The Woman in White
children’s voices at your fireside. I will teach them to speak for me
in THEIR language, and the first lesson they say to their father and
mother shall be—We can’t spare our aunt!”
My journey to Paris was not undertaken alone. At the eleventh hour
Pesca decided that he would accompany me. He had not recovered his
customary cheerfulness since the night at the Opera, and he determined
to try what a week’s holiday would do to raise his spirits.
I performed the errand entrusted to me, and drew out the necessary
report, on the fourth day from our arrival in Paris. The fifth day I
arranged to devote to sight-seeing and amusements in Pesca’s company.
Our hotel had been too full to accommodate us both on the same floor.
My room was on the second story, and Pesca’s was above me, on the
third. On the morning of the fifth day I went upstairs to see if the
Professor was ready to go out. Just before I reached the landing I saw
his door opened from the inside—a long, delicate, nervous hand (not my
friend’s hand certainly) held it ajar. At the same time I heard Pesca’s
voice saying eagerly, in low tones, and in his own language—“I remember
the name, but I don’t know the man. You saw at the Opera he was so
changed that I could not recognise him. I will forward the report—I
can do no more.” “No more need be done,” answered the second voice.
The door opened wide, and the light-haired man with the scar on his
cheek—the man I had seen following Count Fosco’s cab a week before—came
out. He bowed as I drew aside to let him pass—his face was fearfully
pale—and he held fast by the banisters as he descended the stairs.
I pushed open the door and entered Pesca’s room. He was crouched up, in
the strangest manner, in a corner of the sofa. He seemed to shrink from
me when I approached him.
“Am I disturbing you?” I asked. “I did not know you had a friend with
you till I saw him come out.”
“No friend,” said Pesca eagerly. “I see him to-day for the first time
and the last.”
“I am afraid he has brought you bad news?”
“Horrible news, Walter! Let us go back to London—I don’t want to stop
here—I am sorry I ever came. The misfortunes of my youth are very hard
upon me,” he said, turning his face to the wall, “very hard upon me in
my later time. I try to forget them—and they will not forget ME!”
“We can’t return, I am afraid, before the afternoon,” I replied. “Would
you like to come out with me in the meantime?”
“No, my friend, I will wait here. But let us go back to-day—pray let us
go back.”
I left him with the assurance that he should leave Paris that
afternoon. We had arranged the evening before to ascend the Cathedral
of Notre Dame, with Victor Hugo’s noble romance for our guide. There
was nothing in the French capital that I was more anxious to see, and I
departed by myself for the church.
Approaching Notre Dame by the river-side, I passed on my way the
terrible dead-house of Paris—the Morgue. A great crowd clamoured and
heaved round the door. There was evidently something inside which
excited the popular curiosity, and fed the popular appetite for horror.
I should have walked on to the church if the conversation of two men
and a woman on the outskirts of the crowd had not caught my ear. They
had just come out from seeing the sight in the Morgue, and the account
they were giving of the dead body to their neighbours described it as
the corpse of a man—a man of immense size, with a strange mark on his
left arm.
The moment those words reached me I stopped and took my place with the
crowd going in. Some dim foreshadowing of the truth had crossed my
mind when I heard Pesca’s voice through the open door, and when I saw
the stranger’s face as he passed me on the stairs of the hotel. Now
the truth itself was revealed to me—revealed in the chance words that
had just reached my ears. Other vengeance than mine had followed that
fated man from the theatre to his own door—from his own door to his
refuge in Paris. Other vengeance than mine had called him to the day of
reckoning, and had exacted from him the penalty of his life. The moment
when I had pointed him out to Pesca at the theatre in the hearing of
that stranger by our side, who was looking for him too—was the moment
that sealed his doom. I remembered the struggle in my own heart, when
he and I stood face to face—the struggle before I could let him escape
me—and shuddered as I recalled it.
Slowly, inch by inch, I pressed in with the crowd, moving nearer and
nearer to the great glass screen that parts the dead from the living at
the Morgue—nearer and nearer, till I was close behind the front row of
spectators, and could look in.
There he lay, unowned, unknown, exposed to the flippant curiosity of a
French mob! There was the dreadful end of that long life of degraded
ability and heartless crime! Hushed in the sublime repose of death,
the broad, firm, massive face and head fronted us so grandly that the
chattering Frenchwomen about me lifted their hands in admiration, and
cried in shrill chorus, “Ah, what a handsome man!” The wound that had
killed him had been struck with a knife or dagger exactly over his
heart. No other traces of violence appeared about the body except on
the left arm, and there, exactly in the place where I had seen the
brand on Pesca’s arm, were two deep cuts in the shape of the letter T,
which entirely obliterated the mark of the Brotherhood. His clothes,
hung above him, showed that he had been himself conscious of his
danger—they were clothes that had disguised him as a French artisan.
For a few moments, but not for longer, I forced myself to see these
things through the glass screen. I can write of them at no greater
length, for I saw no more.
The few facts in connection with his death which I subsequently
ascertained (partly from Pesca and partly from other sources), may be
stated here before the subject is dismissed from these pages.
His body was taken out of the Seine in the disguise which I have
described, nothing being found on him which revealed his name, his
rank, or his place of abode. The hand that struck him was never traced,
and the circumstances under which he was killed were never discovered.
I leave others to draw their own conclusions in reference to the secret
of the assassination as I have drawn mine. When I have intimated that
the foreigner with the scar was a member of the Brotherhood (admitted
in Italy after Pesca’s departure from his native country), and when I
have further added that the two cuts, in the form of a T, on the left
arm of the dead man, signified the Italian word “Traditore,” and showed
that justice had been done by the Brotherhood on a traitor, I have
contributed all that I know towards elucidating the mystery of Count
Fosco’s death.
The body was identified the day after I had seen it by means of an
anonymous letter addressed to his wife. He was buried by Madame Fosco
in the cemetery of Père la Chaise. Fresh funeral wreaths continue to
this day to be hung on the ornamental bronze railings round the tomb
by the Countess’s own hand. She lives in the strictest retirement at
Versailles. Not long since she published a biography of her deceased
husband. The work throws no light whatever on the name that was really
his own or on the secret history of his life—it is almost entirely
devoted to the praise of his domestic virtues, the assertion of his
rare abilities, and the enumeration of the honours conferred on him.
The circumstances attending his death are very briefly noticed, and
are summed up on the last page in this sentence—“His life was one long
assertion of the rights of the aristocracy and the sacred principles of
Order, and he died a martyr to his cause.”
III
The summer and autumn passed after my return from Paris, and brought no
changes with them which need be noticed here. We lived so simply and
quietly that the income which I was now steadily earning sufficed for
all our wants.
In the February of the new year our first child was born—a son.
My mother and sister and Mrs. Vesey were our guests at the little
christening party, and Mrs. Clements was present to assist my wife on
the same occasion. Marian was our boy’s godmother, and Pesca and Mr.
Gilmore (the latter acting by proxy) were his godfathers. I may add
here that when Mr. Gilmore returned to us a year later he assisted the
design of these pages, at my request, by writing the Narrative which
appears early in the story under his name, and which, though first
in order of precedence, was thus, in order of time, the last that I
received.
The only event in our lives which now remains to be recorded, occurred
when our little Walter was six months old.
At that time I was sent to Ireland to make sketches for certain
forthcoming illustrations in the newspaper to which I was attached.
I was away for nearly a fortnight, corresponding regularly with my
wife and Marian, except during the last three days of my absence,
when my movements were too uncertain to enable me to receive letters.
I performed the latter part of my journey back at night, and when I
reached home in the morning, to my utter astonishment there was no one
to receive me. Laura and Marian and the child had left the house on the
day before my return.
A note from my wife, which was given to me by the servant, only
increased my surprise, by informing me that they had gone to Limmeridge
House. Marian had prohibited any attempt at written explanations—I was
entreated to follow them the moment I came back—complete enlightenment
awaited me on my arrival in Cumberland—and I was forbidden to feel the
slightest anxiety in the meantime. There the note ended. It was still
early enough to catch the morning train. I reached Limmeridge House the
same afternoon.
My wife and Marian were both upstairs. They had established themselves
(by way of completing my amazement) in the little room which had been
once assigned to me for a studio, when I was employed on Mr. Fairlie’s
drawings. On the very chair which I used to occupy when I was at work
Marian was sitting now, with the child industriously sucking his
coral upon her lap—while Laura was standing by the well-remembered
drawing-table which I had so often used, with the little album that I
had filled for her in past times open under her hand.
“What in the name of heaven has brought you here?” I asked. “Does Mr.
Fairlie know——?”
Marian suspended the question on my lips by telling me that Mr. Fairlie
was dead. He had been struck by paralysis, and had never rallied after
the shock. Mr. Kyrle had informed them of his death, and had advised
them to proceed immediately to Limmeridge House.
Some dim perception of a great change dawned on my mind. Laura spoke
before I had quite realised it. She stole close to me to enjoy the
surprise which was still expressed in my face.
“My darling Walter,” she said, “must we really account for our boldness
in coming here? I am afraid, love, I can only explain it by breaking
through our rule, and referring to the past.”
“There is not the least necessity for doing anything of the kind,” said
Marian. “We can be just as explicit, and much more interesting, by
referring to the future.” She rose and held up the child kicking and
crowing in her arms. “Do you know who this is, Walter?” she asked, with
bright tears of happiness gathering in her eyes.
“Even MY bewilderment has its limits,” I replied. “I think I can still
answer for knowing my own child.”
“Child!” she exclaimed, with all her easy gaiety of old times. “Do you
talk in that familiar manner of one of the landed gentry of England?
Are you aware, when I present this illustrious baby to your notice,
in whose presence you stand? Evidently not! Let me make two eminent