The Woman in White
first,” he replied. “Have you forgotten the letter he wrote to her
at the beginning of her illness? It was shown to you, you read it
yourself, and you ought to remember it.”
“I do remember it.”
“If you do, why should you be surprised at her leaving you? You want to
be back at Limmeridge, and she has gone there to get your uncle’s leave
for you on his own terms.”
Poor Lady Glyde’s eyes filled with tears.
“Marian never left me before,” she said, “without bidding me good-bye.”
“She would have bid you good-bye this time,” returned Sir Percival, “if
she had not been afraid of herself and of you. She knew you would try
to stop her, she knew you would distress her by crying. Do you want to
make any more objections? If you do, you must come downstairs and ask
questions in the dining-room. These worries upset me. I want a glass of
wine.”
He left us suddenly.
His manner all through this strange conversation had been very unlike
what it usually was. He seemed to be almost as nervous and fluttered,
every now and then, as his lady herself. I should never have supposed
that his health had been so delicate, or his composure so easy to upset.
I tried to prevail on Lady Glyde to go back to her room, but it was
useless. She stopped in the passage, with the look of a woman whose
mind was panic-stricken.
“Something has happened to my sister!” she said.
“Remember, my lady, what surprising energy there is in Miss Halcombe,”
I suggested. “She might well make an effort which other ladies in her
situation would be unfit for. I hope and believe there is nothing
wrong—I do indeed.”
“I must follow Marian,” said her ladyship, with the same panic-stricken
look. “I must go where she has gone, I must see that she is alive and
well with my own eyes. Come! come down with me to Sir Percival.”
I hesitated, fearing that my presence might be considered an intrusion.
I attempted to represent this to her ladyship, but she was deaf to me.
She held my arm fast enough to force me to go downstairs with her,
and she still clung to me with all the little strength she had at the
moment when I opened the dining-room door.
Sir Percival was sitting at the table with a decanter of wine before
him. He raised the glass to his lips as we went in and drained it at a
draught. Seeing that he looked at me angrily when he put it down again,
I attempted to make some apology for my accidental presence in the room.
“Do you suppose there are any secrets going on here?” he broke out
suddenly; “there are none—there is nothing underhand, nothing kept from
you or from any one.” After speaking those strange words loudly and
sternly, he filled himself another glass of wine and asked Lady Glyde
what she wanted of him.
“If my sister is fit to travel I am fit to travel” said her ladyship,
with more firmness than she had yet shown. “I come to beg you will make
allowances for my anxiety about Marian, and let me follow her at once
by the afternoon train.”
“You must wait till to-morrow,” replied Sir Percival, “and then if you
don’t hear to the contrary you can go. I don’t suppose you are at all
likely to hear to the contrary, so I shall write to Fosco by to-night’s
post.”
He said those last words holding his glass up to the light, and looking
at the wine in it instead of at Lady Glyde. Indeed he never once looked
at her throughout the conversation. Such a singular want of good
breeding in a gentleman of his rank impressed me, I own, very painfully.
“Why should you write to Count Fosco?” she asked, in extreme surprise.
“To tell him to expect you by the midday train,” said Sir Percival. “He
will meet you at the station when you get to London, and take you on to
sleep at your aunt’s in St. John’s Wood.”
Lady Glyde’s hand began to tremble violently round my arm—why I could
not imagine.
“There is no necessity for Count Fosco to meet me,” she said. “I would
rather not stay in London to sleep.”
“You must. You can’t take the whole journey to Cumberland in one
day. You must rest a night in London—and I don’t choose you to go by
yourself to an hotel. Fosco made the offer to your uncle to give you
house-room on the way down, and your uncle has accepted it. Here! here
is a letter from him addressed to yourself. I ought to have sent it up
this morning, but I forgot. Read it and see what Mr. Fairlie himself
says to you.”
Lady Glyde looked at the letter for a moment and then placed it in my
hands.
“Read it,” she said faintly. “I don’t know what is the matter with me.
I can’t read it myself.”
It was a note of only four lines—so short and so careless that it quite
struck me. If I remember correctly it contained no more than these
words—
“Dearest Laura, Please come whenever you like. Break the journey
by sleeping at your aunt’s house. Grieved to hear of dear Marian’s
illness. Affectionately yours, Frederick Fairlie.”
“I would rather not go there—I would rather not stay a night in
London,” said her ladyship, breaking out eagerly with those words
before I had quite done reading the note, short as it was. “Don’t write
to Count Fosco! Pray, pray don’t write to him!”
Sir Percival filled another glass from the decanter so awkwardly that
he upset it and spilt all the wine over the table. “My sight seems to
be failing me,” he muttered to himself, in an odd, muffled voice. He
slowly set the glass up again, refilled it, and drained it once more at
a draught. I began to fear, from his look and manner, that the wine was
getting into his head.
“Pray don’t write to Count Fosco,” persisted Lady Glyde, more earnestly
than ever.
“Why not, I should like to know?” cried Sir Percival, with a sudden
burst of anger that startled us both. “Where can you stay more properly
in London than at the place your uncle himself chooses for you—at your
aunt’s house? Ask Mrs. Michelson.”
The arrangement proposed was so unquestionably the right and the
proper one, that I could make no possible objection to it. Much as I
sympathised with Lady Glyde in other respects, I could not sympathise
with her in her unjust prejudices against Count Fosco. I never before
met with any lady of her rank and station who was so lamentably
narrow-minded on the subject of foreigners. Neither her uncle’s note
nor Sir Percival’s increasing impatience seemed to have the least
effect on her. She still objected to staying a night in London, she
still implored her husband not to write to the Count.
“Drop it!” said Sir Percival, rudely turning his back on us. “If you
haven’t sense enough to know what is best for yourself other people
must know it for you. The arrangement is made and there is an end of
it. You are only wanted to do what Miss Halcombe has done before you—-”
“Marian?” repeated her Ladyship, in a bewildered manner; “Marian
sleeping in Count Fosco’s house!”
“Yes, in Count Fosco’s house. She slept there last night to break the
journey, and you are to follow her example, and do what your uncle
tells you. You are to sleep at Fosco’s to-morrow night, as your sister
did, to break the journey. Don’t throw too many obstacles in my way!
don’t make me repent of letting you go at all!”
He started to his feet, and suddenly walked out into the verandah
through the open glass doors.
“Will your ladyship excuse me,” I whispered, “if I suggest that we
had better not wait here till Sir Percival comes back? I am very much
afraid he is over-excited with wine.”
She consented to leave the room in a weary, absent manner.
As soon as we were safe upstairs again, I did all I could to compose
her ladyship’s spirits. I reminded her that Mr. Fairlie’s letters to
Miss Halcombe and to herself did certainly sanction, and even render
necessary, sooner or later, the course that had been taken. She agreed
to this, and even admitted, of her own accord, that both letters were
strictly in character with her uncle’s peculiar disposition—but her
fears about Miss Halcombe, and her unaccountable dread of sleeping
at the Count’s house in London, still remained unshaken in spite of
every consideration that I could urge. I thought it my duty to protest
against Lady Glyde’s unfavourable opinion of his lordship, and I did
so, with becoming forbearance and respect.
“Your ladyship will pardon my freedom,” I remarked, in conclusion, “but
it is said, ‘by their fruits ye shall know them.’ I am sure the Count’s
constant kindness and constant attention, from the very beginning of
Miss Halcombe’s illness, merit our best confidence and esteem. Even
his lordship’s serious misunderstanding with Mr. Dawson was entirely
attributable to his anxiety on Miss Halcombe’s account.”
“What misunderstanding?” inquired her ladyship, with a look of sudden
interest.
I related the unhappy circumstances under which Mr. Dawson had
withdrawn his attendance—mentioning them all the more readily because I
disapproved of Sir Percival’s continuing to conceal what had happened
(as he had done in my presence) from the knowledge of Lady Glyde.
Her ladyship started up, with every appearance of being additionally
agitated and alarmed by what I had told her.
“Worse! worse than I thought!” she said, walking about the room, in a
bewildered manner. “The Count knew Mr. Dawson would never consent to
Marian’s taking a journey—he purposely insulted the doctor to get him
out of the house.”
“Oh, my lady! my lady!” I remonstrated.
“Mrs. Michelson!” she went on vehemently, “no words that ever were
spoken will persuade me that my sister is in that man’s power and in
that man’s house with her own consent. My horror of him is such, that
nothing Sir Percival could say and no letters my uncle could write,
would induce me, if I had only my own feelings to consult, to eat,
drink, or sleep under his roof. But my misery of suspense about Marian
gives me the courage to follow her anywhere, to follow her even into
Count Fosco’s house.”
I thought it right, at this point, to mention that Miss Halcombe had
already gone on to Cumberland, according to Sir Percival’s account of
the matter.
“I am afraid to believe it!” answered her ladyship. “I am afraid she is
still in that man’s house. If I am wrong, if she has really gone on to
Limmeridge, I am resolved I will not sleep to-morrow night under Count
Fosco’s roof. My dearest friend in the world, next to my sister, lives
near London. You have heard me, you have heard Miss Halcombe, speak
of Mrs. Vesey? I mean to write, and propose to sleep at her house. I
don’t know how I shall get there—I don’t know how I shall avoid the
Count—but to that refuge I will escape in some way, if my sister has
gone to Cumberland. All I ask of you to do, is to see yourself that
my letter to Mrs. Vesey goes to London to-night, as certainly as Sir
Percival’s letter goes to Count Fosco. I have reasons for not trusting
the post-bag downstairs. Will you keep my secret, and help me in this?
it is the last favour, perhaps, that I shall ever ask of you.”
I hesitated, I thought it all very strange, I almost feared that her
ladyship’s mind had been a little affected by recent anxiety and
suffering. At my own risk, however, I ended by giving my consent. If
the letter had been addressed to a stranger, or to any one but a lady
so well known to me by report as Mrs. Vesey, I might have refused.
I thank God—looking to what happened afterwards—I thank God I never
thwarted that wish, or any other, which Lady Glyde expressed to me, on
the last day of her residence at Blackwater Park.
The letter was written and given into my hands. I myself put it into
the post-box in the village that evening.
We saw nothing more of Sir Percival for the rest of the day.
I slept, by Lady Glyde’s own desire, in the next room to hers, with the
door open between us. There was something so strange and dreadful in