome present for looking sharp and
getting the boxes.”
Getting the boxes! I recollected immediately that Laura’s own account
of herself on her arrival in London described her luggage as being
collected for her by some person whom Count Fosco brought with him to
the station. This was the man.
“Did you see the lady?” I asked. “What did she look like? Was she young
or old?”
“Well, sir, what with the hurry and the crowd of people pushing about,
I can’t rightly say what the lady looked like. I can’t call nothing to
mind about her that I know of excepting her name.”
“You remember her name?”
“Yes, sir. Her name was Lady Glyde.”
“How do you come to remember that, when you have forgotten what she
looked like?”
The man smiled, and shifted his feet in some little embarrassment.
“Why, to tell you the truth, sir,” he said, “I hadn’t been long married
at that time, and my wife’s name, before she changed it for mine,
was the same as the lady’s—meaning the name of Glyde, sir. The lady
mentioned it herself. ‘Is your name on your boxes, ma’am?’ says I.
‘Yes,’ says she, ‘my name is on my luggage—it is Lady Glyde.’ ‘Come!’ I
says to myself, ‘I’ve a bad head for gentlefolks’ names in general—but
THIS one comes like an old friend, at any rate.’ I can’t say nothing
about the time, sir, it might be nigh on a year ago, or it mightn’t.
But I can swear to the stout gentleman, and swear to the lady’s name.”
There was no need that he should remember the time—the date was
positively established by his master’s order-book. I felt at once that
the means were now in my power of striking down the whole conspiracy at
a blow with the irresistible weapon of plain fact. Without a moment’s
hesitation, I took the proprietor of the livery stables aside and told
him what the real importance was of the evidence of his order-book and
the evidence of his driver. An arrangement to compensate him for the
temporary loss of the man’s services was easily made, and a copy of the
entry in the book was taken by myself, and certified as true by the
master’s own signature. I left the livery stables, having settled that
John Owen was to hold himself at my disposal for the next three days,
or for a longer period if necessity required it.
I now had in my possession all the papers that I wanted—the district
registrar’s own copy of the certificate of death, and Sir Percival’s
dated letter to the Count, being safe in my pocket-book.
With this written evidence about me, and with the coachman’s answers
fresh in my memory, I next turned my steps, for the first time since
the beginning of all my inquiries, in the direction of Mr. Kyrle’s
office. One of my objects in paying him this second visit was,
necessarily, to tell him what I had done. The other was to warn him
of my resolution to take my wife to Limmeridge the next morning, and
to have her publicly received and recognised in her uncle’s house. I
left it to Mr. Kyrle to decide under these circumstances, and in Mr.
Gilmore’s absence, whether he was or was not bound, as the family
solicitor, to be present on that occasion in the family interests.
I will say nothing of Mr. Kyrle’s amazement, or of the terms in which
he expressed his opinion of my conduct from the first stage of the
investigation to the last. It is only necessary to mention that he at
once decided on accompanying us to Cumberland.
We started the next morning by the early train. Laura, Marian, Mr.
Kyrle, and myself in one carriage, and John Owen, with a clerk from Mr.
Kyrle’s office, occupying places in another. On reaching the Limmeridge
station we went first to the farmhouse at Todd’s Corner. It was my
firm determination that Laura should not enter her uncle’s house till
she appeared there publicly recognised as his niece. I left Marian to
settle the question of accommodation with Mrs. Todd, as soon as the
good woman had recovered from the bewilderment of hearing what our
errand was in Cumberland, and I arranged with her husband that John
Owen was to be committed to the ready hospitality of the farm-servants.
These preliminaries completed, Mr. Kyrle and I set forth together for
Limmeridge House.
I cannot write at any length of our interview with Mr. Fairlie, for I
cannot recall it to mind without feelings of impatience and contempt,
which make the scene, even in remembrance only, utterly repulsive to
me. I prefer to record simply that I carried my point. Mr. Fairlie
attempted to treat us on his customary plan. We passed without notice
his polite insolence at the outset of the interview. We heard without
sympathy the protestations with which he tried next to persuade us that
the disclosure of the conspiracy had overwhelmed him. He absolutely
whined and whimpered at last like a fretful child. “How was he to know
that his niece was alive when he was told that she was dead? He would
welcome dear Laura with pleasure, if we would only allow him time to
recover. Did we think he looked as if he wanted hurrying into his
grave? No. Then, why hurry him?” He reiterated these remonstrances at
every available opportunity, until I checked them once for all, by
placing him firmly between two inevitable alternatives. I gave him
his choice between doing his niece justice on my terms, or facing the
consequence of a public assertion of her existence in a court of law.
Mr. Kyrle, to whom he turned for help, told him plainly that he must
decide the question then and there. Characteristically choosing the
alternative which promised soonest to release him from all personal
anxiety, he announced with a sudden outburst of energy, that he was not
strong enough to bear any more bullying, and that we might do as we
pleased.
Mr. Kyrle and I at once went downstairs, and agreed upon a form of
letter which was to be sent round to the tenants who had attended the
false funeral, summoning them, in Mr. Fairlie’s name, to assemble
in Limmeridge House on the next day but one. An order referring to
the same date was also written, directing a statuary in Carlisle
to send a man to Limmeridge churchyard for the purpose of erasing
an inscription—Mr. Kyrle, who had arranged to sleep in the house,
undertaking that Mr. Fairlie should hear these letters read to him, and
should sign them with his own hand.
I occupied the interval day at the farm in writing a plain narrative
of the conspiracy, and in adding to it a statement of the practical
contradiction which facts offered to the assertion of Laura’s death.
This I submitted to Mr. Kyrle before I read it the next day to the
assembled tenants. We also arranged the form in which the evidence
should be presented at the close of the reading. After these matters
were settled, Mr. Kyrle endeavoured to turn the conversation next
to Laura’s affairs. Knowing, and desiring to know nothing of those
affairs, and doubting whether he would approve, as a man of business,
of my conduct in relation to my wife’s life-interest in the legacy left
to Madame Fosco, I begged Mr. Kyrle to excuse me if I abstained from
discussing the subject. It was connected, as I could truly tell him,
with those sorrows and troubles of the past which we never referred to
among ourselves, and which we instinctively shrank from discussing with
others.
My last labour, as the evening approached, was to obtain “The Narrative
of the Tombstone,” by taking a copy of the false inscription on the
grave before it was erased.
The day came—the day when Laura once more entered the familiar
breakfast-room at Limmeridge House. All the persons assembled rose
from their seats as Marian and I led her in. A perceptible shock of
surprise, an audible murmur of interest ran through them, at the sight
of her face. Mr. Fairlie was present (by my express stipulation),
with Mr. Kyrle by his side. His valet stood behind him with a
smelling-bottle ready in one hand, and a white handkerchief, saturated
with eau-de-Cologne, in the other.
I opened the proceedings by publicly appealing to Mr. Fairlie to say
whether I appeared there with his authority and under his express
sanction. He extended an arm, on either side, to Mr. Kyrle and to his
valet—was by them assisted to stand on his legs, and then expressed
himself in these terms: “Allow me to present Mr. Hartright. I am as
great an invalid as ever, and he is so very obliging as to speak for
me. The subject is dreadfully embarrassing. Please hear him, and don’t
make a noise!” With those words he slowly sank back again into the
chair, and took refuge in his scented pocket-handkerchief.
The disclosure of the conspiracy followed, after I had offered my
preliminary explanation, first of all, in the fewest and the plainest
words. I was there present (I informed my hearers) to declare, first,
that my wife, then sitting by me, was the daughter of the late Mr.
Philip Fairlie; secondly, to prove by positive facts, that the funeral
which they had attended in Limmeridge churchyard was the funeral of
another woman; thirdly, to give them a plain account of how it had all
happened. Without further preface, I at once read the narrative of the
conspiracy, describing it in clear outline, and dwelling only upon the
pecuniary motive for it, in order to avoid complicating my statement by
unnecessary reference to Sir Percival’s secret. This done, I reminded
my audience of the date on the inscription in the churchyard (the
25th), and confirmed its correctness by producing the certificate of
death. I then read them Sir Percival’s letter of the 25th, announcing
his wife’s intended journey from Hampshire to London on the 26th. I
next showed that she had taken that journey, by the personal testimony
of the driver of the fly, and I proved that she had performed it on
the appointed day, by the order-book at the livery stables. Marian
then added her own statement of the meeting between Laura and herself
at the mad-house, and of her sister’s escape. After which I closed the
proceedings by informing the persons present of Sir Percival’s death
and of my marriage.
Mr. Kyrle rose when I resumed my seat, and declared, as the legal
adviser of the family, that my case was proved by the plainest evidence
he had ever heard in his life. As he spoke those words, I put my arm
round Laura, and raised her so that she was plainly visible to every
one in the room. “Are you all of the same opinion?” I asked, advancing
towards them a few steps, and pointing to my wife.
The effect of the question was electrical. Far down at the lower end of
the room one of the oldest tenants on the estate started to his feet,
and led the rest with him in an instant. I see the man now, with his
honest brown face and his iron-grey hair, mounted on the window-seat,
waving his heavy riding-whip over his head, and leading the cheers.
“There she is, alive and hearty—God bless her! Gi’ it tongue, lads! Gi’
it tongue!” The shout that answered him, reiterated again and again,
was the sweetest music I ever heard. The labourers in the village and
the boys from the school, assembled on the lawn, caught up the cheering
and echoed it back on us. The farmers’ wives clustered round Laura, and
struggled which should be first to shake hands with her, and to implore
her, with the tears pouring over their own cheeks, to bear up bravely
and not to cry. She was so completely overwhelmed, that I was obliged
to take her from them, and carry her to the door. There I gave her into
Marian’s care—Marian, who had never failed us yet, whose courageous
self-control did not fail us now. Left by myself at the door, I invited
all the persons present (after thanking them in Laura’s name and mine)
to follow me to the churchyard, and see the false inscription struck
off the tombstone with their own eyes.
They all left the house, and all joined the throng of villagers
collected round the grave, where the statuary’s man was waiting for us.
In a breathless silence, the first sharp stroke of the steel sounded
on the marble. Not a voice was heard—not a soul moved, till those
three words, “Laura, Lady Glyde,” had vanished from sight. Then there
was a great heave of relief among the crowd, as if they felt that the
last fetters of the conspiracy had been struck off Laura herself, and
the assembly slowly withdrew. It was late in the day before the whole
inscription was erased. One line only was afterwards engraved in its
place: “Anne Catherick, July 25th, 1850.”
I returned to Limmeridge House early enough in the evening to take
leave of Mr. Kyrle. He and his clerk, and the driver of the fly, went
back to London by the night train. On their departure an insolent
message was delivered to me from Mr. Fairlie—who had been carried from
the room in a shattered condition, when the first outbreak of cheering
answered my appeal to the tenantry. The message conveyed to us “Mr.
Fairlie’s best congratulations,” and requested to know whether “we
contemplated stopping in the house.” I sent back word that the only
object for which we had entered his doors was accomplished—that I
contemplated stopping in no man’s house but my own—and that Mr. Fairlie
need not entertain the slightest apprehension of ever seeing us or
hearing from us again. We went back to our friends at the farm to rest
that night, and the next morning—escorted to the station, with the
heartiest enthusiasm and good will, by the whole village and by all the
farmers in the neighbourhood—we returned to London.
As our view of the Cumberland hills faded in the distance, I thought
of the first disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle
that was now past and over had been pursued. It was strange to look
back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of
assistance had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me
to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what
would have been the result? The gain (on Mr. Kyrle’s own showing) would
have been more than doubtful—the loss, judging by the plain test of
events as they had really happened, certain. The law would never have
obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The law would never have
made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count.