The Woman in White
“Sir, can I enter this room (where you sit a sufferer), and see you
surrounded by these admirable objects of Art, without discovering
that you are a man whose feelings are acutely impressionable, whose
sympathies are perpetually alive? Tell me, can I do this?”
If I had been strong enough to sit up in my chair I should, of course,
have bowed. Not being strong enough, I smiled my acknowledgments
instead. It did just as well, we both understood one another.
“Pray follow my train of thought,” continued the Count. “I sit here,
a man of refined sympathies myself, in the presence of another man of
refined sympathies also. I am conscious of a terrible necessity for
lacerating those sympathies by referring to domestic events of a very
melancholy kind. What is the inevitable consequence? I have done myself
the honour of pointing it out to you already. I sit confused.”
Was it at this point that I began to suspect he was going to bore me? I
rather think it was.
“Is it absolutely necessary to refer to these unpleasant matters?” I
inquired. “In our homely English phrase, Count Fosco, won’t they keep?”
The Count, with the most alarming solemnity, sighed and shook his head.
“Must I really hear them?”
He shrugged his shoulders (it was the first foreign thing he had done
since he had been in the room), and looked at me in an unpleasantly
penetrating manner. My instincts told me that I had better close my
eyes. I obeyed my instincts.
“Please break it gently,” I pleaded. “Anybody dead?”
“Dead!” cried the Count, with unnecessary foreign fierceness. “Mr.
Fairlie, your national composure terrifies me. In the name of Heaven,
what have I said or done to make you think me the messenger of death?”
“Pray accept my apologies,” I answered. “You have said and done
nothing. I make it a rule in these distressing cases always to
anticipate the worst. It breaks the blow by meeting it half-way, and
so on. Inexpressibly relieved, I am sure, to hear that nobody is dead.
Anybody ill?”
I opened my eyes and looked at him. Was he very yellow when he came in,
or had he turned very yellow in the last minute or two? I really can’t
say, and I can’t ask Louis, because he was not in the room at the time.
“Anybody ill?” I repeated, observing that my national composure still
appeared to affect him.
“That is part of my bad news, Mr. Fairlie. Yes. Somebody is ill.”
“Grieved, I am sure. Which of them is it?”
“To my profound sorrow, Miss Halcombe. Perhaps you were in some degree
prepared to hear this? Perhaps when you found that Miss Halcombe did
not come here by herself, as you proposed, and did not write a second
time, your affectionate anxiety may have made you fear that she was
ill?”
I have no doubt my affectionate anxiety had led to that melancholy
apprehension at some time or other, but at the moment my wretched
memory entirely failed to remind me of the circumstance. However, I
said yes, in justice to myself. I was much shocked. It was so very
uncharacteristic of such a robust person as dear Marian to be ill, that
I could only suppose she had met with an accident. A horse, or a false
step on the stairs, or something of that sort.
“Is it serious?” I asked.
“Serious—beyond a doubt,” he replied. “Dangerous—I hope and trust not.
Miss Halcombe unhappily exposed herself to be wetted through by a heavy
rain. The cold that followed was of an aggravated kind, and it has now
brought with it the worst consequence—fever.”
When I heard the word fever, and when I remembered at the same moment
that the unscrupulous person who was now addressing me had just come
from Blackwater Park, I thought I should have fainted on the spot.
“Good God!” I said. “Is it infectious?”
“Not at present,” he answered, with detestable composure. “It may turn
to infection—but no such deplorable complication had taken place when I
left Blackwater Park. I have felt the deepest interest in the case, Mr.
Fairlie—I have endeavoured to assist the regular medical attendant in
watching it—accept my personal assurances of the uninfectious nature of
the fever when I last saw it.”
Accept his assurances! I never was farther from accepting anything in
my life. I would not have believed him on his oath. He was too yellow
to be believed. He looked like a walking-West-Indian-epidemic. He was
big enough to carry typhus by the ton, and to dye the very carpet
he walked on with scarlet fever. In certain emergencies my mind is
remarkably soon made up. I instantly determined to get rid of him.
“You will kindly excuse an invalid,” I said—“but long conferences of
any kind invariably upset me. May I beg to know exactly what the object
is to which I am indebted for the honour of your visit?”
I fervently hoped that this remarkably broad hint would throw him off
his balance—confuse him—reduce him to polite apologies—in short, get
him out of the room. On the contrary, it only settled him in his chair.
He became additionally solemn, and dignified, and confidential. He held
up two of his horrid fingers and gave me another of his unpleasantly
penetrating looks. What was I to do? I was not strong enough to quarrel
with him. Conceive my situation, if you please. Is language adequate to
describe it? I think not.
“The objects of my visit,” he went on, quite irrepressibly, “are
numbered on my fingers. They are two. First, I come to bear my
testimony, with profound sorrow, to the lamentable disagreements
between Sir Percival and Lady Glyde. I am Sir Percival’s oldest
friend—I am related to Lady Glyde by marriage—I am an eye-witness of
all that has happened at Blackwater Park. In those three capacities I
speak with authority, with confidence, with honourable regret. Sir,
I inform you, as the head of Lady Glyde’s family, that Miss Halcombe
has exaggerated nothing in the letter which she wrote to your address.
I affirm that the remedy which that admirable lady has proposed is
the only remedy that will spare you the horrors of public scandal. A
temporary separation between husband and wife is the one peaceable
solution of this difficulty. Part them for the present, and when
all causes of irritation are removed, I, who have now the honour of
addressing you—I will undertake to bring Sir Percival to reason.
Lady Glyde is innocent, Lady Glyde is injured, but—follow my thought
here!—she is, on that very account (I say it with shame), the cause of
irritation while she remains under her husband’s roof. No other house
can receive her with propriety but yours. I invite you to open it.”
Cool. Here was a matrimonial hailstorm pouring in the South of England,
and I was invited, by a man with fever in every fold of his coat, to
come out from the North of England and take my share of the pelting. I
tried to put the point forcibly, just as I have put it here. The Count
deliberately lowered one of his horrid fingers, kept the other up, and
went on—rode over me, as it were, without even the common coachmanlike
attention of crying “Hi!” before he knocked me down.
“Follow my thought once more, if you please,” he resumed. “My first
object you have heard. My second object in coming to this house is
to do what Miss Halcombe’s illness has prevented her from doing for
herself. My large experience is consulted on all difficult matters
at Blackwater Park, and my friendly advice was requested on the
interesting subject of your letter to Miss Halcombe. I understood at
once—for my sympathies are your sympathies—why you wished to see her
here before you pledged yourself to inviting Lady Glyde. You are most
right, sir, in hesitating to receive the wife until you are quite
certain that the husband will not exert his authority to reclaim her.
I agree to that. I also agree that such delicate explanations as this
difficulty involves are not explanations which can be properly disposed
of by writing only. My presence here (to my own great inconvenience) is
the proof that I speak sincerely. As for the explanations themselves,
I—Fosco—I, who know Sir Percival much better than Miss Halcombe knows
him, affirm to you, on my honour and my word, that he will not come
near this house, or attempt to communicate with this house, while
his wife is living in it. His affairs are embarrassed. Offer him his
freedom by means of the absence of Lady Glyde. I promise you he will
take his freedom, and go back to the Continent at the earliest moment
when he can get away. Is this clear to you as crystal? Yes, it is. Have
you questions to address to me? Be it so, I am here to answer. Ask, Mr.
Fairlie—oblige me by asking to your heart’s content.”
He had said so much already in spite of me, and he looked so dreadfully
capable of saying a great deal more also in spite of me, that I
declined his amiable invitation in pure self-defence.
“Many thanks,” I replied. “I am sinking fast. In my state of health
I must take things for granted. Allow me to do so on this occasion.
We quite understand each other. Yes. Much obliged, I am sure, for
your kind interference. If I ever get better, and ever have a second
opportunity of improving our acquaintance—”
He got up. I thought he was going. No. More talk, more time for the
development of infectious influences—in my room, too—remember that, in
my room!
“One moment yet,” he said, “one moment before I take my leave. I ask
permission at parting to impress on you an urgent necessity. It is
this, sir. You must not think of waiting till Miss Halcombe recovers
before you receive Lady Glyde. Miss Halcombe has the attendance of the
doctor, of the housekeeper at Blackwater Park, and of an experienced
nurse as well—three persons for whose capacity and devotion I answer
with my life. I tell you that. I tell you, also, that the anxiety
and alarm of her sister’s illness has already affected the health
and spirits of Lady Glyde, and has made her totally unfit to be of
use in the sick-room. Her position with her husband grows more and
more deplorable and dangerous every day. If you leave her any longer
at Blackwater Park, you do nothing whatever to hasten her sister’s
recovery, and at the same time, you risk the public scandal, which
you and I, and all of us, are bound in the sacred interests of the
family to avoid. With all my soul, I advise you to remove the serious
responsibility of delay from your own shoulders by writing to Lady
Glyde to come here at once. Do your affectionate, your honourable, your
inevitable duty, and whatever happens in the future, no one can lay
the blame on you. I speak from my large experience—I offer my friendly
advice. Is it accepted—Yes, or No?”
I looked at him—merely looked at him—with my sense of his amazing
assurance, and my dawning resolution to ring for Louis and have him
shown out of the room expressed in every line of my face. It is
perfectly incredible, but quite true, that my face did not appear to
produce the slightest impression on him. Born without nerves—evidently
born without nerves.
“You hesitate?” he said. “Mr. Fairlie! I understand that hesitation.
You object—see, sir, how my sympathies look straight down into your
thoughts!—you object that Lady Glyde is not in health and not in
spirits to take the long journey, from Hampshire to this place, by
herself. Her own maid is removed from her, as you know, and of other
servants fit to travel with her, from one end of England to another,
there are none at Blackwater Park. You object, again, that she cannot
comfortably stop and rest in London, on her way here, because she
cannot comfortably go alone to a public hotel where she is a total
stranger. In one breath, I grant both objections—in another breath, I
remove them. Follow me, if you please, for the last time. It was my
intention, when I returned to England with Sir Percival, to settle
myself in the neighbourhood of London. That purpose has just been