The Woman in White
conjecture stirring in my mind. I would rather not see it confronting
me in plain black and white.
I almost dread to-morrow—so much depends on my discretion and
self-control. There are two precautions, at all events, which I am sure
not to forget. I must be careful to keep up friendly appearances with
the Count, and I must be well on my guard when the messenger from the
office comes here with the answer to my letter.
V
June 17th.—When the dinner hour brought us together again, Count Fosco
was in his usual excellent spirits. He exerted himself to interest
and amuse us, as if he was determined to efface from our memories all
recollection of what had passed in the library that afternoon. Lively
descriptions of his adventures in travelling, amusing anecdotes of
remarkable people whom he had met with abroad, quaint comparisons
between the social customs of various nations, illustrated by
examples drawn from men and women indiscriminately all over Europe,
humorous confessions of the innocent follies of his own early life,
when he ruled the fashions of a second-rate Italian town, and wrote
preposterous romances on the French model for a second-rate Italian
newspaper—all flowed in succession so easily and so gaily from his
lips, and all addressed our various curiosities and various interests
so directly and so delicately, that Laura and I listened to him with
as much attention and, inconsistent as it may seem, with as much
admiration also, as Madame Fosco herself. Women can resist a man’s
love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money, but
they cannot resist a man’s tongue when he knows how to talk to them.
After dinner, while the favourable impression which he had produced on
us was still vivid in our minds, the Count modestly withdrew to read in
the library.
Laura proposed a stroll in the grounds to enjoy the close of the long
evening. It was necessary in common politeness to ask Madame Fosco
to join us, but this time she had apparently received her orders
beforehand, and she begged we would kindly excuse her. “The Count will
probably want a fresh supply of cigarettes,” she remarked by way of
apology, “and nobody can make them to his satisfaction but myself.” Her
cold blue eyes almost warmed as she spoke the words—she looked actually
proud of being the officiating medium through which her lord and master
composed himself with tobacco-smoke!
Laura and I went out together alone.
It was a misty, heavy evening. There was a sense of blight in the air;
the flowers were drooping in the garden, and the ground was parched and
dewless. The western heaven, as we saw it over the quiet trees, was of
a pale yellow hue, and the sun was setting faintly in a haze. Coming
rain seemed near—it would fall probably with the fall of night.
“Which way shall we go?” I asked
“Towards the lake, Marian, if you like,” she answered.
“You seem unaccountably fond, Laura, of that dismal lake.”
“No, not of the lake but of the scenery about it. The sand and heath
and the fir-trees are the only objects I can discover, in all this
large place, to remind me of Limmeridge. But we will walk in some other
direction if you prefer it.”
“I have no favourite walks at Blackwater Park, my love. One is the same
as another to me. Let us go to the lake—we may find it cooler in the
open space than we find it here.”
We walked through the shadowy plantation in silence. The heaviness in
the evening air oppressed us both, and when we reached the boat-house
we were glad to sit down and rest inside.
A white fog hung low over the lake. The dense brown line of the trees
on the opposite bank appeared above it, like a dwarf forest floating
in the sky. The sandy ground, shelving downward from where we sat, was
lost mysteriously in the outward layers of the fog. The silence was
horrible. No rustling of the leaves—no bird’s note in the wood—no cry
of water-fowl from the pools of the hidden lake. Even the croaking of
the frogs had ceased to-night.
“It is very desolate and gloomy,” said Laura. “But we can be more alone
here than anywhere else.”
She spoke quietly and looked at the wilderness of sand and mist with
steady, thoughtful eyes. I could see that her mind was too much
occupied to feel the dreary impressions from without which had fastened
themselves already on mine.
“I promised, Marian, to tell you the truth about my married life,
instead of leaving you any longer to guess it for yourself,” she began.
“That secret is the first I have ever had from you, love, and I am
determined it shall be the last. I was silent, as you know, for your
sake—and perhaps a little for my own sake as well. It is very hard for
a woman to confess that the man to whom she has given her whole life is
the man of all others who cares least for the gift. If you were married
yourself, Marian—and especially if you were happily married—you would
feel for me as no single woman CAN feel, however kind and true she may
be.”
What answer could I make? I could only take her hand and look at her
with my whole heart as well as my eyes would let me.
“How often,” she went on, “I have heard you laughing over what you used
to call your ‘poverty!’ how often you have made me mock-speeches of
congratulation on my wealth! Oh, Marian, never laugh again. Thank God
for your poverty—it has made you your own mistress, and has saved you
from the lot that has fallen on ME.”
A sad beginning on the lips of a young wife!—sad in its quiet
plain-spoken truth. The few days we had all passed together at
Blackwater Park had been many enough to show me—to show any one—what
her husband had married her for.
“You shall not be distressed,” she said, “by hearing how soon my
disappointments and my trials began—or even by knowing what they
were. It is bad enough to have them on my memory. If I tell you how
he received the first and last attempt at remonstrance that I ever
made, you will know how he has always treated me, as well as if I
had described it in so many words. It was one day at Rome when we
had ridden out together to the tomb of Cecilia Metella. The sky was
calm and lovely, and the grand old ruin looked beautiful, and the
remembrance that a husband’s love had raised it in the old time to a
wife’s memory, made me feel more tenderly and more anxiously towards my
husband than I had ever felt yet. ‘Would you build such a tomb for ME,
Percival?’ I asked him. ‘You said you loved me dearly before we were
married, and yet, since that time——’ I could get no farther. Marian!
he was not even looking at me! I pulled down my veil, thinking it best
not to let him see that the tears were in my eyes. I fancied he had
not paid any attention to me, but he had. He said, ‘Come away,’ and
laughed to himself as he helped me on to my horse. He mounted his own
horse and laughed again as we rode away. ‘If I do build you a tomb,’ he
said, ‘it will be done with your own money. I wonder whether Cecilia
Metella had a fortune and paid for hers.’ I made no reply—how could I,
when I was crying behind my veil? ‘Ah, you light-complexioned women are
all sulky,’ he said. ‘What do you want? compliments and soft speeches?
Well! I’m in a good humour this morning. Consider the compliments paid
and the speeches said.’ Men little know when they say hard things to us
how well we remember them, and how much harm they do us. It would have
been better for me if I had gone on crying, but his contempt dried up
my tears and hardened my heart. From that time, Marian, I never checked
myself again in thinking of Walter Hartright. I let the memory of those
happy days, when we were so fond of each other in secret, come back
and comfort me. What else had I to look to for consolation? If we had
been together you would have helped me to better things. I know it was
wrong, darling, but tell me if I was wrong without any excuse.”
I was obliged to turn my face from her. “Don’t ask me!” I said. “Have I
suffered as you have suffered? What right have I to decide?”
“I used to think of him,” she pursued, dropping her voice and moving
closer to me, “I used to think of him when Percival left me alone at
night to go among the Opera people. I used to fancy what I might have
been if it had pleased God to bless me with poverty, and if I had been
his wife. I used to see myself in my neat cheap gown, sitting at home
and waiting for him while he was earning our bread—sitting at home and
working for him and loving him all the better because I had to work
for him—seeing him come in tired and taking off his hat and coat for
him, and, Marian, pleasing him with little dishes at dinner that I had
learnt to make for his sake. Oh! I hope he is never lonely enough and
sad enough to think of me and see me as I have thought of HIM and see
HIM!”
As she said those melancholy words, all the lost tenderness returned
to her voice, and all the lost beauty trembled back into her face. Her
eyes rested as lovingly on the blighted, solitary, ill-omened view
before us, as if they saw the friendly hills of Cumberland in the dim
and threatening sky.
“Don’t speak of Walter any more,” I said, as soon as I could control
myself. “Oh, Laura, spare us both the wretchedness of talking of him
now!”
She roused herself, and looked at me tenderly.
“I would rather be silent about him for ever,” she answered, “than
cause you a moment’s pain.”
“It is in your interests,” I pleaded; “it is for your sake that I
speak. If your husband heard you——”
“It would not surprise him if he did hear me.”
She made that strange reply with a weary calmness and coldness. The
change in her manner, when she gave the answer, startled me almost as
much as the answer itself.
“Not surprise him!” I repeated. “Laura! remember what you are
saying—you frighten me!”
“It is true,” she said; “it is what I wanted to tell you to-day, when
we were talking in your room. My only secret when I opened my heart to
him at Limmeridge was a harmless secret, Marian—you said so yourself.
The name was all I kept from him, and he has discovered it.”
I heard her, but I could say nothing. Her last words had killed the
little hope that still lived in me.
“It happened at Rome,” she went on, as wearily calm and cold as ever.
“We were at a little party given to the English by some friends of Sir
Percival’s—Mr. and Mrs. Markland. Mrs. Markland had the reputation
of sketching very beautifully, and some of the guests prevailed on
her to show us her drawings. We all admired them, but something I
said attracted her attention particularly to me. ‘Surely you draw
yourself?’ she asked. ‘I used to draw a little once,’ I answered, ‘but
I have given it up.’ ‘If you have once drawn,’ she said, ‘you may take
to it again one of these days, and if you do, I wish you would let
me recommend you a master.’ I said nothing—you know why, Marian—and
tried to change the conversation. But Mrs. Markland persisted. ‘I
have had all sorts of teachers,’ she went on, ‘but the best of all,
the most intelligent and the most attentive, was a Mr. Hartright. If
you ever take up your drawing again, do try him as a master. He is
a young man—modest and gentlemanlike—I am sure you will like him.’
Think of those words being spoken to me publicly, in the presence
of strangers—strangers who had been invited to meet the bride and
bridegroom! I did all I could to control myself—I said nothing, and
looked down close at the drawings. When I ventured to raise my head
again, my eyes and my husband’s eyes met, and I knew, by his look,
that my face had betrayed me. ‘We will see about Mr. Hartright,’ he
said, looking at me all the time, ‘when we get back to England. I agree
with you, Mrs. Markland—I think Lady Glyde is sure to like him.’ He
laid an emphasis on the last words which made my cheeks burn, and set