The Woman in White
“Well, Percival,” he said, “and in the case of Lady Glyde’s death, what
do you get then?”
“If she leaves no children——”
“Which she is likely to do?”
“Which she is not in the least likely to do——”
“Yes?”
“Why, then I get her twenty thousand pounds.”
“Paid down?”
“Paid down.”
They were silent once more. As their voices ceased Madame Fosco’s
shadow darkened the blind again. Instead of passing this time, it
remained, for a moment, quite still. I saw her fingers steal round the
corner of the blind, and draw it on one side. The dim white outline of
her face, looking out straight over me, appeared behind the window. I
kept still, shrouded from head to foot in my black cloak. The rain,
which was fast wetting me, dripped over the glass, blurred it, and
prevented her from seeing anything. “More rain!” I heard her say to
herself. She dropped the blind, and I breathed again freely.
The talk went on below me, the Count resuming it this time.
“Percival! do you care about your wife?”
“Fosco! that’s rather a downright question.”
“I am a downright man, and I repeat it.”
“Why the devil do you look at me in that way?”
“You won’t answer me? Well, then, let us say your wife dies before the
summer is out——”
“Drop it, Fosco!”
“Let us say your wife dies——”
“Drop it, I tell you!”
“In that case, you would gain twenty thousand pounds, and you would
lose——”
“I should lose the chance of three thousand a year.”
“The REMOTE chance, Percival—the remote chance only. And you want
money, at once. In your position the gain is certain—the loss doubtful.”
“Speak for yourself as well as for me. Some of the money I want has
been borrowed for you. And if you come to gain, my wife’s death would
be ten thousand pounds in your wife’s pocket. Sharp as you are, you
seem to have conveniently forgotten Madame Fosco’s legacy. Don’t look
at me in that way! I won’t have it! What with your looks and your
questions, upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!”
“Your flesh? Does flesh mean conscience in English? I speak of your
wife’s death as I speak of a possibility. Why not? The respectable
lawyers who scribble-scrabble your deeds and your wills look the deaths
of living people in the face. Do lawyers make your flesh creep? Why
should I? It is my business to-night to clear up your position beyond
the possibility of mistake, and I have now done it. Here is your
position. If your wife lives, you pay those bills with her signature to
the parchment. If your wife dies, you pay them with her death.”
As he spoke the light in Madame Fosco’s room was extinguished, and the
whole second floor of the house was now sunk in darkness.
“Talk! talk!” grumbled Sir Percival. “One would think, to hear you,
that my wife’s signature to the deed was got already.”
“You have left the matter in my hands,” retorted the Count, “and I
have more than two months before me to turn round in. Say no more
about it, if you please, for the present. When the bills are due, you
will see for yourself if my ‘talk! talk!’ is worth something, or if
it is not. And now, Percival, having done with the money matters for
to-night, I can place my attention at your disposal, if you wish to
consult me on that second difficulty which has mixed itself up with
our little embarrassments, and which has so altered you for the worse,
that I hardly know you again. Speak, my friend—and pardon me if I
shock your fiery national tastes by mixing myself a second glass of
sugar-and-water.”
“It’s very well to say speak,” replied Sir Percival, in a far more
quiet and more polite tone than he had yet adopted, “but it’s not so
easy to know how to begin.”
“Shall I help you?” suggested the Count. “Shall I give this private
difficulty of yours a name? What if I call it—Anne Catherick?”
“Look here, Fosco, you and I have known each other for a long time, and
if you have helped me out of one or two scrapes before this, I have
done the best I could to help you in return, as far as money would go.
We have made as many friendly sacrifices, on both sides, as men could,
but we have had our secrets from each other, of course—haven’t we?”
“You have had a secret from me, Percival. There is a skeleton in your
cupboard here at Blackwater Park that has peeped out in these last few
days at other people besides yourself.”
“Well, suppose it has. If it doesn’t concern you, you needn’t be
curious about it, need you?”
“Do I look curious about it?”
“Yes, you do.”
“So! so! my face speaks the truth, then? What an immense foundation
of good there must be in the nature of a man who arrives at my age,
and whose face has not yet lost the habit of speaking the truth!—Come,
Glyde! let us be candid one with the other. This secret of yours has
sought me: I have not sought it. Let us say I am curious—do you ask me,
as your old friend, to respect your secret, and to leave it, once for
all, in your own keeping?”
“Yes—that’s just what I do ask.”
“Then my curiosity is at an end. It dies in me from this moment.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“What makes you doubt me?”
“I have had some experience, Fosco, of your roundabout ways, and I am
not so sure that you won’t worm it out of me after all.”
The chair below suddenly creaked again—I felt the trellis-work pillar
under me shake from top to bottom. The Count had started to his feet,
and had struck it with his hand in indignation.
“Percival! Percival!” he cried passionately, “do you know me no better
than that? Has all your experience shown you nothing of my character
yet? I am a man of the antique type! I am capable of the most exalted
acts of virtue—when I have the chance of performing them. It has been
the misfortune of my life that I have had few chances. My conception of
friendship is sublime! Is it my fault that your skeleton has peeped out
at me? Why do I confess my curiosity? You poor superficial Englishman,
it is to magnify my own self-control. I could draw your secret out of
you, if I liked, as I draw this finger out of the palm of my hand—you
know I could! But you have appealed to my friendship, and the duties of
friendship are sacred to me. See! I trample my base curiosity under my
feet. My exalted sentiments lift me above it. Recognise them, Percival!
imitate them, Percival! Shake hands—I forgive you.”
His voice faltered over the last words—faltered, as if he were actually
shedding tears!
Sir Percival confusedly attempted to excuse himself, but the Count was
too magnanimous to listen to him.
“No!” he said. “When my friend has wounded me, I can pardon him without
apologies. Tell me, in plain words, do you want my help?”
“Yes, badly enough.”
“And you can ask for it without compromising yourself?”
“I can try, at any rate.”
“Try, then.”
“Well, this is how it stands:—I told you to-day that I had done my best
to find Anne Catherick, and failed.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Fosco! I’m a lost man if I DON’T find her.”
“Ha! Is it so serious as that?”
A little stream of light travelled out under the verandah, and fell
over the gravel-walk. The Count had taken the lamp from the inner part
of the room to see his friend clearly by the light of it.
“Yes!” he said. “Your face speaks the truth this time. Serious,
indeed—as serious as the money matters themselves.”
“More serious. As true as I sit here, more serious!”
The light disappeared again and the talk went on.
“I showed you the letter to my wife that Anne Catherick hid in the
sand,” Sir Percival continued. “There’s no boasting in that letter,
Fosco—she DOES know the Secret.”
“Say as little as possible, Percival, in my presence, of the Secret.
Does she know it from you?”
“No, from her mother.”
“Two women in possession of your private mind—bad, bad, bad, my
friend! One question here, before we go any farther. The motive of
your shutting up the daughter in the asylum is now plain enough to me,
but the manner of her escape is not quite so clear. Do you suspect
the people in charge of her of closing their eyes purposely, at the
instance of some enemy who could afford to make it worth their while?”
“No, she was the best-behaved patient they had—and, like fools, they
trusted her. She’s just mad enough to be shut up, and just sane enough
to ruin me when she’s at large—if you understand that?”
“I do understand it. Now, Percival, come at once to the point, and then
I shall know what to do. Where is the danger of your position at the
present moment?”
“Anne Catherick is in this neighbourhood, and in communication with
Lady Glyde—there’s the danger, plain enough. Who can read the letter
she hid in the sand, and not see that my wife is in possession of the
Secret, deny it as she may?”
“One moment, Percival. If Lady Glyde does know the Secret, she must
know also that it is a compromising secret for you. As your wife,
surely it is her interest to keep it?”
“Is it? I’m coming to that. It might be her interest if she cared
two straws about me. But I happen to be an encumbrance in the way of
another man. She was in love with him before she married me—she’s in
love with him now—an infernal vagabond of a drawing-master, named
Hartright.”
“My dear friend! what is there extraordinary in that? They are all in
love with some other man. Who gets the first of a woman’s heart? In all
my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One.
Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One,
never! He exists, of course—but I have not met with him.”
“Wait! I haven’t done yet. Who do you think helped Anne Catherick to
get the start, when the people from the mad-house were after her?
Hartright. Who do you think saw her again in Cumberland? Hartright.
Both times he spoke to her alone. Stop! don’t interrupt me. The
scoundrel’s as sweet on my wife as she is on him. He knows the Secret,
and she knows the Secret. Once let them both get together again, and
it’s her interest and his interest to turn their information against
me.”
“Gently, Percival—gently! Are you insensible to the virtue of Lady
Glyde?”
“That for the virtue of Lady Glyde! I believe in nothing about her but
her money. Don’t you see how the case stands? She might be harmless
enough by herself; but if she and that vagabond Hartright——”
“Yes, yes, I see. Where is Mr. Hartright?”
“Out of the country. If he means to keep a whole skin on his bones, I
recommend him not to come back in a hurry.”
“Are you sure he is out of the country?”
“Certain. I had him watched from the time he left Cumberland to the
time he sailed. Oh, I’ve been careful, I can tell you! Anne Catherick
lived with some people at a farmhouse near Limmeridge. I went there
myself, after she had given me the slip, and made sure that they knew
nothing. I gave her mother a form of letter to write to Miss Halcombe,
exonerating me from any bad motive in putting her under restraint. I’ve
spent, I’m afraid to say how much, in trying to trace her, and in spite
of it all, she turns up here and escapes me on my own property! How do
I know who else may see her, who else may speak to her? That prying
scoundrel, Hartright, may come back without my knowing it, and may make
use of her to-morrow——”
“Not he, Percival! While I am on the spot, and while that woman is in
the neighbourhood, I will answer for our laying hands on her before
Mr. Hartright—even if he does come back. I see! yes, yes, I see! The
finding of Anne Catherick is the first necessity—make your mind easy
about the rest. Your wife is here, under your thumb—Miss Halcombe is
inseparable from her, and is, therefore, under your thumb also—and Mr.
Hartright is out of the country. This invisible Anne of yours is all we
have to think of for the present. You have made your inquiries?”
“Yes. I have been to her mother, I have ransacked the village—and all