The Woman in White
master, who had sent her away.
“Try to make the best of it, Fanny,” I said. “Your mistress and I will
stand your friends, and will take care that your character shall not
suffer. Now, listen to me. I have very little time to spare, and I am
going to put a great trust in your hands. I wish you to take care of
these two letters. The one with the stamp on it you are to put into
the post when you reach London to-morrow. The other, directed to Mr.
Fairlie, you are to deliver to him yourself as soon as you get home.
Keep both the letters about you and give them up to no one. They are of
the last importance to your mistress’s interests.”
Fanny put the letters into the bosom of her dress. “There they shall
stop, miss,” she said, “till I have done what you tell me.”
“Mind you are at the station in good time to-morrow morning,” I
continued. “And when you see the housekeeper at Limmeridge give her my
compliments, and say that you are in my service until Lady Glyde is
able to take you back. We may meet again sooner than you think. So keep
a good heart, and don’t miss the seven o’clock train.”
“Thank you, miss—thank you kindly. It gives one courage to hear your
voice again. Please to offer my duty to my lady, and say I left all the
things as tidy as I could in the time. Oh, dear! dear! who will dress
her for dinner to-day? It really breaks my heart, miss, to think of it.”
When I got back to the house I had only a quarter of an hour to spare
to put myself in order for dinner, and to say two words to Laura before
I went downstairs.
“The letters are in Fanny’s hands,” I whispered to her at the door. “Do
you mean to join us at dinner?”
“Oh, no, no—not for the world.”
“Has anything happened? Has any one disturbed you?”
“Yes—just now—Sir Percival——”
“Did he come in?”
“No, he frightened me by a thump on the door outside. I said, ‘Who’s
there?’ ‘You know,’ he answered. ‘Will you alter your mind, and tell
me the rest? You shall! Sooner or later I’ll wring it out of you. You
know where Anne Catherick is at this moment.’ ‘Indeed, indeed,’ I said,
‘I don’t.’ ‘You do!’ he called back. ‘I’ll crush your obstinacy—mind
that!—I’ll wring it out of you!’ He went away with those words—went
away, Marian, hardly five minutes ago.”
He had not found Anne! We were safe for that night—he had not found her
yet.
“You are going downstairs, Marian? Come up again in the evening.”
“Yes, yes. Don’t be uneasy if I am a little late—I must be careful not
to give offence by leaving them too soon.”
The dinner-bell rang and I hastened away.
Sir Percival took Madame Fosco into the dining-room, and the Count
gave me his arm. He was hot and flushed, and was not dressed with his
customary care and completeness. Had he, too, been out before dinner,
and been late in getting back? or was he only suffering from the heat a
little more severely than usual?
However this might be, he was unquestionably troubled by some secret
annoyance or anxiety, which, with all his powers of deception, he
was not able entirely to conceal. Through the whole of dinner he was
almost as silent as Sir Percival himself, and he, every now and then,
looked at his wife with an expression of furtive uneasiness which was
quite new in my experience of him. The one social obligation which he
seemed to be self-possessed enough to perform as carefully as ever
was the obligation of being persistently civil and attentive to me.
What vile object he has in view I cannot still discover, but be the
design what it may, invariable politeness towards myself, invariable
humility towards Laura, and invariable suppression (at any cost) of
Sir Percival’s clumsy violence, have been the means he has resolutely
and impenetrably used to get to his end ever since he set foot in this
house. I suspected it when he first interfered in our favour, on the
day when the deed was produced in the library, and I feel certain of it
now.
When Madame Fosco and I rose to leave the table, the Count rose also to
accompany us back to the drawing-room.
“What are you going away for?” asked Sir Percival—“I mean YOU, Fosco.”
“I am going away because I have had dinner enough, and wine enough,”
answered the Count. “Be so kind, Percival, as to make allowances for my
foreign habit of going out with the ladies, as well as coming in with
them.”
“Nonsense! Another glass of claret won’t hurt you. Sit down again like
an Englishman. I want half an hour’s quiet talk with you over our wine.”
“A quiet talk, Percival, with all my heart, but not now, and not over
the wine. Later in the evening, if you please—later in the evening.”
“Civil!” said Sir Percival savagely. “Civil behaviour, upon my soul, to
a man in his own house!”
I had more than once seen him look at the Count uneasily during
dinner-time, and had observed that the Count carefully abstained
from looking at him in return. This circumstance, coupled with the
host’s anxiety for a little quiet talk over the wine, and the guest’s
obstinate resolution not to sit down again at the table, revived in
my memory the request which Sir Percival had vainly addressed to his
friend earlier in the day to come out of the library and speak to him.
The Count had deferred granting that private interview, when it was
first asked for in the afternoon, and had again deferred granting it,
when it was a second time asked for at the dinner-table. Whatever the
coming subject of discussion between them might be, it was clearly an
important subject in Sir Percival’s estimation—and perhaps (judging
from his evident reluctance to approach it) a dangerous subject as
well, in the estimation of the Count.
These considerations occurred to me while we were passing from the
dining-room to the drawing-room. Sir Percival’s angry commentary on his
friend’s desertion of him had not produced the slightest effect. The
Count obstinately accompanied us to the tea-table—waited a minute or
two in the room—went out into the hall—and returned with the post-bag
in his hands. It was then eight o’clock—the hour at which the letters
were always despatched from Blackwater Park.
“Have you any letter for the post, Miss Halcombe?” he asked,
approaching me with the bag.
I saw Madame Fosco, who was making the tea, pause, with the sugar-tongs
in her hand, to listen for my answer.
“No, Count, thank you. No letters to-day.”
He gave the bag to the servant, who was then in the room; sat down at
the piano, and played the air of the lively Neapolitan street-song,
“La mia Carolina,” twice over. His wife, who was usually the most
deliberate of women in all her movements, made the tea as quickly as
I could have made it myself—finished her own cup in two minutes, and
quietly glided out of the room.
I rose to follow her example—partly because I suspected her of
attempting some treachery upstairs with Laura, partly because I was
resolved not to remain alone in the same room with her husband.
Before I could get to the door the Count stopped me, by a request for a
cup of tea. I gave him the cup of tea, and tried a second time to get
away. He stopped me again—this time by going back to the piano, and
suddenly appealing to me on a musical question in which he declared
that the honour of his country was concerned.
I vainly pleaded my own total ignorance of music, and total want of
taste in that direction. He only appealed to me again with a vehemence
which set all further protest on my part at defiance. “The English and
the Germans (he indignantly declared) were always reviling the Italians
for their inability to cultivate the higher kinds of music. We were
perpetually talking of our Oratorios, and they were perpetually talking
of their Symphonies. Did we forget and did they forget his immortal
friend and countryman, Rossini? What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime
oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in
a concert-room? What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony
under another name? Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this,
and this, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand
had ever been composed by mortal man?”—And without waiting for a word
of assent or dissent on my part, looking me hard in the face all the
time, he began thundering on the piano, and singing to it with loud and
lofty enthusiasm—only interrupting himself, at intervals, to announce
to me fiercely the titles of the different pieces of music: “Chorus
of Egyptians in the Plague of Darkness, Miss Halcombe!”—“Recitativo
of Moses with the tables of the Law.”—“Prayer of Israelites, at the
passage of the Red Sea. Aha! Aha! Is that sacred? is that sublime?” The
piano trembled under his powerful hands, and the teacups on the table
rattled, as his big bass voice thundered out the notes, and his heavy
foot beat time on the floor.
There was something horrible—something fierce and devilish—in the
outburst of his delight at his own singing and playing, and in the
triumph with which he watched its effect upon me as I shrank nearer
and nearer to the door. I was released at last, not by my own efforts,
but by Sir Percival’s interposition. He opened the dining-room door,
and called out angrily to know what “that infernal noise” meant. The
Count instantly got up from the piano. “Ah! if Percival is coming,” he
said, “harmony and melody are both at an end. The Muse of Music, Miss
Halcombe, deserts us in dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale
the rest of my enthusiasm in the open air!” He stalked out into the
verandah, put his hands in his pockets, and resumed the “Recitativo of
Moses”, sotto voce, in the garden.
I heard Sir Percival call after him from the dining-room window. But
he took no notice—he seemed determined not to hear. That long-deferred
quiet talk between them was still to be put off, was still to wait for
the Count’s absolute will and pleasure.
He had detained me in the drawing-room nearly half an hour from the
time when his wife left us. Where had she been, and what had she been
doing in that interval?
I went upstairs to ascertain, but I made no discoveries, and when I
questioned Laura, I found that she had not heard anything. Nobody had
disturbed her, no faint rustling of the silk dress had been audible,
either in the ante-room or in the passage.
It was then twenty minutes to nine. After going to my room to get my
journal, I returned, and sat with Laura, sometimes writing, sometimes
stopping to talk with her. Nobody came near us, and nothing happened.
We remained together till ten o’clock. I then rose, said my last
cheering words, and wished her good-night. She locked her door again
after we had arranged that I should come in and see her the first thing
in the morning.
I had a few sentences more to add to my diary before going to bed
myself, and as I went down again to the drawing-room after leaving
Laura for the last time that weary day, I resolved merely to show
myself there, to make my excuses, and then to retire an hour earlier
than usual for the night.
Sir Percival, and the Count and his wife, were sitting together. Sir
Percival was yawning in an easy-chair, the Count was reading, Madame
Fosco was fanning herself. Strange to say, HER face was flushed now.
She, who never suffered from the heat, was most undoubtedly suffering
from it to-night.
“I am afraid, Countess, you are not quite so well as usual?” I said.
“The very remark I was about to make to you,” she replied. “You are
looking pale, my dear.”
My dear! It was the first time she had ever addressed me with that
familiarity! There was an insolent smile too on her face when she said
the words.
“I am suffering from one of my bad headaches,” I answered coldly.
“Ah, indeed? Want of exercise, I suppose? A walk before dinner would