The Woman in White (44 page)

"Surely you like this modest, trembling English twilight?" he said
softly. "Ah! I love it. I feel my inborn admiration of all that
is noble, and great, and good, purified by the breath of heaven on
an evening like this. Nature has such imperishable charms, such
inextinguishable tenderness for me!—I am an old, fat man—talk
which would become your lips, Miss Halcombe, sounds like a
derision and a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at in my
moments of sentiment, as if my soul was like myself, old and
overgrown. Observe, dear lady, what a light is dying on the
trees! Does it penetrate your heart, as it penetrates mine?"

He paused, looked at me, and repeated the famous lines of Dante on
the Evening-time, with a melody and tenderness which added a charm
of their own to the matchless beauty of the poetry itself.

"Bah!" he cried suddenly, as the last cadence of those noble
Italian words died away on his lips; "I make an old fool of
myself, and only weary you all! Let us shut up the window in our
bosoms and get back to the matter-of-fact world. Percival! I
sanction the admission of the lamps. Lady Glyde—Miss Halcombe—
Eleanor, my good wife—which of you will indulge me with a game at
dominoes?"

He addressed us all, but he looked especially at Laura.

She had learnt to feel my dread of offending him, and she accepted
his proposal. It was more than I could have done at that moment.
I could not have sat down at the same table with him for any
consideration. His eyes seemed to reach my inmost soul through
the thickening obscurity of the twilight. His voice trembled
along every nerve in my body, and turned me hot and cold
alternately. The mystery and terror of my dream, which had
haunted me at intervals all through the evening, now oppressed my
mind with an unendurable foreboding and an unutterable awe. I saw
the white tomb again, and the veiled woman rising out of it by
Hartright's side. The thought of Laura welled up like a spring in
the depths of my heart, and filled it with waters of bitterness,
never, never known to it before. I caught her by the hand as she
passed me on her way to the table, and kissed her as if that night
was to part us for ever. While they were all gazing at me in
astonishment, I ran out through the low window which was open
before me to the ground—ran out to hide from them in the
darkness, to hide even from myself.

We separated that evening later than usual. Towards mid-night the
summer silence was broken by the shuddering of a low, melancholy
wind among the trees. We all felt the sudden chill in the
atmosphere, but the Count was the first to notice the stealthy
rising of the wind. He stopped while he was lighting my candle
for me, and held up his hand warningly—

"Listen!" he said. "There will be a change to-morrow."

June 19th.—The events of yesterday warned me to be ready, sooner
or later, to meet the worst. To-day is not yet at an end, and the
worst has come.

Judging by the closest calculation of time that Laura and I could
make, we arrived at the conclusion that Anne Catherick must have
appeared at the boat-house at half-past two o'clock on the
afternoon of yesterday. I accordingly arranged that Laura should
just show herself at the luncheon-table to-day, and should then
slip out at the first opportunity, leaving me behind to preserve
appearances, and to follow her as soon as I could safely do so.
This mode of proceeding, if no obstacles occurred to thwart us,
would enable her to be at the boat-house before half-past two, and
(when I left the table, in my turn) would take me to a safe
position in the plantation before three.

The change in the weather, which last night's wind warned us to
expect, came with the morning. It was raining heavily when I got
up, and it continued to rain until twelve o'clock—when the clouds
dispersed, the blue sky appeared, and the sun shone again with the
bright promise of a fine afternoon.

My anxiety to know how Sir Percival and the Count would occupy the
early part of the day was by no means set at rest, so far as Sir
Percival was concerned, by his leaving us immediately after
breakfast, and going out by himself, in spite of the rain. He
neither told us where he was going nor when we might expect him
back. We saw him pass the breakfast-room window hastily, with his
high boots and his waterproof coat on—and that was all.

The Count passed the morning quietly indoors, some part of it in
the library, some part in the drawing-room, playing odds and ends
of music on the piano, and humming to himself. Judging by
appearances, the sentimental side of his character was
persistently inclined to betray itself still. He was silent and
sensitive, and ready to sigh and languish ponderously (as only fat
men CAN sigh and languish) on the smallest provocation.

Luncheon-time came and Sir Percival did not return. The Count
took his friend's place at the table, plaintively devoured the
greater part of a fruit tart, submerged under a whole jugful of
cream, and explained the full merit of the achievement to us as
soon as he had done. "A taste for sweets," he said in his softest
tones and his tenderest manner, "is the innocent taste of women
and children. I love to share it with them—it is another bond,
dear ladies, between you and me."

Laura left the table in ten minutes' time. I was sorely tempted
to accompany her. But if we had both gone out together we must
have excited suspicion, and worse still, if we allowed Anne
Catherick to see Laura, accompanied by a second person who was a
stranger to her, we should in all probability forfeit her
confidence from that moment, never to regain it again.

I waited, therefore, as patiently as I could, until the servant
came in to clear the table. When I quitted the room, there were
no signs, in the house or out of it, of Sir Percival's return. I
left the Count with a piece of sugar between his lips, and the
vicious cockatoo scrambling up his waistcoat to get at it, while
Madame Fosco, sitting opposite to her husband, watched the
proceedings of his bird and himself as attentively as if she had
never seen anything of the sort before in her life. On my way to
the plantation I kept carefully beyond the range of view from the
luncheon-room window. Nobody saw me and nobody followed me. It
was then a quarter to three o'clock by my watch.

Once among the trees I walked rapidly, until I had advanced more
than half-way through the plantation. At that point I slackened
my pace and proceeded cautiously, but I saw no one, and heard no
voices. By little and little I came within view of the back of
the boat-house—stopped and listened—then went on, till I was
close behind it, and must have heard any persons who were talking
inside. Still the silence was unbroken—still far and near no
sign of a living creature appeared anywhere.

After skirting round by the back of the building, first on one
side and then on the other, and making no discoveries, I ventured
in front of it, and fairly looked in. The place was empty.

I called, "Laura!"—at first softly, then louder and louder. No
one answered and no one appeared. For all that I could see and
hear, the only human creature in the neighbourhood of the lake and
the plantation was myself.

My heart began to beat violently, but I kept my resolution, and
searched, first the boat-house and then the ground in front of it,
for any signs which might show me whether Laura had really reached
the place or not. No mark of her presence appeared inside the
building, but I found traces of her outside it, in footsteps on
the sand.

I detected the footsteps of two persons—large footsteps like a
man's, and small footsteps, which, by putting my own feet into
them and testing their size in that manner, I felt certain were
Laura's. The ground was confusedly marked in this way just before
the boat-house. Close against one side of it, under shelter of
the projecting roof, I discovered a little hole in the sand—a
hole artificially made, beyond a doubt. I just noticed it, and
then turned away immediately to trace the footsteps as far as I
could, and to follow the direction in which they might lead me.

They led me, starting from the left-hand side of the boat-house,
along the edge of the trees, a distance, I should think, of
between two and three hundred yards, and then the sandy ground
showed no further trace of them. Feeling that the persons whose
course I was tracking must necessarily have entered the plantation
at this point, I entered it too. At first I could find no path,
but I discovered one afterwards, just faintly traced among the
trees, and followed it. It took me, for some distance, in the
direction of the village, until I stopped at a point where another
foot-track crossed it. The brambles grew thickly on either side
of this second path. I stood looking down it, uncertain which way
to take next, and while I looked I saw on one thorny branch some
fragments of fringe from a woman's shawl. A closer examination of
the fringe satisfied me that it had been torn from a shawl of
Laura's, and I instantly followed the second path. It brought me
out at last, to my great relief, at the back of the house. I say
to my great relief, because I inferred that Laura must, for some
unknown reason, have returned before me by this roundabout way. I
went in by the court-yard and the offices. The first person whom
I met in crossing the servants' hall was Mrs. Michelson, the
housekeeper.

"Do you know," I asked, "whether Lady Glyde has come in from her
walk or not?"

"My lady came in a little while ago with Sir Percival," answered
the housekeeper. "I am afraid, Miss Halcombe, something very
distressing has happened."

My heart sank within me. "You don't mean an accident?" I said
faintly.

"No, no—thank God, no accident. But my lady ran up-stairs to her
own room in tears, and Sir Percival has ordered me to give Fanny
warning to leave in an hour's time."

Fanny was Laura's maid—a good affectionate girl who had been with
her for years—the only person in the house whose fidelity and
devotion we could both depend upon.

"Where is Fanny?" I inquired.

"In my room, Miss Halcombe. The young woman is quite overcome,
and I told her to sit down and try to recover herself."

I went to Mrs. Michelson's room, and found Fanny in a corner, with
her box by her side, crying bitterly.

She could give me no explanation whatever of her sudden dismissal.
Sir Percival had ordered that she should have a month's wages, in
place of a month's warning, and go. No reason had been assigned—
no objection had been made to her conduct. She had been forbidden
to appeal to her mistress, forbidden even to see her for a moment
to say good-bye. She was to go without explanations or farewells,
and to go at once.

After soothing the poor girl by a few friendly words, I asked
where she proposed to sleep that night. She replied that she
thought of going to the little inn in the village, the landlady of
which was a respectable woman, known to the servants at Blackwater
Park. The next morning, by leaving early, she might get back to
her friends in Cumberland without stopping in London, where she
was a total stranger.

I felt directly that Fanny's departure offered us a safe means of
communication with London and with Limmeridge House, of which it
might be very important to avail ourselves. Accordingly, I told
her that she might expect to hear from her mistress or from me in
the course of the evening, and that she might depend on our both
doing all that lay in our power to help her, under the trial of
leaving us for the present. Those words said, I shook hands with
her and went upstairs.

The door which led to Laura's room was the door of an ante-chamber
opening on to the passage. When I tried it, it was bolted on the
inside.

I knocked, and the door was opened by the same heavy, over-grown
housemaid whose lumpish insensibility had tried my patience so
severely on the day when I found the wounded dog.

I had, since that time, discovered that her name was Margaret
Porcher, and that she was the most awkward, slatternly, and
obstinate servant in the house.

On opening the door she instantly stepped out to the threshold,
and stood grinning at me in stolid silence.

"Why do you stand there?" I said. "Don't you see that I want to
come in?"

"Ah, but you mustn't come in," was the answer, with another and a
broader grin still.

"How dare you talk to me in that way? Stand back instantly!"

She stretched out a great red hand and arm on each side of her, so
as to bar the doorway, and slowly nodded her addle head at me.

"Master's orders," she said, and nodded again.

I had need of all my self-control to warn me against contesting
the matter with HER, and to remind me that the next words I had to
say must be addressed to her master. I turned my back on her, and
instantly went downstairs to find him. My resolution to keep my
temper under all the irritations that Sir Percival could offer
was, by this time, as completely forgotten—I say so to my shame—
as if I had never made it. It did me good, after all I had
suffered and suppressed in that house—it actually did me good to
feel how angry I was.

The drawing-room and the breakfast-room were both empty. I went
on to the library, and there I found Sir Percival, the Count, and
Madame Fosco. They were all three standing up, close together,
and Sir Percival had a little slip of paper in his hand. As I
opened the door I heard the Count say to him, "No—a thousand
times over, no."

I walked straight up to him, and looked him full in the face.

"Am I to understand, Sir Percival, that your wife's room is a
prison, and that your housemaid is the gaoler who keeps it?" I
asked.

"Yes, that is what you are to understand," he answered. "Take
care my gaoler hasn't got double duty to do—take care your room
is not a prison too."