The Woman in White
had for the asking. Go when you please—but take care how you spread
scandals about me and my affairs when you’re out of my service. Tell
the truth, and nothing but the truth, or it will be the worse for you!
See Miss Halcombe for yourself—see if she hasn’t been as well taken
care of in one part of the house as in the other. Remember the doctor’s
own orders that Lady Glyde was to have a change of air at the earliest
possible opportunity. Bear all that well in mind, and then say anything
against me and my proceedings if you dare!”
He poured out these words fiercely, all in a breath, walking backwards
and forwards, and striking about him in the air with his whip.
Nothing that he said or did shook my opinion of the disgraceful series
of falsehoods that he had told in my presence the day before, or of the
cruel deception by which he had separated Lady Glyde from her sister,
and had sent her uselessly to London, when she was half distracted with
anxiety on Miss Halcombe’s account. I naturally kept these thoughts to
myself, and said nothing more to irritate him; but I was not the less
resolved to persist in my purpose. A soft answer turneth away wrath,
and I suppressed my own feelings accordingly when it was my turn to
reply.
“While I am in your service, Sir Percival,” I said, “I hope I know my
duty well enough not to inquire into your motives. When I am out of
your service, I hope I know my own place well enough not to speak of
matters which don’t concern me—”
“When do you want to go?” he asked, interrupting me without ceremony.
“Don’t suppose I am anxious to keep you—don’t suppose I care about your
leaving the house. I am perfectly fair and open in this matter, from
first to last. When do you want to go?”
“I should wish to leave at your earliest convenience, Sir Percival.”
“My convenience has nothing to do with it. I shall be out of the house
for good and all to-morrow morning, and I can settle your accounts
to-night. If you want to study anybody’s convenience, it had better be
Miss Halcombe’s. Mrs. Rubelle’s time is up to-day, and she has reasons
for wishing to be in London to-night. If you go at once, Miss Halcombe
won’t have a soul left here to look after her.”
I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I was quite incapable
of deserting Miss Halcombe in such an emergency as had now befallen
Lady Glyde and herself. After first distinctly ascertaining from Sir
Percival that Mrs. Rubelle was certain to leave at once if I took her
place, and after also obtaining permission to arrange for Mr. Dawson’s
resuming his attendance on his patient, I willingly consented to remain
at Blackwater Park until Miss Halcombe no longer required my services.
It was settled that I should give Sir Percival’s solicitor a week’s
notice before I left, and that he was to undertake the necessary
arrangements for appointing my successor. The matter was discussed in
very few words. At its conclusion Sir Percival abruptly turned on his
heel, and left me free to join Mrs. Rubelle. That singular foreign
person had been sitting composedly on the door-step all this time,
waiting till I could follow her to Miss Halcombe’s room.
I had hardly walked half-way towards the house when Sir Percival, who
had withdrawn in the opposite direction, suddenly stopped and called me
back.
“Why are you leaving my service?” he asked.
The question was so extraordinary, after what had just passed between
us, that I hardly knew what to say in answer to it.
“Mind! I don’t know why you are going,” he went on. “You must give a
reason for leaving me, I suppose, when you get another situation. What
reason? The breaking up of the family? Is that it?”
“There can be no positive objection, Sir Percival, to that reason——”
“Very well! That’s all I want to know. If people apply for your
character, that’s your reason, stated by yourself. You go in
consequence of the breaking up of the family.”
He turned away again before I could say another word, and walked out
rapidly into the grounds. His manner was as strange as his language. I
acknowledge he alarmed me.
Even the patience of Mrs. Rubelle was getting exhausted, when I joined
her at the house door.
“At last!” she said, with a shrug of her lean foreign shoulders. She
led the way into the inhabited side of the house, ascended the stairs,
and opened with her key the door at the end of the passage, which
communicated with the old Elizabethan rooms—a door never previously
used, in my time, at Blackwater Park. The rooms themselves I knew
well, having entered them myself on various occasions from the other
side of the house. Mrs. Rubelle stopped at the third door along the
old gallery, handed me the key of it, with the key of the door of
communication, and told me I should find Miss Halcombe in that room.
Before I went in I thought it desirable to make her understand that her
attendance had ceased. Accordingly, I told her in plain words that the
charge of the sick lady henceforth devolved entirely on myself.
“I am glad to hear it, ma’am,” said Mrs. Rubelle. “I want to go very
much.”
“Do you leave to-day?” I asked, to make sure of her.
“Now that you have taken charge, ma’am, I leave in half an hour’s time.
Sir Percival has kindly placed at my disposition the gardener, and the
chaise, whenever I want them. I shall want them in half an hour’s time
to go to the station. I am packed up in anticipation already. I wish
you good-day, ma’am.”
She dropped a brisk curtsey, and walked back along the gallery, humming
a little tune, and keeping time to it cheerfully with the nosegay in
her hand. I am sincerely thankful to say that was the last I saw of
Mrs. Rubelle.
When I went into the room Miss Halcombe was asleep. I looked at her
anxiously, as she lay in the dismal, high, old-fashioned bed. She was
certainly not in any respect altered for the worse since I had seen her
last. She had not been neglected, I am bound to admit, in any way that
I could perceive. The room was dreary, and dusty, and dark, but the
window (looking on a solitary court-yard at the back of the house) was
opened to let in the fresh air, and all that could be done to make the
place comfortable had been done. The whole cruelty of Sir Percival’s
deception had fallen on poor Lady Glyde. The only ill-usage which
either he or Mrs. Rubelle had inflicted on Miss Halcombe consisted, so
far as I could see, in the first offence of hiding her away.
I stole back, leaving the sick lady still peacefully asleep, to give
the gardener instructions about bringing the doctor. I begged the man,
after he had taken Mrs. Rubelle to the station, to drive round by Mr.
Dawson’s, and leave a message in my name, asking him to call and see
me. I knew he would come on my account, and I knew he would remain when
he found Count Fosco had left the house.
In due course of time the gardener returned, and said that he had
driven round by Mr. Dawson’s residence, after leaving Mrs. Rubelle
at the station. The doctor sent me word that he was poorly in health
himself, but that he would call, if possible, the next morning.
Having delivered his message the gardener was about to withdraw, but I
stopped him to request that he would come back before dark, and sit up
that night, in one of the empty bedrooms, so as to be within call in
case I wanted him. He understood readily enough my unwillingness to be
left alone all night in the most desolate part of that desolate house,
and we arranged that he should come in between eight and nine.
He came punctually, and I found cause to be thankful that I had adopted
the precaution of calling him in. Before midnight Sir Percival’s
strange temper broke out in the most violent and most alarming manner,
and if the gardener had not been on the spot to pacify him on the
instant, I am afraid to think what might have happened.
Almost all the afternoon and evening he had been walking about the
house and grounds in an unsettled, excitable manner, having, in all
probability, as I thought, taken an excessive quantity of wine at
his solitary dinner. However that may be, I heard his voice calling
loudly and angrily in the new wing of the house, as I was taking a
turn backwards and forwards along the gallery the last thing at night.
The gardener immediately ran down to him, and I closed the door of
communication, to keep the alarm, if possible, from reaching Miss
Halcombe’s ears. It was full half an hour before the gardener came
back. He declared that his master was quite out of his senses—not
through the excitement of drink, as I had supposed, but through a kind
of panic or frenzy of mind, for which it was impossible to account. He
had found Sir Percival walking backwards and forwards by himself in
the hall, swearing, with every appearance of the most violent passion,
that he would not stop another minute alone in such a dungeon as his
own house, and that he would take the first stage of his journey
immediately in the middle of the night. The gardener, on approaching
him, had been hunted out, with oaths and threats, to get the horse and
chaise ready instantly. In a quarter of an hour Sir Percival had joined
him in the yard, had jumped into the chaise, and, lashing the horse
into a gallop, had driven himself away, with his face as pale as ashes
in the moonlight. The gardener had heard him shouting and cursing at
the lodge-keeper to get up and open the gate—had heard the wheels roll
furiously on again in the still night, when the gate was unlocked—and
knew no more.
The next day, or a day or two after, I forget which, the chaise was
brought back from Knowlesbury, our nearest town, by the ostler at the
old inn. Sir Percival had stopped there, and had afterwards left by the
train—for what destination the man could not tell. I never received
any further information, either from himself or from any one else, of
Sir Percival’s proceedings, and I am not even aware, at this moment,
whether he is in England or out of it. He and I have not met since he
drove away like an escaped criminal from his own house, and it is my
fervent hope and prayer that we may never meet again.
My own part of this sad family story is now drawing to an end.
I have been informed that the particulars of Miss Halcombe’s waking,
and of what passed between us when she found me sitting by her bedside,
are not material to the purpose which is to be answered by the present
narrative. It will be sufficient for me to say in this place, that she
was not herself conscious of the means adopted to remove her from the
inhabited to the uninhabited part of the house. She was in a deep sleep
at the time, whether naturally or artificially produced she could not
say. In my absence at Torquay, and in the absence of all the resident
servants except Margaret Porcher (who was perpetually eating, drinking,
or sleeping, when she was not at work), the secret transfer of Miss
Halcombe from one part of the house to the other was no doubt easily
performed. Mrs. Rubelle (as I discovered for myself, in looking about
the room) had provisions, and all other necessaries, together with the
means of heating water, broth, and so on, without kindling a fire,
placed at her disposal during the few days of her imprisonment with
the sick lady. She had declined to answer the questions which Miss
Halcombe naturally put, but had not, in other respects, treated her
with unkindness or neglect. The disgrace of lending herself to a vile
deception is the only disgrace with which I can conscientiously charge
Mrs. Rubelle.
I need write no particulars (and I am relieved to know it) of the
effect produced on Miss Halcombe by the news of Lady Glyde’s departure,
or by the far more melancholy tidings which reached us only too soon
afterwards at Blackwater Park. In both cases I prepared her mind