The Woman in White
why I threw down the pen and turned my back on him.” She rose in sudden
agitation, and walked about the room. “I have kept many things from
your knowledge, Marian, for fear of distressing you, and making you
unhappy at the outset of our new lives. You don’t know how he has used
me. And yet you ought to know, for you saw how he used me to-day. You
heard him sneer at my presuming to be scrupulous—you heard him say I
had made a virtue of necessity in marrying him.” She sat down again,
her face flushed deeply, and her hands twisted and twined together in
her lap. “I can’t tell you about it now,” she said; “I shall burst
out crying if I tell you now—later, Marian, when I am more sure of
myself. My poor head aches, darling—aches, aches, aches. Where is your
smelling-bottle? Let me talk to you about yourself. I wish I had given
him my signature, for your sake. Shall I give it to him to-morrow? I
would rather compromise myself than compromise you. After your taking
my part against him, he will lay all the blame on you if I refuse
again. What shall we do? Oh, for a friend to help us and advise us!—a
friend we could really trust!”
She sighed bitterly. I saw in her face that she was thinking of
Hartright—saw it the more plainly because her last words set me
thinking of him too. In six months only from her marriage we wanted the
faithful service he had offered to us in his farewell words. How little
I once thought that we should ever want it at all!
“We must do what we can to help ourselves,” I said. “Let us try to talk
it over calmly, Laura—let us do all in our power to decide for the
best.”
Putting what she knew of her husband’s embarrassments and what I
had heard of his conversation with the lawyer together, we arrived
necessarily at the conclusion that the parchment in the library had
been drawn up for the purpose of borrowing money, and that Laura’s
signature was absolutely necessary to fit it for the attainment of Sir
Percival’s object.
The second question, concerning the nature of the legal contract
by which the money was to be obtained, and the degree of personal
responsibility to which Laura might subject herself if she signed it in
the dark, involved considerations which lay far beyond any knowledge
and experience that either of us possessed. My own convictions led
me to believe that the hidden contents of the parchment concealed a
transaction of the meanest and the most fraudulent kind.
I had not formed this conclusion in consequence of Sir Percival’s
refusal to show the writing or to explain it, for that refusal might
well have proceeded from his obstinate disposition and his domineering
temper alone. My sole motive for distrusting his honesty sprang from
the change which I had observed in his language and his manners at
Blackwater Park, a change which convinced me that he had been acting a
part throughout the whole period of his probation at Limmeridge House.
His elaborate delicacy, his ceremonious politeness which harmonised so
agreeably with Mr. Gilmore’s old-fashioned notions, his modesty with
Laura, his candour with me, his moderation with Mr. Fairlie—all these
were the artifices of a mean, cunning, and brutal man, who had dropped
his disguise when his practised duplicity had gained its end, and had
openly shown himself in the library on that very day. I say nothing of
the grief which this discovery caused me on Laura’s account, for it is
not to be expressed by any words of mine. I only refer to it at all,
because it decided me to oppose her signing the parchment, whatever the
consequences might be, unless she was first made acquainted with the
contents.
Under these circumstances, the one chance for us when to-morrow came
was to be provided with an objection to giving the signature, which
might rest on sufficiently firm commercial or legal grounds to shake
Sir Percival’s resolution, and to make him suspect that we two women
understood the laws and obligations of business as well as himself.
After some pondering, I determined to write to the only honest man
within reach whom we could trust to help us discreetly in our forlorn
situation. That man was Mr. Gilmore’s partner, Mr. Kyrle, who conducted
the business now that our old friend had been obliged to withdraw from
it, and to leave London on account of his health. I explained to Laura
that I had Mr. Gilmore’s own authority for placing implicit confidence
in his partner’s integrity, discretion, and accurate knowledge of all
her affairs, and with her full approval I sat down at once to write
the letter, I began by stating our position to Mr. Kyrle exactly as
it was, and then asked for his advice in return, expressed in plain,
downright terms which he could comprehend without any danger of
misinterpretations and mistakes. My letter was as short as I could
possibly make it, and was, I hope, unencumbered by needless apologies
and needless details.
Just as I was about to put the address on the envelope an obstacle was
discovered by Laura, which in the effort and preoccupation of writing
had escaped my mind altogether.
“How are we to get the answer in time?” she asked. “Your letter will
not be delivered in London before to-morrow morning, and the post will
not bring the reply here till the morning after.”
The only way of overcoming this difficulty was to have the answer
brought to us from the lawyer’s office by a special messenger. I wrote
a postscript to that effect, begging that the messenger might be
despatched with the reply by the eleven o’clock morning train, which
would bring him to our station at twenty minutes past one, and so
enable him to reach Blackwater Park by two o’clock at the latest. He
was to be directed to ask for me, to answer no questions addressed to
him by any one else, and to deliver his letter into no hands but mine.
“In case Sir Percival should come back to-morrow before two o’clock,”
I said to Laura, “the wisest plan for you to adopt is to be out in
the grounds all the morning with your book or your work, and not to
appear at the house till the messenger has had time to arrive with the
letter. I will wait here for him all the morning, to guard against any
misadventures or mistakes. By following this arrangement I hope and
believe we shall avoid being taken by surprise. Let us go down to the
drawing-room now. We may excite suspicion if we remain shut up together
too long.”
“Suspicion?” she repeated. “Whose suspicion can we excite, now that Sir
Percival has left the house? Do you mean Count Fosco?”
“Perhaps I do, Laura.”
“You are beginning to dislike him as much as I do, Marian.”
“No, not to dislike him. Dislike is always more or less associated with
contempt—I can see nothing in the Count to despise.”
“You are not afraid of him, are you?”
“Perhaps I am—a little.”
“Afraid of him, after his interference in our favour to-day!”
“Yes. I am more afraid of his interference than I am of Sir Percival’s
violence. Remember what I said to you in the library. Whatever you do,
Laura, don’t make an enemy of the Count!”
We went downstairs. Laura entered the drawing-room, while I proceeded
across the hall, with my letter in my hand, to put it into the
post-bag, which hung against the wall opposite to me.
The house door was open, and as I crossed past it, I saw Count Fosco
and his wife standing talking together on the steps outside, with their
faces turned towards me.
The Countess came into the hall rather hastily, and asked if I had
leisure enough for five minutes’ private conversation. Feeling a little
surprised by such an appeal from such a person, I put my letter into
the bag, and replied that I was quite at her disposal. She took my arm
with unaccustomed friendliness and familiarity, and instead of leading
me into an empty room, drew me out with her to the belt of turf which
surrounded the large fish-pond.
As we passed the Count on the steps he bowed and smiled, and then went
at once into the house, pushing the hall door to after him, but not
actually closing it.
The Countess walked me gently round the fish-pond. I expected to
be made the depositary of some extraordinary confidence, and I was
astonished to find that Madame Fosco’s communication for my private
ear was nothing more than a polite assurance of her sympathy for me,
after what had happened in the library. Her husband had told her of all
that had passed, and of the insolent manner in which Sir Percival had
spoken to me. This information had so shocked and distressed her, on my
account and on Laura’s, that she had made up her mind, if anything of
the sort happened again, to mark her sense of Sir Percival’s outrageous
conduct by leaving the house. The Count had approved of her idea, and
she now hoped that I approved of it too.
I thought this a very strange proceeding on the part of such a
remarkably reserved woman as Madame Fosco, especially after the
interchange of sharp speeches which had passed between us during the
conversation in the boat-house on that very morning. However, it was
my plain duty to meet a polite and friendly advance on the part of one
of my elders with a polite and friendly reply. I answered the Countess
accordingly in her own tone, and then, thinking we had said all that
was necessary on either side, made an attempt to get back to the house.
But Madame Fosco seemed resolved not to part with me, and to my
unspeakable amazement, resolved also to talk. Hitherto the most silent
of women, she now persecuted me with fluent conventionalities on the
subject of married life, on the subject of Sir Percival and Laura,
on the subject of her own happiness, on the subject of the late Mr.
Fairlie’s conduct to her in the matter of her legacy, and on half a
dozen other subjects besides, until she had detained me walking round
and round the fish-pond for more than half an hour, and had quite
wearied me out. Whether she discovered this or not, I cannot say, but
she stopped as abruptly as she had begun—looked towards the house
door, resumed her icy manner in a moment, and dropped my arm of her
own accord before I could think of an excuse for accomplishing my own
release from her.
As I pushed open the door and entered the hall, I found myself suddenly
face to face with the Count again. He was just putting a letter into
the post-bag.
After he had dropped it in and had closed the bag, he asked me where
I had left Madame Fosco. I told him, and he went out at the hall door
immediately to join his wife. His manner when he spoke to me was
so unusually quiet and subdued that I turned and looked after him,
wondering if he were ill or out of spirits.
Why my next proceeding was to go straight up to the post-bag and take
out my own letter and look at it again, with a vague distrust on me,
and why the looking at it for the second time instantly suggested the
idea to my mind of sealing the envelope for its greater security—are
mysteries which are either too deep or too shallow for me to fathom.
Women, as everybody knows, constantly act on impulses which they cannot
explain even to themselves, and I can only suppose that one of those
impulses was the hidden cause of my unaccountable conduct on this
occasion.
Whatever influence animated me, I found cause to congratulate myself
on having obeyed it as soon as I prepared to seal the letter in my
own room. I had originally closed the envelope in the usual way by
moistening the adhesive point and pressing it on the paper beneath,
and when I now tried it with my finger, after a lapse of full
three-quarters of an hour, the envelope opened on the instant, without
sticking or tearing. Perhaps I had fastened it insufficiently? Perhaps
there might have been some defect in the adhesive gum?
Or, perhaps——No! it is quite revolting enough to feel that third