The Woman in White (40 page)

"It would not surprise him if he did hear me."

She made that strange reply with a weary calmness and coldness.
The change in her manner, when she gave the answer, startled me
almost as much as the answer itself.

"Not surprise him!" I repeated. "Laura! remember what you are
saying—you frighten me!"

"It is true," she said; "it is what I wanted to tell you to-day,
when we were talking in your room. My only secret when I opened
my heart to him at Limmeridge was a harmless secret, Marian—you
said so yourself. The name was all I kept from him, and he has
discovered it."

I heard her, but I could say nothing. Her last words had killed
the little hope that still lived in me.

"It happened at Rome," she went on, as wearily calm and cold as
ever. "We were at a little party given to the English by some
friends of Sir Percival's—Mr. and Mrs. Markland. Mrs. Markland
had the reputation of sketching very beautifully, and some of the
guests prevailed on her to show us her drawings. We all admired
them, but something I said attracted her attention particularly to
me. 'Surely you draw yourself?' she asked. 'I used to draw a
little once,' I answered, 'but I have given it up.' 'If you have
once drawn,' she said, 'you may take to it again one of these
days, and if you do, I wish you would let me recommend you a
master.' I said nothing—you know why, Marian—and tried to change
the conversation. But Mrs. Markland persisted. 'I have had all
sorts of teachers,' she went on, 'but the best of all, the most
intelligent and the most attentive, was a Mr. Hartright. If you
ever take up your drawing again, do try him as a master. He is a
young man—modest and gentlemanlike—I am sure you will like him.
'Think of those words being spoken to me publicly, in the presence
of strangers—strangers who had been invited to meet the bride and
bridegroom! I did all I could to control myself—I said nothing,
and looked down close at the drawings. When I ventured to raise
my head again, my eyes and my husband's eyes met, and I knew, by
his look, that my face had betrayed me. 'We will see about Mr.
Hartright,' he said, looking at me all the time, 'when we get back
to England. I agree with you, Mrs. Markland—I think Lady Glyde
is sure to like him.' He laid an emphasis on the last words which
made my cheeks burn, and set my heart beating as if it would
stifle me. Nothing more was said. We came away early. He was
silent in the carriage driving back to the hotel. He helped me
out, and followed me upstairs as usual. But the moment we were in
the drawing-room, he locked the door, pushed me down into a chair,
and stood over me with his hands on my shoulders. 'Ever since
that morning when you made your audacious confession to me at
Limmeridge,' he said, 'I have wanted to find out the man, and I
found him in your face to-night. Your drawing-master was the man,
and his name is Hartright. You shall repent it, and he shall
repent it, to the last hour of your lives. Now go to bed and
dream of him if you like, with the marks of my horsewhip on his
shoulders.' Whenever he is angry with me now he refers to what I
acknowledged to him in your presence with a sneer or a threat. I
have no power to prevent him from putting his own horrible
construction on the confidence I placed in him. I have no
influence to make him believe me, or to keep him silent. You
looked surprised to-day when you heard him tell me that I had made
a virtue of necessity in marrying him. You will not be surprised
again when you hear him repeat it, the next time he is out of
temper—-Oh, Marian! don't! don't! you hurt me!"

I had caught her in my arms, and the sting and torment of my
remorse had closed them round her like a vice. Yes! my remorse.
The white despair of Walter's face, when my cruel words struck him
to the heart in the summer-house at Limmeridge, rose before me in
mute, unendurable reproach. My hand had pointed the way which led
the man my sister loved, step by step, far from his country and
his friends. Between those two young hearts I had stood, to
sunder them for ever, the one from the other, and his life and her
life lay wasted before me alike in witness of the deed. I had
done this, and done it for Sir Percival Glyde.

For Sir Percival Glyde.

I heard her speaking, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she
was comforting me—I, who deserved nothing but the reproach of her
silence! How long it was before I mastered the absorbing misery of
my own thoughts, I cannot tell. I was first conscious that she
was kissing me, and then my eyes seemed to wake on a sudden to
their sense of outward things, and I knew that I was looking
mechanically straight before me at the prospect of the lake.

"It is late," I heard her whisper. "It will be dark in the
plantation." She shook my arm and repeated, "Marian! it will be
dark in the plantation."

"Give me a minute longer," I said—"a minute, to get better in."

I was afraid to trust myself to look at her yet, and I kept my
eyes fixed on the view.

It WAS late. The dense brown line of trees in the sky had faded
in the gathering darkness to the faint resemblance of a long
wreath of smoke. The mist over the lake below had stealthily
enlarged, and advanced on us. The silence was as breathless as
ever, but the horror of it had gone, and the solemn mystery of its
stillness was all that remained.

"We are far from the house," she whispered. "Let us go back."

She stopped suddenly, and turned her face from me towards the
entrance of the boat-house.

"Marian!" she said, trembling violently. "Do you see nothing?
Look!"

"Where?"

"Down there, below us."

She pointed. My eyes followed her hand, and I saw it too.

A living figure was moving over the waste of heath in the
distance. It crossed our range of view from the boat-house, and
passed darkly along the outer edge of the mist. It stopped far
off, in front of us—waited—and passed on; moving slowly, with
the white cloud of mist behind it and above it—slowly, slowly,
till it glided by the edge of the boat-house, and we saw it no
more.

We were both unnerved by what had passed between us that evening.
Some minutes elapsed before Laura would venture into the
plantation, and before I could make up my mind to lead her back to
the house.

"Was it a man or a woman?" she asked in a whisper, as we moved at
last into the dark dampness of the outer air.

"I am not certain."

"Which do you think?"

"It looked like a woman."

"I was afraid it was a man in a long cloak."

"It may be a man. In this dim light it is not possible to be
certain."

"Wait, Marian! I'm frightened—I don't see the path. Suppose the
figure should follow us?"

"Not at all likely, Laura. There is really nothing to be alarmed
about. The shores of the lake are not far from the village, and
they are free to any one to walk on by day or night. It is only
wonderful we have seen no living creature there before."

We were now in the plantation. It was very dark—so dark, that we
found some difficulty in keeping the path. I gave Laura my arm,
and we walked as fast as we could on our way back.

Before we were half-way through she stopped, and forced me to stop
with her. She was listening.

"Hush," she whispered. "I hear something behind us."

"Dead leaves," I said to cheer her, "or a twig blown off the
trees."

"It is summer time, Marian, and there is not a breath of wind.
Listen!"

I heard the sound too—a sound like a light footstep following us.

"No matter who it is, or what it is," I said, "let us walk on. In
another minute, if there is anything to alarm us, we shall be near
enough to the house to be heard."

We went on quickly—so quickly, that Laura was breathless by the
time we were nearly through the plantation, and within sight of
the lighted windows.

I waited a moment to give her breathing-time. Just as we were
about to proceed she stopped me again, and signed to me with her
hand to listen once more. We both heard distinctly a long, heavy
sigh behind us, in the black depths of the trees.

"Who's there?" I called out.

There was no answer.

"Who's there?" I repeated.

An instant of silence followed, and then we heard the light fall
of the footsteps again, fainter and fainter—sinking away into the
darkness—sinking, sinking, sinking—till they were lost in the
silence.

We hurried out from the trees to the open lawn beyond crossed it
rapidly, and without another word passing between us, reached the
house.

In the light of the hall-lamp Laura looked at me, with white
cheeks and startled eyes.

"I am half dead with fear," she said. "Who could it have been?"

"We will try to guess to-morrow," I replied. "In the meantime say
nothing to any one of what we have heard and seen."

"Why not?"

"Because silence is safe, and we have need of safety in this
house."

I sent Laura upstairs immediately, waited a minute to take off my
hat and put my hair smooth, and then went at once to make my first
investigations in the library, on pretence of searching for a
book.

There sat the Count, filling out the largest easy-chair in the
house, smoking and reading calmly, with his feet on an ottoman,
his cravat across his knees, and his shirt collar wide open. And
there sat Madame Fosco, like a quiet child, on a stool by his
side, making cigarettes. Neither husband nor wife could, by any
possibility, have been out late that evening, and have just got
back to the house in a hurry. I felt that my object in visiting
the library was answered the moment I set eyes on them.

Count Fosco rose in polite confusion and tied his cravat on when I
entered the room.

"Pray don't let me disturb you," I said. "I have only come here
to get a book."

"All unfortunate men of my size suffer from the heat," said the
Count, refreshing himself gravely with a large green fan. "I wish
I could change places with my excellent wife. She is as cool at
this moment as a fish in the pond outside."

The Countess allowed herself to thaw under the influence of her
husband's quaint comparison. "I am never warm, Miss Halcombe,"
she remarked, with the modest air of a woman who was confessing to
one of her own merits.

"Have you and Lady Glyde been out this evening?" asked the Count,
while I was taking a book from the shelves to preserve
appearances.

"Yes, we went out to get a little air."

"May I ask in what direction?"

"In the direction of the lake—as far as the boat-house."

"Aha? As far as the boat-house?"

Under other circumstances I might have resented his curiosity.
But to-night I hailed it as another proof that neither he nor his
wife were connected with the mysterious appearance at the lake.

"No more adventures, I suppose, this evening?" he went on. "No
more discoveries, like your discovery of the wounded dog?"

He fixed his unfathomable grey eyes on me, with that cold, clear,
irresistible glitter in them which always forces me to look at
him, and always makes me uneasy while I do look. An unutterable
suspicion that his mind is prying into mine overcomes me at these
times, and it overcame me now.

"No," I said shortly; "no adventures—no discoveries."

I tried to look away from him and leave the room. Strange as it
seems, I hardly think I should have succeeded in the attempt if
Madame Fosco had not helped me by causing him to move and look
away first.

"Count, you are keeping Miss Halcombe standing," she said.

The moment he turned round to get me a chair, I seized my
opportunity—thanked him—made my excuses—and slipped out.

An hour later, when Laura's maid happened to be in her mistress's
room, I took occasion to refer to the closeness of the night, with
a view to ascertaining next how the servants had been passing
their time.

"Have you been suffering much from the heat downstairs?" I asked.

"No, miss," said the girl, "we have not felt it to speak of."

"You have been out in the woods then, I suppose?"

"Some of us thought of going, miss. But cook said she should take
her chair into the cool court-yard, outside the kitchen door, and
on second thoughts, all the rest of us took our chairs out there
too."

The housekeeper was now the only person who remained to be
accounted for.

"Is Mrs. Michelson gone to bed yet?" I inquired.

"I should think not, miss," said the girl, smiling. "Mrs.
Michelson is more likely to be getting up just now than going to
bed."

"Why? What do you mean? Has Mrs. Michelson been taking to her bed
in the daytime?"

"No, miss, not exactly, but the next thing to it. She's been
asleep all the evening on the sofa in her own room."

Putting together what I observed for myself in the library, and
what I have just heard from Laura's maid, one conclusion seems
inevitable. The figure we saw at the lake was not the figure of
Madame Fosco, of her husband, or of any of the servants. The
footsteps we heard behind us were not the footsteps of any one
belonging to the house.

Who could it have been?

It seems useless to inquire. I cannot even decide whether the
figure was a man's or a woman's. I can only say that I think it
was a woman's.

June 18th.—The misery of self-reproach which I suffered yesterday
evening, on hearing what Laura told me in the boat-house, returned
in the loneliness of the night, and kept me waking and wretched
for hours.

I lighted my candle at last, and searched through my old journals
to see what my share in the fatal error of her marriage had really
been, and what I might have once done to save her from it. The
result soothed me a little for it showed that, however blindly and
ignorantly I acted, I acted for the best. Crying generally does me
harm; but it was not so last night—I think it relieved me. I
rose this morning with a settled resolution and a quiet mind.
Nothing Sir Percival can say or do shall ever irritate me again,
or make me forget for one moment that I am staying here in
defiance of mortifications, insults, and threats, for Laura's
service and for Laura's sake.