The Woman in White
the time I had waited for. Now that medical attendance was no longer
indispensable, I played the first move in the game by asserting myself
against the doctor. He was one among many witnesses in my way whom it
was necessary to remove. A lively altercation between us (in which
Percival, previously instructed by me, refused to interfere) served the
purpose in view. I descended on the miserable man in an irresistible
avalanche of indignation, and swept him from the house.
The servants were the next encumbrances to get rid of. Again
I instructed Percival (whose moral courage required perpetual
stimulants), and Mrs. Michelson was amazed, one day, by hearing from
her master that the establishment was to be broken up. We cleared the
house of all the servants but one, who was kept for domestic purposes,
and whose lumpish stupidity we could trust to make no embarrassing
discoveries. When they were gone, nothing remained but to relieve
ourselves of Mrs. Michelson—a result which was easily achieved by
sending this amiable lady to find lodgings for her mistress at the
sea-side.
The circumstances were now exactly what they were required to be. Lady
Glyde was confined to her room by nervous illness, and the lumpish
housemaid (I forget her name) was shut up there at night in attendance
on her mistress. Marian, though fast recovering, still kept her bed,
with Mrs. Rubelle for nurse. No other living creatures but my wife,
myself, and Percival were in the house. With all the chances thus in
our favour I confronted the next emergency, and played the second move
in the game.
The object of the second move was to induce Lady Glyde to leave
Blackwater unaccompanied by her sister. Unless we could persuade her
that Marian had gone on to Cumberland first, there was no chance of
removing her, of her own free will, from the house. To produce this
necessary operation in her mind, we concealed our interesting invalid
in one of the uninhabited bedrooms at Blackwater. At the dead of
night Madame Fosco, Madame Rubelle, and myself (Percival not being
cool enough to be trusted) accomplished the concealment. The scene
was picturesque, mysterious, dramatic in the highest degree. By my
directions the bed had been made, in the morning, on a strong movable
framework of wood. We had only to lift the framework gently at the
head and foot, and to transport our patient where we pleased, without
disturbing herself or her bed. No chemical assistance was needed or
used in this case. Our interesting Marian lay in the deep repose of
convalescence. We placed the candles and opened the doors beforehand.
I, in right of my great personal strength, took the head of the
framework—my wife and Madame Rubelle took the foot. I bore my share
of that inestimably precious burden with a manly tenderness, with a
fatherly care. Where is the modern Rembrandt who could depict our
midnight procession? Alas for the Arts! alas for this most pictorial of
subjects! The modern Rembrandt is nowhere to be found.
The next morning my wife and I started for London, leaving Marian
secluded, in the uninhabited middle of the house, under care of Madame
Rubelle, who kindly consented to imprison herself with her patient for
two or three days. Before taking our departure I gave Percival Mr.
Fairlie’s letter of invitation to his niece (instructing her to sleep
on the journey to Cumberland at her aunt’s house), with directions to
show it to Lady Glyde on hearing from me. I also obtained from him the
address of the Asylum in which Anne Catherick had been confined, and a
letter to the proprietor, announcing to that gentleman the return of
his runaway patient to medical care.
I had arranged, at my last visit to the metropolis, to have our modest
domestic establishment ready to receive us when we arrived in London
by the early train. In consequence of this wise precaution, we were
enabled that same day to play the third move in the game—the getting
possession of Anne Catherick.
Dates are of importance here. I combine in myself the opposite
characteristics of a Man of Sentiment and a Man of Business. I have all
the dates at my fingers’ ends.
On Wednesday, the 24th of July 1850, I sent my wife in a cab to clear
Mrs. Clements out of the way, in the first place. A supposed message
from Lady Glyde in London was sufficient to obtain this result. Mrs.
Clements was taken away in the cab, and was left in the cab, while my
wife (on pretence of purchasing something at a shop) gave her the slip,
and returned to receive her expected visitor at our house in St. John’s
Wood. It is hardly necessary to add that the visitor had been described
to the servants as “Lady Glyde.”
In the meanwhile I had followed in another cab, with a note for Anne
Catherick, merely mentioning that Lady Glyde intended to keep Mrs.
Clements to spend the day with her, and that she was to join them under
care of the good gentleman waiting outside, who had already saved her
from discovery in Hampshire by Sir Percival. The “good gentleman”
sent in this note by a street boy, and paused for results a door or
two farther on. At the moment when Anne appeared at the house door
and closed it this excellent man had the cab door open ready for her,
absorbed her into the vehicle, and drove off.
(Pass me, here, one exclamation in parenthesis. How interesting this
is!)
On the way to Forest Road my companion showed no fear. I can be
paternal—no man more so—when I please, and I was intensely paternal on
this occasion. What titles I had to her confidence! I had compounded
the medicine which had done her good—I had warned her of her danger
from Sir Percival. Perhaps I trusted too implicitly to these
titles—perhaps I underrated the keenness of the lower instincts in
persons of weak intellect—it is certain that I neglected to prepare her
sufficiently for a disappointment on entering my house. When I took her
into the drawing-room—when she saw no one present but Madame Fosco,
who was a stranger to her—she exhibited the most violent agitation;
if she had scented danger in the air, as a dog scents the presence
of some creature unseen, her alarm could not have displayed itself
more suddenly and more causelessly. I interposed in vain. The fear
from which she was suffering I might have soothed, but the serious
heart-disease, under which she laboured, was beyond the reach of
all moral palliatives. To my unspeakable horror she was seized with
convulsions—a shock to the system, in her condition, which might have
laid her dead at any moment at our feet.
The nearest doctor was sent for, and was told that “Lady Glyde”
required his immediate services. To my infinite relief, he was a
capable man. I represented my visitor to him as a person of weak
intellect, and subject to delusions, and I arranged that no nurse but
my wife should watch in the sick-room. The unhappy woman was too ill,
however, to cause any anxiety about what she might say. The one dread
which now oppressed me was the dread that the false Lady Glyde might
die before the true Lady Glyde arrived in London.
I had written a note in the morning to Madame Rubelle, telling her to
join me at her husband’s house on the evening of Friday the 26th, with
another note to Percival, warning him to show his wife her uncle’s
letter of invitation, to assert that Marian had gone on before her,
and to despatch her to town by the midday train, on the 26th, also.
On reflection I had felt the necessity, in Anne Catherick’s state
of health, of precipitating events, and of having Lady Glyde at my
disposal earlier than I had originally contemplated. What fresh
directions, in the terrible uncertainty of my position, could I now
issue? I could do nothing but trust to chance and the doctor. My
emotions expressed themselves in pathetic apostrophes, which I was
just self-possessed enough to couple, in the hearing of other people,
with the name of “Lady Glyde.” In all other respects Fosco, on that
memorable day, was Fosco shrouded in total eclipse.
She passed a bad night, she awoke worn out, but later in the day she
revived amazingly. My elastic spirits revived with her. I could receive
no answers from Percival and Madame Rubelle till the morning of the
next day, the 26th. In anticipation of their following my directions,
which, accident apart, I knew they would do, I went to secure a fly to
fetch Lady Glyde from the railway, directing it to be at my house on
the 26th, at two o’clock. After seeing the order entered in the book,
I went on to arrange matters with Monsieur Rubelle. I also procured
the services of two gentlemen who could furnish me with the necessary
certificates of lunacy. One of them I knew personally—the other was
known to Monsieur Rubelle. Both were men whose vigorous minds soared
superior to narrow scruples—both were labouring under temporary
embarrassments—both believed in ME.
It was past five o’clock in the afternoon before I returned from the
performance of these duties. When I got back Anne Catherick was dead.
Dead on the 25th, and Lady Glyde was not to arrive in London till the
26th!
I was stunned. Meditate on that. Fosco stunned!
It was too late to retrace our steps. Before my return the doctor
had officiously undertaken to save me all trouble by registering the
death, on the date when it happened, with his own hand. My grand
scheme, unassailable hitherto, had its weak place now—no efforts on
my part could alter the fatal event of the 25th. I turned manfully
to the future. Percival’s interests and mine being still at stake,
nothing was left but to play the game through to the end. I recalled my
impenetrable calm—and played it.
On the morning of the 26th Percival’s letter reached me, announcing
his wife’s arrival by the midday train. Madame Rubelle also wrote to
say she would follow in the evening. I started in the fly, leaving the
false Lady Glyde dead in the house, to receive the true Lady Glyde on
her arrival by the railway at three o’clock. Hidden under the seat of
the carriage, I carried with me all the clothes Anne Catherick had worn
on coming into my house—they were destined to assist the resurrection
of the woman who was dead in the person of the woman who was living.
What a situation! I suggest it to the rising romance writers of
England. I offer it, as totally new, to the worn-out dramatists of
France.
Lady Glyde was at the station. There was great crowding and confusion,
and more delay than I liked (in case any of her friends had happened
to be on the spot), in reclaiming her luggage. Her first questions, as
we drove off, implored me to tell her news of her sister. I invented
news of the most pacifying kind, assuring her that she was about to
see her sister at my house. My house, on this occasion only, was in
the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, and was in the occupation of
Monsieur Rubelle, who received us in the hall.
I took my visitor upstairs into a back room, the two medical gentlemen
being there in waiting on the floor beneath to see the patient, and to
give me their certificates. After quieting Lady Glyde by the necessary
assurances about her sister, I introduced my friends separately to
her presence. They performed the formalities of the occasion briefly,
intelligently, conscientiously. I entered the room again as soon as
they had left it, and at once precipitated events by a reference of the
alarming kind to “Miss Halcombe’s” state of health.
Results followed as I had anticipated. Lady Glyde became frightened,
and turned faint. For the second time, and the last, I called Science
to my assistance. A medicated glass of water and a medicated bottle
of smelling-salts relieved her of all further embarrassment and
alarm. Additional applications later in the evening procured her the