The Woman in White (43 page)

"You tried to make her go on?"

"I tried, but she only drew herself away from me again, and leaned
her face and arms against the side of the boat-house. 'Oh!' I
heard her say, with a dreadful, distracted tenderness in her
voice, 'oh! if I could only be buried with your mother! If I could
only wake at her side, when the angel's trumpet sounds, and the
graves give up their dead at the resurrection!'—Marian! I
trembled from head to foot—it was horrible to hear her. 'But
there is no hope of that,' she said, moving a little, so as to
look at me again, 'no hope for a poor stranger like me. I shall
not rest under the marble cross that I washed with my own hands,
and made so white and pure for her sake. Oh no! oh no! God's
mercy, not man's, will take me to her, where the wicked cease from
troubling and the weary are at rest.' She spoke those words
quietly and sorrowfully, with a heavy, hopeless sigh, and then
waited a little. Her face was confused and troubled, she seemed
to be thinking, or trying to think. 'What was it I said just
now?' she asked after a while. 'When your mother is in my mind,
everything else goes out of it. What was I saying? what was I
saying?' I reminded the poor creature, as kindly and delicately as
I could. 'Ah, yes, yes,' she said, still in a vacant, perplexed
manner. 'You are helpless with your wicked husband. Yes. And I
must do what I have come to do here—I must make it up to you for
having been afraid to speak out at a better time.' 'What IS it you
have to tell me?' I asked. 'The Secret that your cruel husband is
afraid of,' she answered. 'I once threatened him with the Secret,
and frightened him. You shall threaten him with the Secret, and
frighten him too.' Her face darkened, and a hard, angry stare
fixed itself in her eyes. She began waving her hand at me in a
vacant, unmeaning manner. 'My mother knows the Secret,' she said.
'My mother has wasted under the Secret half her lifetime. One
day, when I was grown up, she said something to ME. And the next
day your husband—-'"

"Yes! yes! Go on. What did she tell you about your husband?"

"She stopped again, Marian, at that point—-"

"And said no more?"

"And listened eagerly. 'Hush!' she whispered, still waving her
hand at me. 'Hush!' She moved aside out of the doorway, moved
slowly and stealthily, step by step, till I lost her past the edge
of the boat-house."

"Surely you followed her?"

"Yes, my anxiety made me bold enough to rise and follow her. Just
as I reached the entrance, she appeared again suddenly, round the
side of the boat-house. 'The Secret,' I whispered to her—'wait
and tell me the Secret!' She caught hold of my arm, and looked at
me with wild frightened eyes. 'Not now,' she said, 'we are not
alone—we are watched. Come here to-morrow at this time—by
yourself—mind—by yourself.' She pushed me roughly into the boat-
house again, and I saw her no more."

"Oh, Laura, Laura, another chance lost! If I had only been near
you she should not have escaped us. On which side did you lose
sight of her?"

"On the left side, where the ground sinks and the wood is
thickest."

"Did you run out again? did you call after her?"

"How could I? I was too terrified to move or speak."

"But when you DID move—when you came out?"

"I ran back here, to tell you what had happened."

"Did you see any one, or hear any one, in the plantation?"

"No, it seemed to be all still and quiet when I passed through
it."

I waited for a moment to consider. Was this third person,
supposed to have been secretly present at the interview, a
reality, or the creature of Anne Catherick's excited fancy? It was
impossible to determine. The one thing certain was, that we had
failed again on the very brink of discovery—failed utterly and
irretrievably, unless Anne Catherick kept her appointment at the
boat-house for the next day.

"Are you quite sure you have told me everything that passed? Every
word that was said?" I inquired.

"I think so," she answered. "My powers of memory, Marian, are not
like yours. But I was so strongly impressed, so deeply
interested, that nothing of any importance can possibly have
escaped me."

"My dear Laura, the merest trifles are of importance where Anne
Catherick is concerned. Think again. Did no chance reference
escape her as to the place in which she is living at the present
time?"

"None that I can remember."

"Did she not mention a companion and friend—a woman named Mrs.
Clements?"

"Oh yes! yes! I forgot that. She told me Mrs. Clements wanted
sadly to go with her to the lake and take care of her, and begged
and prayed that she would not venture into this neighbourhood
alone."

"Was that all she said about Mrs. Clements?"

"Yes, that was all."

"She told you nothing about the place in which she took refuge
after leaving Todd's Corner?"

"Nothing—I am quite sure."

"Nor where she has lived since? Nor what her illness had been?"

"No, Marian, not a word. Tell me, pray tell me, what you think
about it. I don't know what to think, or what to do next."

"You must do this, my love: You must carefully keep the
appointment at the boat-house to-morrow. It is impossible to say
what interests may not depend on your seeing that woman again.
You shall not be left to yourself a second time. I will follow
you at a safe distance. Nobody shall see me, but I will keep
within hearing of your voice, if anything happens. Anne Catherick
has escaped Walter Hartright, and has escaped you. Whatever
happens, she shall not escape ME."

Laura's eyes read mine attentively.

"You believe," she said, "in this secret that my husband is afraid
of? Suppose, Marian, it should only exist after all in Anne
Catherick's fancy? Suppose she only wanted to see me and to speak
to me, for the sake of old remembrances? Her manner was so
strange—I almost doubted her. Would you trust her in other
things?"

"I trust nothing, Laura, but my own observation of your husband's
conduct. I judge Anne Catherick's words by his actions, and I
believe there is a secret."

I said no more, and got up to leave the room Thoughts were
troubling me which I might have told her if we had spoken together
longer, and which it might have been dangerous for her to know.
The influence of the terrible dream from which she had awakened me
hung darkly and heavily over every fresh impression which the
progress of her narrative produced on my mind. I felt the ominous
future coming close, chilling me with an unutterable awe, forcing
on me the conviction of an unseen design in the long series of
complications which had now fastened round us. I thought of
Hartright—as I saw him in the body when he said farewell; as I
saw him in the spirit in my dream—and I too began to doubt now
whether we were not advancing blindfold to an appointed and an
inevitable end.

Leaving Laura to go upstairs alone, I went out to look about me in
the walks near the house. The circumstances under which Anne
Catherick had parted from her had made me secretly anxious to know
how Count Fosco was passing the afternoon, and had rendered me
secretly distrustful of the results of that solitary journey from
which Sir Percival had returned but a few hours since.

After looking for them in every direction and discovering nothing,
I returned to the house, and entered the different rooms on the
ground floor one after another. They were all empty. I came out
again into the hall, and went upstairs to return to Laura. Madame
Fosco opened her door as I passed it in my way along the passage,
and I stopped to see if she could inform me of the whereabouts of
her husband and Sir Percival. Yes, she had seen them both from
her window more than an hour since. The Count had looked up with
his customary kindness, and had mentioned with his habitual
attention to her in the smallest trifles, that he and his friend
were going out together for a long walk.

For a long walk! They had never yet been in each other's company
with that object in my experience of them. Sir Percival cared for
no exercise but riding, and the Count (except when he was polite
enough to be my escort) cared for no exercise at all.

When I joined Laura again, I found that she had called to mind in
my absence the impending question of the signature to the deed,
which, in the interest of discussing her interview with Anne
Catherick, we had hitherto overlooked. Her first words when I saw
her expressed her surprise at the absence of the expected summons
to attend Sir Percival in the library.

"You may make your mind easy on that subject," I said. "For the
present, at least, neither your resolution nor mine will be
exposed to any further trial. Sir Percival has altered his plans—
the business of the signature is put off."

"Put off?" Laura repeated amazedly. "Who told you so?"

"My authority is Count Fosco. I believe it is to his interference
that we are indebted for your husband's sudden change of purpose."

"It seems impossible, Marian. If the object of my signing was, as
we suppose, to obtain money for Sir Percival that he urgently
wanted, how can the matter be put off?"

"I think, Laura, we have the means at hand of setting that doubt
at rest. Have you forgotten the conversation that I heard between
Sir Percival and the lawyer as they were crossing the hall?"

"No, but I don't remember—-"

"I do. There were two alternatives proposed. One was to obtain
your signature to the parchment. The other was to gain time by
giving bills at three months. The last resource is evidently the
resource now adopted, and we may fairly hope to be relieved from
our share in Sir Percival's embarrassments for some time to come."

"Oh, Marian, it sounds too good to be true!"

"Does it, my love? You complimented me on my ready memory not long
since, but you seem to doubt it now. I will get my journal, and
you shall see if I am right or wrong."

I went away and got the book at once.

On looking back to the entry referring to the lawyer's visit, we
found that my recollection of the two alternatives presented was
accurately correct. It was almost as great a relief to my mind as
to Laura's, to find that my memory had served me, on this
occasion, as faithfully as usual. In the perilous uncertainty of
our present situation, it is hard to say what future interests may
not depend upon the regularity of the entries in my journal, and
upon the reliability of my recollection at the time when I make
them.

Laura's face and manner suggested to me that this last
consideration had occurred to her as well as to myself. Anyway,
it is only a trifling matter, and I am almost ashamed to put it
down here in writing—it seems to set the forlornness of our
situation in such a miserably vivid light. We must have little
indeed to depend on, when the discovery that my memory can still
be trusted to serve us is hailed as if it was the discovery of a
new friend!

The first bell for dinner separated us. Just as it had done
ringing, Sir Percival and the Count returned from their walk. We
heard the master of the house storming at the servants for being
five minutes late, and the master's guest interposing, as usual,
in the interests of propriety, patience, and peace.

The evening has come and gone. No extraordinary event has
happened. But I have noticed certain peculiarities in the conduct
of Sir Percival and the Count, which have sent me to my bed
feeling very anxious and uneasy about Anne Catherick, and about
the results which to-morrow may produce.

I know enough by this time, to be sure, that the aspect of Sir
Percival which is the most false, and which, therefore, means the
worst, is his polite aspect. That long walk with his friend had
ended in improving his manners, especially towards his wife. To
Laura's secret surprise and to my secret alarm, he called her by
her Christian name, asked if she had heard lately from her uncle,
inquired when Mrs. Vesey was to receive her invitation to
Blackwater, and showed her so many other little attentions that he
almost recalled the days of his hateful courtship at Limmeridge
House. This was a bad sign to begin with, and I thought it more
ominous still that he should pretend after dinner to fall asleep
in the drawing-room, and that his eyes should cunningly follow
Laura and me when he thought we neither of us suspected him. I
have never had any doubt that his sudden journey by himself took
him to Welmingham to question Mrs. Catherick—but the experience
of to-night has made me fear that the expedition was not
undertaken in vain, and that he has got the information which he
unquestionably left us to collect. If I knew where Anne Catherick
was to be found, I would be up to-morrow with sunrise and warn
her.

While the aspect under which Sir Percival presented himself to-
night was unhappily but too familiar to me, the aspect under which
the Count appeared was, on the other hand, entirely new in my
experience of him. He permitted me, this evening, to make his
acquaintance, for the first time, in the character of a Man of
Sentiment—of sentiment, as I believe, really felt, not assumed
for the occasion.

For instance, he was quiet and subdued—his eyes and his voice
expressed a restrained sensibility. He wore (as if there was some
hidden connection between his showiest finery and his deepest
feeling) the most magnificent waistcoat he has yet appeared in—it
was made of pale sea-green silk, and delicately trimmed with fine
silver braid. His voice sank into the tenderest inflections, his
smile expressed a thoughtful, fatherly admiration, whenever he
spoke to Laura or to me. He pressed his wife's hand under the
table when she thanked him for trifling little attentions at
dinner. He took wine with her. "Your health and happiness, my
angel!" he said, with fond glistening eyes. He ate little or
nothing, and sighed, and said "Good Percival!" when his friend
laughed at him. After dinner, he took Laura by the hand, and
asked her if she would be "so sweet as to play to him." She
complied, through sheer astonishment. He sat by the piano, with
his watch-chain resting in folds, like a golden serpent, on the
sea-green protuberance of his waistcoat. His immense head lay
languidly on one side, and he gently beat time with two of his
yellow-white fingers. He highly approved of the music, and
tenderly admired Laura's manner of playing—not as poor Hartright
used to praise it, with an innocent enjoyment of the sweet sounds,
but with a clear, cultivated, practical knowledge of the merits of
the composition, in the first place, and of the merits of the
player's touch in the second. As the evening closed in, he begged
that the lovely dying light might not be profaned, just yet, by
the appearance of the lamps. He came, with his horribly silent
tread, to the distant window at which I was standing, to be out of
his way and to avoid the very sight of him—he came to ask me to
support his protest against the lamps. If any one of them could
only have burnt him up at that moment, I would have gone down to
the kitchen and fetched it myself.