The Woman in White
open ground, that I was free. When I at last turned my steps homewards,
it was not till many hours later—not till after dark.
I found Marian waiting for me alone in the little sitting-room. She
had persuaded Laura to go to rest, after first promising to show me
her drawing the moment I came in. The poor little dim faint sketch—so
trifling in itself, so touching in its associations—was propped up
carefully on the table with two books, and was placed where the faint
light of the one candle we allowed ourselves might fall on it to the
best advantage. I sat down to look at the drawing, and to tell Marian,
in whispers, what had happened. The partition which divided us from the
next room was so thin that we could almost hear Laura’s breathing, and
we might have disturbed her if we had spoken aloud.
Marian preserved her composure while I described my interview with Mr.
Kyrle. But her face became troubled when I spoke next of the men who
had followed me from the lawyer’s office, and when I told her of the
discovery of Sir Percival’s return.
“Bad news, Walter,” she said, “the worst news you could bring. Have you
nothing more to tell me?”
“I have something to give you,” I replied, handing her the note which
Mr. Kyrle had confided to my care.
She looked at the address and recognised the handwriting instantly.
“You know your correspondent?” I said.
“Too well,” she answered. “My correspondent is Count Fosco.”
With that reply she opened the note. Her face flushed deeply while she
read it—her eyes brightened with anger as she handed it to me to read
in my turn.
The note contained these lines—
“Impelled by honourable admiration—honourable to myself, honourable to
you—I write, magnificent Marian, in the interests of your tranquillity,
to say two consoling words—
“Fear nothing!
“Exercise your fine natural sense and remain in retirement. Dear
and admirable woman, invite no dangerous publicity. Resignation
is sublime—adopt it. The modest repose of home is eternally
fresh—enjoy it. The storms of life pass harmless over the valley of
Seclusion—dwell, dear lady, in the valley.
“Do this and I authorise you to fear nothing. No new calamity shall
lacerate your sensibilities—sensibilities precious to me as my own. You
shall not be molested, the fair companion of your retreat shall not be
pursued. She has found a new asylum in your heart. Priceless asylum!—I
envy her and leave her there.
“One last word of affectionate warning, of paternal caution, and I tear
myself from the charm of addressing you—I close these fervent lines.
“Advance no farther than you have gone already, compromise no serious
interests, threaten nobody. Do not, I implore you, force me into
action—ME, the Man of Action—when it is the cherished object of my
ambition to be passive, to restrict the vast reach of my energies and
my combinations for your sake. If you have rash friends, moderate
their deplorable ardour. If Mr. Hartright returns to England, hold
no communication with him. I walk on a path of my own, and Percival
follows at my heels. On the day when Mr. Hartright crosses that path,
he is a lost man.”
The only signature to these lines was the initial letter F, surrounded
by a circle of intricate flourishes. I threw the letter on the table
with all the contempt that I felt for it.
“He is trying to frighten you—a sure sign that he is frightened
himself,” I said.
She was too genuine a woman to treat the letter as I treated it. The
insolent familiarity of the language was too much for her self-control.
As she looked at me across the table, her hands clenched themselves in
her lap, and the old quick fiery temper flamed out again brightly in
her cheeks and her eyes.
“Walter!” she said, “if ever those two men are at your mercy, and if
you are obliged to spare one of them, don’t let it be the Count.”
“I will keep this letter, Marian, to help my memory when the time
comes.”
She looked at me attentively as I put the letter away in my pocket-book.
“When the time comes?” she repeated. “Can you speak of the future as
if you were certain of it?—certain after what you have heard in Mr.
Kyrle’s office, after what has happened to you to-day?”
“I don’t count the time from to-day, Marian. All I have done to-day is
to ask another man to act for me. I count from to-morrow——”
“Why from to-morrow?”
“Because to-morrow I mean to act for myself.”
“How?”
“I shall go to Blackwater by the first train, and return, I hope, at
night.”
“To Blackwater!”
“Yes. I have had time to think since I left Mr. Kyrle. His opinion on
one point confirms my own. We must persist to the last in hunting down
the date of Laura’s journey. The one weak point in the conspiracy, and
probably the one chance of proving that she is a living woman, centre
in the discovery of that date.”
“You mean,” said Marian, “the discovery that Laura did not leave
Blackwater Park till after the date of her death on the doctor’s
certificate?”
“Certainly.”
“What makes you think it might have been AFTER? Laura can tell us
nothing of the time she was in London.”
“But the owner of the Asylum told you that she was received there on
the twenty-seventh of July. I doubt Count Fosco’s ability to keep her
in London, and to keep her insensible to all that was passing around
her, more than one night. In that case, she must have started on the
twenty-sixth, and must have come to London one day after the date of
her own death on the doctor’s certificate. If we can prove that date,
we prove our case against Sir Percival and the Count.”
“Yes, yes—I see! But how is the proof to be obtained?”
“Mrs. Michelson’s narrative has suggested to me two ways of trying to
obtain it. One of them is to question the doctor, Mr. Dawson, who must
know when he resumed his attendance at Blackwater Park after Laura
left the house. The other is to make inquiries at the inn to which Sir
Percival drove away by himself at night. We know that his departure
followed Laura’s after the lapse of a few hours, and we may get at the
date in that way. The attempt is at least worth making, and to-morrow I
am determined it shall be made.”
“And suppose it fails—I look at the worst now, Walter; but I will look
at the best if disappointments come to try us—suppose no one can help
you at Blackwater?”
“There are two men who can help me, and shall help me in London—Sir
Percival and the Count. Innocent people may well forget the date—but
THEY are guilty, and THEY know it. If I fail everywhere else, I mean to
force a confession out of one or both of them on my own terms.”
All the woman flushed up in Marian’s face as I spoke.
“Begin with the Count,” she whispered eagerly. “For my sake, begin with
the Count.”
“We must begin, for Laura’s sake, where there is the best chance of
success,” I replied.
The colour faded from her face again, and she shook her head sadly.
“Yes,” she said, “you are right—it was mean and miserable of me to say
that. I try to be patient, Walter, and succeed better now than I did in
happier times. But I have a little of my old temper still left, and it
will get the better of me when I think of the Count!”
“His turn will come,” I said. “But, remember, there is no weak place in
his life that we know of yet.” I waited a little to let her recover her
self-possession, and then spoke the decisive words—
“Marian! There is a weak place we both know of in Sir Percival’s life——”
“You mean the Secret!”
“Yes: the Secret. It is our only sure hold on him. I can force him from
his position of security, I can drag him and his villainy into the
face of day, by no other means. Whatever the Count may have done, Sir
Percival has consented to the conspiracy against Laura from another
motive besides the motive of gain. You heard him tell the Count that he
believed his wife knew enough to ruin him? You heard him say that he
was a lost man if the secret of Anne Catherick was known?”
“Yes! yes! I did.”
“Well, Marian, when our other resources have failed us, I mean to know
the Secret. My old superstition clings to me, even yet. I say again
the woman in white is a living influence in our three lives. The End
is appointed—the End is drawing us on—and Anne Catherick, dead in her
grave, points the way to it still!”
V
The story of my first inquiries in Hampshire is soon told.
My early departure from London enabled me to reach Mr. Dawson’s house
in the forenoon. Our interview, so far as the object of my visit was
concerned, led to no satisfactory result.
Mr. Dawson’s books certainly showed when he had resumed his attendance
on Miss Halcombe at Blackwater Park, but it was not possible to
calculate back from this date with any exactness, without such help
from Mrs. Michelson as I knew she was unable to afford. She could not
say from memory (who, in similar cases, ever can?) how many days had
elapsed between the renewal of the doctor’s attendance on his patient
and the previous departure of Lady Glyde. She was almost certain of
having mentioned the circumstance of the departure to Miss Halcombe,
on the day after it happened—but then she was no more able to fix the
date of the day on which this disclosure took place, than to fix the
date of the day before, when Lady Glyde had left for London. Neither
could she calculate, with any nearer approach to exactness, the time
that had passed from the departure of her mistress, to the period when
the undated letter from Madame Fosco arrived. Lastly, as if to complete
the series of difficulties, the doctor himself, having been ill at
the time, had omitted to make his usual entry of the day of the week
and month when the gardener from Blackwater Park had called on him to
deliver Mrs. Michelson’s message.
Hopeless of obtaining assistance from Mr. Dawson, I resolved to try
next if I could establish the date of Sir Percival’s arrival at
Knowlesbury.
It seemed like a fatality! When I reached Knowlesbury the inn was shut
up, and bills were posted on the walls. The speculation had been a bad
one, as I was informed, ever since the time of the railway. The new
hotel at the station had gradually absorbed the business, and the old
inn (which we knew to be the inn at which Sir Percival had put up),
had been closed about two months since. The proprietor had left the
town with all his goods and chattels, and where he had gone I could not
positively ascertain from any one. The four people of whom I inquired
gave me four different accounts of his plans and projects when he left
Knowlesbury.
There were still some hours to spare before the last train left for
London, and I drove back again in a fly from the Knowlesbury station to
Blackwater Park, with the purpose of questioning the gardener and the
person who kept the lodge. If they, too, proved unable to assist me, my
resources for the present were at an end, and I might return to town.
I dismissed the fly a mile distant from the park, and getting my
directions from the driver, proceeded by myself to the house.
As I turned into the lane from the high-road, I saw a man, with a
carpet-bag, walking before me rapidly on the way to the lodge. He
was a little man, dressed in shabby black, and wearing a remarkably
large hat. I set him down (as well as it was possible to judge) for
a lawyer’s clerk, and stopped at once to widen the distance between
us. He had not heard me, and he walked on out of sight, without
looking back. When I passed through the gates myself, a little while
afterwards, he was not visible—he had evidently gone on to the house.
There were two women in the lodge. One of them was old, the other I
knew at once, by Marian’s description of her, to be Margaret Porcher.
I asked first if Sir Percival was at the Park, and receiving a reply in