The Woman in White (35 page)

"Don't ask him any questions if he does. Don't take him into our
confidence!"

"You seem to dislike him, Laura, in a very determined manner.
What has he said or done to justify you?"

"Nothing, Marian. On the contrary, he was all kindness and
attention on our journey home, and he several times checked Sir
Percival's outbreaks of temper, in the most considerate manner
towards me. Perhaps I dislike him because he has so much more
power over my husband than I have. Perhaps it hurts my pride to
be under any obligations to his interference. All I know is, that
I DO dislike him."

The rest of the day and evening passed quietly enough. The Count
and I played at chess. For the first two games he politely
allowed me to conquer him, and then, when he saw that I had found
him out, begged my pardon, and at the third game checkmated me in
ten minutes. Sir Percival never once referred, all through the
evening, to the lawyer's visit. But either that event, or
something else, had produced a singular alteration for the better
in him. He was as polite and agreeable to all of us, as he used
to be in the days of his probation at Limmeridge, and he was so
amazingly attentive and kind to his wife, that even icy Madame
Fosco was roused into looking at him with a grave surprise. What
does this mean? I think I can guess—I am afraid Laura can guess—
and I am sure Count Fosco knows. I caught Sir Percival looking at
him for approval more than once in the course of the evening.

June 17th.—A day of events. I most fervently hope I may not have
to add, a day of disasters as well.

Sir Percival was as silent at breakfast as he had been the evening
before, on the subject of the mysterious "arrangement" (as the
lawyer called it) which is hanging over our heads. An hour
afterwards, however, he suddenly entered the morning-room, where
his wife and I were waiting, with our hats on, for Madame Fosco to
join us, and inquired for the Count.

"We expect to see him here directly," I said.

"The fact is," Sir Percival went on, walking nervously about the
room, "I want Fosco and his wife in the library, for a mere
business formality, and I want you there, Laura, for a minute
too." He stopped, and appeared to notice, for the first time, that
we were in our walking costume. "Have you just come in?" he
asked, "or were you just going out?"

"We were all thinking of going to the lake this morning," said
Laura. "But if you have any other arrangement to propose—-"

"No, no," he answered hastily. "My arrangement can wait. After
lunch will do as well for it as after breakfast. All going to the
lake, eh? A good idea. Let's have an idle morning—I'll be one of
the party."

There was no mistaking his manner, even if it had been possible to
mistake the uncharacteristic readiness which his words expressed,
to submit his own plans and projects to the convenience of others.
He was evidently relieved at finding any excuse for delaying the
business formality in the library, to which his own words had
referred. My heart sank within me as I drew the inevitable
inference.

The Count and his wife joined us at that moment. The lady had her
husband's embroidered tobacco-pouch, and her store of paper in her
hand, for the manufacture of the eternal cigarettes. The
gentleman, dressed, as usual, in his blouse and straw hat, carried
the gay little pagoda-cage, with his darling white mice in it, and
smiled on them, and on us, with a bland amiability which it was
impossible to resist.

"With your kind permission," said the Count, "I will take my small
family here—my poor-little-harmless-pretty-Mouseys, out for an
airing along with us. There are dogs about the house, and shall I
leave my forlorn white children at the mercies of the dogs? Ah,
never!"

He chirruped paternally at his small white children through the
bars of the pagoda, and we all left the house for the lake.

In the plantation Sir Percival strayed away from us. It seems to
be part of his restless disposition always to separate himself
from his companions on these occasions, and always to occupy
himself when he is alone in cutting new walking-sticks for his own
use. The mere act of cutting and lopping at hazard appears to
please him. He has filled the house with walking-sticks of his
own making, not one of which he ever takes up for a second time.
When they have been once used his interest in them is all
exhausted, and he thinks of nothing but going on and making more.

At the old boat-house he joined us again. I will put down the
conversation that ensued when we were all settled in our places
exactly as it passed. It is an important conversation, so far as
I am concerned, for it has seriously disposed me to distrust the
influence which Count Fosco has exercised over my thoughts and
feelings, and to resist it for the future as resolutely as I can.

The boat-house was large enough to hold us all, but Sir Percival
remained outside trimming the last new stick with his pocket-axe.
We three women found plenty of room on the large seat. Laura took
her work, and Madame Fosco began her cigarettes. I, as usual, had
nothing to do. My hands always were, and always will be, as
awkward as a man's. The Count good-humouredly took a stool many
sizes too small for him, and balanced himself on it with his back
against the side of the shed, which creaked and groaned under his
weight. He put the pagoda-cage on his lap, and let out the mice
to crawl over him as usual. They are pretty, innocent-looking
little creatures, but the sight of them creeping about a man's
body is for some reason not pleasant to me. It excites a strange
responsive creeping in my own nerves, and suggests hideous ideas
of men dying in prison with the crawling creatures of the dungeon
preying on them undisturbed.

The morning was windy and cloudy, and the rapid alternations of
shadow and sunlight over the waste of the lake made the view look
doubly wild, weird, and gloomy.

"Some people call that picturesque," said Sir Percival, pointing
over the wide prospect with his half-finished walking-stick. "I
call it a blot on a gentleman's property. In my great-
grandfather's time the lake flowed to this place. Look at it now!
It is not four feet deep anywhere, and it is all puddles and
pools. I wish I could afford to drain it, and plant it all over.
My bailiff (a superstitious idiot) says he is quite sure the lake
has a curse on it, like the Dead Sea. What do you think, Fosco?
It looks just the place for a murder, doesn't it?"

"My good Percival," remonstrated the Count. "What is your solid
English sense thinking of? The water is too shallow to hide the
body, and there is sand everywhere to print off the murderer's
footsteps. It is, upon the whole, the very worst place for a
murder that I ever set my eyes on."

"Humbug!" said Sir Percival, cutting away fiercely at his stick.
"You know what I mean. The dreary scenery, the lonely situation.
If you choose to understand me, you can—if you don't choose, I am
not going to trouble myself to explain my meaning."

"And why not," asked the Count, "when your meaning can be
explained by anybody in two words? If a fool was going to commit a
murder, your lake is the first place he would choose for it. If a
wise man was going to commit a murder, your lake is the last place
he would choose for it. Is that your meaning? If it is, there is
your explanation for you ready made. Take it, Percival, with your
good Fosco's blessing."

Laura looked at the Count with her dislike for him appearing a
little too plainly in her face. He was so busy with his mice that
he did not notice her.

"I am sorry to hear the lake-view connected with anything so
horrible as the idea of murder," she said. "And if Count Fosco
must divide murderers into classes, I think he has been very
unfortunate in his choice of expressions. To describe them as
fools only seems like treating them with an indulgence to which
they have no claim. And to describe them as wise men sounds to me
like a downright contradiction in terms. I have always heard that
truly wise men are truly good men, and have a horror of crime."

"My dear lady," said the Count, "those are admirable sentiments,
and I have seen them stated at the tops of copy-books." He lifted
one of the white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in
his whimsical way. "My pretty little smooth white rascal," he
said, "here is a moral lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a
truly good mouse. Mention that, if you please, to your
companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your cage again as long
as you live."

"It is easy to turn everything into ridicule," said Laura
resolutely; "but you will not find it quite so easy, Count Fosco,
to give me an instance of a wise man who has been a great
criminal."

The Count shrugged his huge shoulders, and smiled on Laura in the
friendliest manner.

"Most true!" he said. "The fool's crime is the crime that is
found out, and the wise man's crime is the crime that is NOT found
out. If I could give you an instance, it would not be the
instance of a wise man. Dear Lady Glyde, your sound English
common sense has been too much for me. It is checkmate for me
this time, Miss Halcombe—ha?"

"Stand to your guns, Laura," sneered Sir Percival, who had been
listening in his place at the door. "Tell him next, that crimes
cause their own detection. There's another bit of copy-book
morality for you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What
infernal humbug!"

"I believe it to be true," said Laura quietly.

Sir Percival burst out laughing, so violently, so outrageously,
that he quite startled us all—the Count more than any of us.

"I believe it too," I said, coming to Laura's rescue.

Sir Percival, who had been unaccountably amused at his wife's
remark, was just as unaccountably irritated by mine. He struck
the new stick savagely on the sand, and walked away from us.

"Poor dear Percival!" cried Count Fosco, looking after him gaily,
"he is the victim of English spleen. But, my dear Miss Halcombe,
my dear Lady Glyde, do you really believe that crimes cause their
own detection? And you, my angel," he continued, turning to his
wife, who had not uttered a word yet, "do you think so too?"

"I wait to be instructed," replied the Countess, in tones of
freezing reproof, intended for Laura and me, "before I venture on
giving my opinion in the presence of well-informed men."

"Do you, indeed?" I said. "I remember the time, Countess, when
you advocated the Rights of Women, and freedom of female opinion
was one of them."

"What is your view of the subject, Count?" asked Madame Fosco,
calmly proceeding with her cigarettes, and not taking the least
notice of me.

The Count stroked one of his white mice reflectively with his
chubby little finger before he answered.

"It is truly wonderful," he said, "how easily Society can console
itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of
clap-trap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime
is miserably ineffective—and yet only invent a moral epigram,
saying that it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders
from that moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And
murder will out (another moral epigram), will it? Ask Coroners who
sit at inquests in large towns if that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask
secretaries of life-assurance companies if that is true, Miss
Halcombe. Read your own public journals. In the few cases that
get into the newspapers, are there not instances of slain bodies
found, and no murderers ever discovered? Multiply the cases that
are reported by the cases that are NOT reported, and the bodies
that are found by the bodies that are NOT found, and what
conclusion do you come to? This. That there are foolish criminals
who are discovered, and wise criminals who escape. The hiding of
a crime, or the detection of a crime, what is it? A trial of skill
between the police on one side, and the individual on the other.
When the criminal is a brutal, ignorant fool, the police in nine
cases out of ten win. When the criminal is a resolute, educated,
highly-intelligent man, the police in nine cases out of ten lose.
If the police win, you generally hear all about it. If the police
lose, you generally hear nothing. And on this tottering
foundation you build up your comfortable moral maxim that Crime
causes its own detection! Yes—all the crime you know of. And
what of the rest?"

"Devilish true, and very well put," cried a voice at the entrance
of the boat-house. Sir Percival had recovered his equanimity, and
had come back while we were listening to the Count.

"Some of it may be true," I said, "and all of it may be very well
put. But I don't see why Count Fosco should celebrate the victory
of the criminal over Society with so much exultation, or why you,
Sir Percival, should applaud him so loudly for doing it."

"Do you hear that, Fosco?" asked Sir Percival. "Take my advice,
and make your peace with your audience. Tell them virtue's a fine
thing—they like that, I can promise you."

The Count laughed inwardly and silently, and two of the white mice
in his waistcoat, alarmed by the internal convulsion going on
beneath them, darted out in a violent hurry, and scrambled into
their cage again.

"The ladies, my good Percival, shall tell me about virtue," he
said. "They are better authorities than I am, for they know what
virtue is, and I don't."

"You hear him?" said Sir Percival. "Isn't it awful?"

"It is true," said the Count quietly. "I am a citizen of the
world, and I have met, in my time, with so many different sorts of
virtue, that I am puzzled, in my old age, to say which is the
right sort and which is the wrong. Here, in England, there is one
virtue. And there, in China, there is another virtue. And John
Englishman says my virtue is the genuine virtue. And John
Chinaman says my virtue is the genuine virtue. And I say Yes to
one, or No to the other, and am just as much bewildered about it
in the case of John with the top-boots as I am in the case of John
with the pigtail. Ah, nice little Mousey! come, kiss me. What is
your own private notion of a virtuous man, my pret-pret-pretty? A
man who keeps you warm, and gives you plenty to eat. And a good
notion, too, for it is intelligible, at the least."