The Woman in White
at Limmeridge, and he was so amazingly attentive and kind to his wife,
that even icy Madame Fosco was roused into looking at him with a grave
surprise. What does this mean? I think I can guess—I am afraid Laura
can guess—and I am sure Count Fosco knows. I caught Sir Percival
looking at him for approval more than once in the course of the evening.
June 17th.—A day of events. I most fervently hope I may not have to
add, a day of disasters as well.
Sir Percival was as silent at breakfast as he had been the evening
before, on the subject of the mysterious “arrangement” (as the lawyer
called it) which is hanging over our heads. An hour afterwards,
however, he suddenly entered the morning-room, where his wife and
I were waiting, with our hats on, for Madame Fosco to join us, and
inquired for the Count.
“We expect to see him here directly,” I said.
“The fact is,” Sir Percival went on, walking nervously about the
room, “I want Fosco and his wife in the library, for a mere business
formality, and I want you there, Laura, for a minute too.” He stopped,
and appeared to notice, for the first time, that we were in our walking
costume. “Have you just come in?” he asked, “or were you just going
out?”
“We were all thinking of going to the lake this morning,” said Laura.
“But if you have any other arrangement to propose——”
“No, no,” he answered hastily. “My arrangement can wait. After lunch
will do as well for it as after breakfast. All going to the lake, eh? A
good idea. Let’s have an idle morning—I’ll be one of the party.”
There was no mistaking his manner, even if it had been possible to
mistake the uncharacteristic readiness which his words expressed, to
submit his own plans and projects to the convenience of others. He was
evidently relieved at finding any excuse for delaying the business
formality in the library, to which his own words had referred. My heart
sank within me as I drew the inevitable inference.
The Count and his wife joined us at that moment. The lady had her
husband’s embroidered tobacco-pouch, and her store of paper in her
hand, for the manufacture of the eternal cigarettes. The gentleman,
dressed, as usual, in his blouse and straw hat, carried the gay little
pagoda-cage, with his darling white mice in it, and smiled on them, and
on us, with a bland amiability which it was impossible to resist.
“With your kind permission,” said the Count, “I will take my small
family here—my poor-little-harmless-pretty-Mouseys, out for an airing
along with us. There are dogs about the house, and shall I leave my
forlorn white children at the mercies of the dogs? Ah, never!”
He chirruped paternally at his small white children through the bars of
the pagoda, and we all left the house for the lake.
In the plantation Sir Percival strayed away from us. It seems to be
part of his restless disposition always to separate himself from his
companions on these occasions, and always to occupy himself when he is
alone in cutting new walking-sticks for his own use. The mere act of
cutting and lopping at hazard appears to please him. He has filled the
house with walking-sticks of his own making, not one of which he ever
takes up for a second time. When they have been once used his interest
in them is all exhausted, and he thinks of nothing but going on and
making more.
At the old boat-house he joined us again. I will put down the
conversation that ensued when we were all settled in our places
exactly as it passed. It is an important conversation, so far as I am
concerned, for it has seriously disposed me to distrust the influence
which Count Fosco has exercised over my thoughts and feelings, and to
resist it for the future as resolutely as I can.
The boat-house was large enough to hold us all, but Sir Percival
remained outside trimming the last new stick with his pocket-axe. We
three women found plenty of room on the large seat. Laura took her
work, and Madame Fosco began her cigarettes. I, as usual, had nothing
to do. My hands always were, and always will be, as awkward as a man’s.
The Count good-humouredly took a stool many sizes too small for him,
and balanced himself on it with his back against the side of the shed,
which creaked and groaned under his weight. He put the pagoda-cage
on his lap, and let out the mice to crawl over him as usual. They
are pretty, innocent-looking little creatures, but the sight of them
creeping about a man’s body is for some reason not pleasant to me. It
excites a strange responsive creeping in my own nerves, and suggests
hideous ideas of men dying in prison with the crawling creatures of the
dungeon preying on them undisturbed.
The morning was windy and cloudy, and the rapid alternations of shadow
and sunlight over the waste of the lake made the view look doubly wild,
weird, and gloomy.
“Some people call that picturesque,” said Sir Percival, pointing over
the wide prospect with his half-finished walking-stick. “I call it a
blot on a gentleman’s property. In my great-grandfather’s time the
lake flowed to this place. Look at it now! It is not four feet deep
anywhere, and it is all puddles and pools. I wish I could afford to
drain it, and plant it all over. My bailiff (a superstitious idiot)
says he is quite sure the lake has a curse on it, like the Dead Sea.
What do you think, Fosco? It looks just the place for a murder, doesn’t
it?”
“My good Percival,” remonstrated the Count. “What is your solid English
sense thinking of? The water is too shallow to hide the body, and there
is sand everywhere to print off the murderer’s footsteps. It is, upon
the whole, the very worst place for a murder that I ever set my eyes
on.”
“Humbug!” said Sir Percival, cutting away fiercely at his stick. “You
know what I mean. The dreary scenery, the lonely situation. If you
choose to understand me, you can—if you don’t choose, I am not going to
trouble myself to explain my meaning.”
“And why not,” asked the Count, “when your meaning can be explained by
anybody in two words? If a fool was going to commit a murder, your lake
is the first place he would choose for it. If a wise man was going to
commit a murder, your lake is the last place he would choose for it. Is
that your meaning? If it is, there is your explanation for you ready
made. Take it, Percival, with your good Fosco’s blessing.”
Laura looked at the Count with her dislike for him appearing a little
too plainly in her face. He was so busy with his mice that he did not
notice her.
“I am sorry to hear the lake-view connected with anything so horrible
as the idea of murder,” she said. “And if Count Fosco must divide
murderers into classes, I think he has been very unfortunate in his
choice of expressions. To describe them as fools only seems like
treating them with an indulgence to which they have no claim. And to
describe them as wise men sounds to me like a downright contradiction
in terms. I have always heard that truly wise men are truly good men,
and have a horror of crime.”
“My dear lady,” said the Count, “those are admirable sentiments, and I
have seen them stated at the tops of copy-books.” He lifted one of the
white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in his whimsical
way. “My pretty little smooth white rascal,” he said, “here is a moral
lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a truly good mouse. Mention that,
if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your
cage again as long as you live.”
“It is easy to turn everything into ridicule,” said Laura resolutely;
“but you will not find it quite so easy, Count Fosco, to give me an
instance of a wise man who has been a great criminal.”
The Count shrugged his huge shoulders, and smiled on Laura in the
friendliest manner.
“Most true!” he said. “The fool’s crime is the crime that is found out,
and the wise man’s crime is the crime that is NOT found out. If I could
give you an instance, it would not be the instance of a wise man. Dear
Lady Glyde, your sound English common sense has been too much for me.
It is checkmate for me this time, Miss Halcombe—ha?”
“Stand to your guns, Laura,” sneered Sir Percival, who had been
listening in his place at the door. “Tell him next, that crimes cause
their own detection. There’s another bit of copy-book morality for you,
Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What infernal humbug!”
“I believe it to be true,” said Laura quietly.
Sir Percival burst out laughing, so violently, so outrageously, that he
quite startled us all—the Count more than any of us.
“I believe it too,” I said, coming to Laura’s rescue.
Sir Percival, who had been unaccountably amused at his wife’s remark,
was just as unaccountably irritated by mine. He struck the new stick
savagely on the sand, and walked away from us.
“Poor dear Percival!” cried Count Fosco, looking after him gaily,
“he is the victim of English spleen. But, my dear Miss Halcombe, my
dear Lady Glyde, do you really believe that crimes cause their own
detection? And you, my angel,” he continued, turning to his wife, who
had not uttered a word yet, “do you think so too?”
“I wait to be instructed,” replied the Countess, in tones of freezing
reproof, intended for Laura and me, “before I venture on giving my
opinion in the presence of well-informed men.”
“Do you, indeed?” I said. “I remember the time, Countess, when you
advocated the Rights of Women, and freedom of female opinion was one of
them.”
“What is your view of the subject, Count?” asked Madame Fosco, calmly
proceeding with her cigarettes, and not taking the least notice of me.
The Count stroked one of his white mice reflectively with his chubby
little finger before he answered.
“It is truly wonderful,” he said, “how easily Society can console
itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of
clap-trap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is
miserably ineffective—and yet only invent a moral epigram, saying
that it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from
that moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And murder
will out (another moral epigram), will it? Ask Coroners who sit at
inquests in large towns if that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask secretaries
of life-assurance companies if that is true, Miss Halcombe. Read your
own public journals. In the few cases that get into the newspapers,
are there not instances of slain bodies found, and no murderers ever
discovered? Multiply the cases that are reported by the cases that are
NOT reported, and the bodies that are found by the bodies that are
NOT found, and what conclusion do you come to? This. That there are
foolish criminals who are discovered, and wise criminals who escape.
The hiding of a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A
trial of skill between the police on one side, and the individual on
the other. When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant fool, the police in
nine cases out of ten win. When the criminal is a resolute, educated,
highly-intelligent man, the police in nine cases out of ten lose. If
the police win, you generally hear all about it. If the police lose,
you generally hear nothing. And on this tottering foundation you build
up your comfortable moral maxim that Crime causes its own detection!
Yes—all the crime you know of. And what of the rest?”
“Devilish true, and very well put,” cried a voice at the entrance of
the boat-house. Sir Percival had recovered his equanimity, and had come
back while we were listening to the Count.
“Some of it may be true,” I said, “and all of it may be very well
put. But I don’t see why Count Fosco should celebrate the victory of
the criminal over Society with so much exultation, or why you, Sir
Percival, should applaud him so loudly for doing it.”
“Do you hear that, Fosco?” asked Sir Percival. “Take my advice,