The Woman in White
have been just the thing for you.” She referred to the “walk” with a
strange emphasis. Had she seen me go out? No matter if she had. The
letters were safe now in Fanny’s hands.
“Come and have a smoke, Fosco,” said Sir Percival, rising, with another
uneasy look at his friend.
“With pleasure, Percival, when the ladies have gone to bed,” replied
the Count.
“Excuse me, Countess, if I set you the example of retiring,” I said.
“The only remedy for such a headache as mine is going to bed.”
I took my leave. There was the same insolent smile on the woman’s face
when I shook hands with her. Sir Percival paid no attention to me. He
was looking impatiently at Madame Fosco, who showed no signs of leaving
the room with me. The Count smiled to himself behind his book. There
was yet another delay to that quiet talk with Sir Percival—and the
Countess was the impediment this time.
IX
June 19th.—Once safely shut into my own room, I opened these pages, and
prepared to go on with that part of the day’s record which was still
left to write.
For ten minutes or more I sat idle, with the pen in my hand, thinking
over the events of the last twelve hours. When I at last addressed
myself to my task, I found a difficulty in proceeding with it which
I had never experienced before. In spite of my efforts to fix my
thoughts on the matter in hand, they wandered away with the strangest
persistency in the one direction of Sir Percival and the Count, and
all the interest which I tried to concentrate on my journal centred
instead in that private interview between them which had been put off
all through the day, and which was now to take place in the silence and
solitude of the night.
In this perverse state of my mind, the recollection of what had passed
since the morning would not come back to me, and there was no resource
but to close my journal and to get away from it for a little while.
I opened the door which led from my bedroom into my sitting-room, and
having passed through, pulled it to again, to prevent any accident
in case of draught with the candle left on the dressing-table. My
sitting-room window was wide open, and I leaned out listlessly to look
at the night.
It was dark and quiet. Neither moon nor stars were visible. There was
a smell like rain in the still, heavy air, and I put my hand out of
window. No. The rain was only threatening, it had not come yet.
I remained leaning on the window-sill for nearly a quarter of an hour,
looking out absently into the black darkness, and hearing nothing,
except now and then the voices of the servants, or the distant sound of
a closing door, in the lower part of the house.
Just as I was turning away wearily from the window to go back to the
bedroom and make a second attempt to complete the unfinished entry in
my journal, I smelt the odour of tobacco-smoke stealing towards me on
the heavy night air. The next moment I saw a tiny red spark advancing
from the farther end of the house in the pitch darkness. I heard no
footsteps, and I could see nothing but the spark. It travelled along
in the night, passed the window at which I was standing, and stopped
opposite my bedroom window, inside which I had left the light burning
on the dressing-table.
The spark remained stationary for a moment, then moved back again in
the direction from which it had advanced. As I followed its progress
I saw a second red spark, larger than the first, approaching from the
distance. The two met together in the darkness. Remembering who smoked
cigarettes and who smoked cigars, I inferred immediately that the Count
had come out first to look and listen under my window, and that Sir
Percival had afterwards joined him. They must both have been walking
on the lawn—or I should certainly have heard Sir Percival’s heavy
footfall, though the Count’s soft step might have escaped me, even on
the gravel walk.
I waited quietly at the window, certain that they could neither of them
see me in the darkness of the room.
“What’s the matter?” I heard Sir Percival say in a low voice. “Why
don’t you come in and sit down?”
“I want to see the light out of that window,” replied the Count softly.
“What harm does the light do?”
“It shows she is not in bed yet. She is sharp enough to suspect
something, and bold enough to come downstairs and listen, if she can
get the chance. Patience, Percival—patience.”
“Humbug! You’re always talking of patience.”
“I shall talk of something else presently. My good friend, you are on
the edge of your domestic precipice, and if I let you give the women
one other chance, on my sacred word of honour they will push you over
it!”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“We will come to our explanations, Percival, when the light is out of
that window, and when I have had one little look at the rooms on each
side of the library, and a peep at the staircase as well.”
They slowly moved away, and the rest of the conversation between them
(which had been conducted throughout in the same low tones) ceased to
be audible. It was no matter. I had heard enough to determine me on
justifying the Count’s opinion of my sharpness and my courage. Before
the red sparks were out of sight in the darkness I had made up my mind
that there should be a listener when those two men sat down to their
talk—and that the listener, in spite of all the Count’s precautions to
the contrary, should be myself. I wanted but one motive to sanction the
act to my own conscience, and to give me courage enough for performing
it—and that motive I had. Laura’s honour, Laura’s happiness—Laura’s
life itself—might depend on my quick ears and my faithful memory
to-night.
I had heard the Count say that he meant to examine the rooms on each
side of the library, and the staircase as well, before he entered on
any explanation with Sir Percival. This expression of his intentions
was necessarily sufficient to inform me that the library was the room
in which he proposed that the conversation should take place. The one
moment of time which was long enough to bring me to that conclusion was
also the moment which showed me a means of baffling his precautions—or,
in other words, of hearing what he and Sir Percival said to each other,
without the risk of descending at all into the lower regions of the
house.
In speaking of the rooms on the ground floor I have mentioned
incidentally the verandah outside them, on which they all opened by
means of French windows, extending from the cornice to the floor. The
top of this verandah was flat, the rain-water being carried off from
it by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the house. On the narrow
leaden roof, which ran along past the bedrooms, and which was rather
less, I should think, than three feet below the sills of the window, a
row of flower-pots was ranged, with wide intervals between each pot—the
whole being protected from falling in high winds by an ornamental iron
railing along the edge of the roof.
The plan which had now occurred to me was to get out at my sitting-room
window on to this roof, to creep along noiselessly till I reached
that part of it which was immediately over the library window, and to
crouch down between the flower-pots, with my ear against the outer
railing. If Sir Percival and the Count sat and smoked to-night, as I
had seen them sitting and smoking many nights before, with their chairs
close at the open window, and their feet stretched on the zinc garden
seats which were placed under the verandah, every word they said to
each other above a whisper (and no long conversation, as we all know
by experience, can be carried on IN a whisper) must inevitably reach
my ears. If, on the other hand, they chose to-night to sit far back
inside the room, then the chances were that I should hear little or
nothing—and in that case, I must run the far more serious risk of
trying to outwit them downstairs.
Strongly as I was fortified in my resolution by the desperate nature
of our situation, I hoped most fervently that I might escape this last
emergency. My courage was only a woman’s courage after all, and it was
very near to failing me when I thought of trusting myself on the ground
floor, at the dead of night, within reach of Sir Percival and the Count.
I went softly back to my bedroom to try the safer experiment of the
verandah roof first.
A complete change in my dress was imperatively necessary for many
reasons. I took off my silk gown to begin with, because the slightest
noise from it on that still night might have betrayed me. I next
removed the white and cumbersome parts of my underclothing, and
replaced them by a petticoat of dark flannel. Over this I put my black
travelling cloak, and pulled the hood on to my head. In my ordinary
evening costume I took up the room of three men at least. In my present
dress, when it was held close about me, no man could have passed
through the narrowest spaces more easily than I. The little breadth
left on the roof of the verandah, between the flower-pots on one side
and the wall and the windows of the house on the other, made this a
serious consideration. If I knocked anything down, if I made the least
noise, who could say what the consequences might be?
I only waited to put the matches near the candle before I extinguished
it, and groped my way back into the sitting-room. I locked that door,
as I had locked my bedroom door—then quietly got out of the window, and
cautiously set my feet on the leaden roof of the verandah.
My two rooms were at the inner extremity of the new wing of the house
in which we all lived, and I had five windows to pass before I could
reach the position it was necessary to take up immediately over the
library. The first window belonged to a spare room which was empty. The
second and third windows belonged to Laura’s room. The fourth window
belonged to Sir Percival’s room. The fifth belonged to the Countess’s
room. The others, by which it was not necessary for me to pass, were
the windows of the Count’s dressing-room, of the bathroom, and of the
second empty spare room.
No sound reached my ears—the black blinding darkness of the night was
all round me when I first stood on the verandah, except at that part
of it which Madame Fosco’s window overlooked. There, at the very place
above the library to which my course was directed—there I saw a gleam
of light! The Countess was not yet in bed.
It was too late to draw back—it was no time to wait. I determined to go
on at all hazards, and trust for security to my own caution and to the
darkness of the night. “For Laura’s sake!” I thought to myself, as I
took the first step forward on the roof, with one hand holding my cloak
close round me, and the other groping against the wall of the house.
It was better to brush close by the wall than to risk striking my feet
against the flower-pots within a few inches of me, on the other side.
I passed the dark window of the spare room, trying the leaden roof
at each step with my foot before I risked resting my weight on it. I
passed the dark windows of Laura’s room (“God bless her and keep her
to-night!”). I passed the dark window of Sir Percival’s room. Then I
waited a moment, knelt down with my hands to support me, and so crept
to my position, under the protection of the low wall between the bottom
of the lighted window and the verandah roof.
When I ventured to look up at the window itself I found that the top of
it only was open, and that the blind inside was drawn down. While I was
looking I saw the shadow of Madame Fosco pass across the white field
of the blind—then pass slowly back again. Thus far she could not have
heard me, or the shadow would surely have stopped at the blind, even if
she had wanted courage enough to open the window and look out?