The Woman in White (45 page)

"Take YOU care how you treat your wife, and how you threaten ME,"
I broke out in the heat of my anger. "There are laws in England
to protect women from cruelty and outrage. If you hurt a hair of
Laura's head, if you dare to interfere with my freedom, come what
may, to those laws I will appeal."

Instead of answering me he turned round to the Count.

"What did I tell you?" he asked. "What do you say now?"

"What I said before," replied the Count—"No."

Even in the vehemence of my anger I felt his calm, cold, grey eyes
on my face. They turned away from me as soon as he had spoken,
and looked significantly at his wife. Madame Fosco immediately
moved close to my side, and in that position addressed Sir
Percival before either of us could speak again.

"Favour me with your attention for one moment," she said, in her
clear icily-suppressed tones. "I have to thank you, Sir Percival,
for your hospitality, and to decline taking advantage of it any
longer. I remain in no house in which ladies are treated as your
wife and Miss Halcombe have been treated here to-day!"

Sir Percival drew back a step, and stared at her in dead silence.
The declaration he had just heard—a declaration which he well
knew, as I well knew, Madame Fosco would not have ventured to make
without her husband's permission—seemed to petrify him with
surprise. The Count stood by, and looked at his wife with the
most enthusiastic admiration.

"She is sublime!" he said to himself. He approached her while he
spoke, and drew her hand through his arm. "I am at your service,
Eleanor," he went on, with a quiet dignity that I had never
noticed in him before. "And at Miss Halcombe's service, if she
will honour me by accepting all the assistance I can offer her."

"Damn it! what do you mean?" cried Sir Percival, as the Count
quietly moved away with his wife to the door.

"At other times I mean what I say, but at this time I mean what my
wife says," replied the impenetrable Italian. "We have changed
places, Percival, for once, and Madame Fosco's opinion is—mine."

Sir Percival crumpled up the paper in his hand, and pushing past
the Count, with another oath, stood between him and the door.

"Have your own way," he said, with baffled rage in his low, half-
whispering tones. "Have your own way—and see what comes of it."
With those words he left the room.

Madame Fosco glanced inquiringly at her husband. "He has gone
away very suddenly," she said. "What does it mean?"

"It means that you and I together have brought the worst-tempered
man in all England to his senses," answered the Count. "It means,
Miss Halcombe, that Lady Glyde is relieved from a gross indignity,
and you from the repetition of an unpardonable insult. Suffer me
to express my admiration of your conduct and your courage at a
very trying moment."

"Sincere admiration," suggested Madame Fosco.

"Sincere admiration," echoed the Count.

I had no longer the strength of my first angry resistance to
outrage and injury to support me. My heart-sick anxiety to see
Laura, my sense of my own helpless ignorance of what had happened
at the boat-house, pressed on me with an intolerable weight. I
tried to keep up appearances by speaking to the Count and his wife
in the tone which they had chosen to adopt in speaking to me, but
the words failed on my lips—my breath came short and thick—my
eyes looked longingly, in silence, at the door. The Count,
understanding my anxiety, opened it, went out, and pulled it to
after him. At the same time Sir Percival's heavy step descended
the stairs. I heard them whispering together outside, while
Madame Fosco was assuring me, in her calmest and most conventional
manner, that she rejoiced, for all our sakes, that Sir Percival's
conduct had not obliged her husband and herself to leave
Blackwater Park. Before she had done speaking the whispering
ceased, the door opened, and the Count looked in.

"Miss Halcombe," he said, "I am happy to inform you that Lady
Glyde is mistress again in her own house. I thought it might be
more agreeable to you to hear of this change for the better from
me than from Sir Percival, and I have therefore expressly returned
to mention it."

"Admirable delicacy!" said Madame Fosco, paying back her husband's
tribute of admiration with the Count's own coin, in the Count's
own manner. He smiled and bowed as if he had received a formal
compliment from a polite stranger, and drew back to let me pass
out first.

Sir Percival was standing in the hall. As I hurried to the stairs
I heard him call impatiently to the Count to come out of the
library.

"What are you waiting there for?" he said. "I want to speak to
you."

"And I want to think a little by myself," replied the other.
"Wait till later, Percival, wait till later."

Neither he nor his friend said any more. I gained the top of the
stairs and ran along the passage. In my haste and my agitation I
left the door of the ante-chamber open, but I closed the door of
the bedroom the moment I was inside it.

Laura was sitting alone at the far end of the room, her arms
resting wearily on a table, and her face hidden in her hands. She
started up with a cry of delight when she saw me.

"How did you get here?" she asked. "Who gave you leave? Not Sir
Percival?"

In my overpowering anxiety to hear what she had to tell me, I
could not answer her—I could only put questions on my side.
Laura's eagerness to know what had passed downstairs proved,
however, too strong to be resisted. She persistently repeated her
inquiries.

"The Count, of course," I answered impatiently. "Whose influence
in the house—-"

She stopped me with a gesture of disgust.

"Don't speak of him," she cried. "The Count is the vilest
creature breathing! The Count is a miserable Spy—-!"

Before we could either of us say another word we were alarmed by a
soft knocking at the door of the bedroom.

I had not yet sat down, and I went first to see who it was. When
I opened the door Madame Fosco confronted me with my handkerchief
in her hand.

"You dropped this downstairs, Miss Halcombe," she said, "and I
thought I could bring it to you, as I was passing by to my own
room."

Her face, naturally pale, had turned to such a ghastly whiteness
that I started at the sight of it. Her hands, so sure and steady
at all other times, trembled violently, and her eyes looked
wolfishly past me through the open door, and fixed on Laura.

She had been listening before she knocked! I saw it in her white
face, I saw it in her trembling hands, I saw it in her look at
Laura.

After waiting an instant she turned from me in silence, and slowly
walked away.

I closed the door again. "Oh, Laura! Laura! We shall both rue the
day when you called the Count a Spy!"

"You would have called him so yourself, Marian, if you had known
what I know. Anne Catherick was right. There was a third person
watching us in the plantation yesterday, and that third person—"

"Are you sure it was the Count?"

"I am absolutely certain. He was Sir Percival's spy—he was Sir
Percival's informer—he set Sir Percival watching and waiting, all
the morning through, for Anne Catherick and for me."

"Is Anne found? Did you see her at the lake?"

"No. She has saved herself by keeping away from the place. When
I got to the boat-house no one was there."

"Yes? Yes?"

"I went in and sat waiting for a few minutes. But my restlessness
made me get up again, to walk about a little. As I passed out I
saw some marks on the sand, close under the front of the boat-
house. I stooped down to examine them, and discovered a word
written in large letters on the sand. The word was—LOOK."

"And you scraped away the sand, and dug a hollow place in it?"

"How do you know that, Marian?"

"I saw the hollow place myself when I followed you to the boat-
house. Go on—go on!"

"Yes, I scraped away the sand on the surface, and in a little
while I came to a strip of paper hidden beneath, which had writing
on it. The writing was signed with Anne Catherick's initials."

"Where is it?"

"Sir Percival has taken it from me."

"Can you remember what the writing was? Do you think you can
repeat it to me?"

"In substance I can, Marian. It was very short. You would have
remembered it, word for word."

"Try to tell me what the substance was before we go any further."

She complied. I write the lines down here exactly as she repeated
them to me. They ran thus—

"I was seen with you, yesterday, by a tall, stout old man, and had
to run to save myself. He was not quick enough on his feet to
follow me, and he lost me among the trees. I dare not risk coming
back here to-day at the same time. I write this, and hide it in
the sand, at six in the morning, to tell you so. When we speak
next of your wicked husband's Secret we must speak safely, or not
at all. Try to have patience. I promise you shall see me again
and that soon.—A. C."

The reference to the "tall, stout old man" (the terms of which
Laura was certain that she had repeated to me correctly) left no
doubt as to who the intruder had been. I called to mind that I
had told Sir Percival, in the Count's presence the day before,
that Laura had gone to the boat-house to look for her brooch. In
all probability he had followed her there, in his officious way,
to relieve her mind about the matter of the signature, immediately
after he had mentioned the change in Sir Percival's plans to me in
the drawing-room. In this case he could only have got to the
neighbourhood of the boat-house at the very moment when Anne
Catherick discovered him. The suspiciously hurried manner in
which she parted from Laura had no doubt prompted his useless
attempt to follow her. Of the conversation which had previously
taken place between them he could have heard nothing. The
distance between the house and the lake, and the time at which he
left me in the drawing-room, as compared with the time at which
Laura and Anne Catherick had been speaking together, proved that
fact to us at any rate, beyond a doubt.

Having arrived at something like a conclusion so far, my next
great interest was to know what discoveries Sir Percival had made
after Count Fosco had given him his information.

"How came you to lose possession of the letter?" I asked. "What
did you do with it when you found it in the sand?"

"After reading it once through," she replied, "I took it into the
boat-house with me to sit down and look over it a second time.
While I was reading a shadow fell across the paper. I looked up,
and saw Sir Percival standing in the doorway watching me."

"Did you try to hide the letter?"

"I tried, but he stopped me. 'You needn't trouble to hide that,'
he said. 'I happen to have read it.' I could only look at him
helplessly—I could say nothing. 'You understand?' he went on; 'I
have read it. I dug it up out of the sand two hours since, and
buried it again, and wrote the word above it again, and left it
ready to your hands. You can't lie yourself out of the scrape
now. You saw Anne Catherick in secret yesterday, and you have got
her letter in your hand at this moment. I have not caught HER
yet, but I have caught YOU. Give me the letter.' He stepped close
up to me—I was alone with him, Marian—what could I do?—I gave
him the letter."

"What did he say when you gave it to him?"

"At first he said nothing. He took me by the arm, and led me out
of the boat-house, and looked about him on all sides, as if he was
afraid of our being seen or heard. Then he clasped his hand fast
round my arm, and whispered to me, 'What did Anne Catherick say to
you yesterday? I insist on hearing every word, from first to
last.'"

"Did you tell him?"

"I was alone with him, Marian—his cruel hand was bruising my arm—
what could I do?"

"Is the mark on your arm still? Let me see it."

"Why do you want to see it?"

"I want to see it, Laura, because our endurance must end, and our
resistance must begin to-day. That mark is a weapon to strike him
with. Let me see it now—I may have to swear to it at some future
time."

"Oh, Marian, don't look so—don't talk so! It doesn't hurt me
now!"

"Let me see it!"

She showed me the marks. I was past grieving over them, past
crying over them, past shuddering over them. They say we are
either better than men, or worse. If the temptation that has
fallen in some women's way, and made them worse, had fallen in
mine at that moment Thank God! my face betrayed nothing that his
wife could read. The gentle, innocent, affectionate creature
thought I was frightened for her and sorry for her, and thought no
more.

"Don't think too seriously of it, Marian," she said simply, as she
pulled her sleeve down again. "It doesn't hurt me now."

"I will try to think quietly of it, my love, for your sake.—Well!
well! And you told him all that Anne Catherick had said to you—
all that you told me?"

"Yes, all. He insisted on it—I was alone with him—I could
conceal nothing."

"Did he say anything when you had done?"

"He looked at me, and laughed to himself in a mocking, bitter way.
'I mean to have the rest out of you,' he said, 'do you hear?—the
rest.' I declared to him solemnly that I had told him everything I
knew. 'Not you,' he answered, 'you know more than you choose to
tell. Won't you tell it? You shall! I'll wring it out of you at
home if I can't wring it out of you here.' He led me away by a
strange path through the plantation—a path where there was no
hope of our meeting you—and he spoke no more till we came within
sight of the house. Then he stopped again, and said, 'Will you
take a second chance, if I give it to you? Will you think better
of it, and tell me the rest?' I could only repeat the same words I
had spoken before. He cursed my obstinacy, and went on, and took
me with him to the house. 'You can't deceive me,' he said, 'you
know more than you choose to tell. I'll have your secret out of
you, and I'll have it out of that sister of yours as well. There
shall be no more plotting and whispering between you. Neither you
nor she shall see each other again till you have confessed the
truth. I'll have you watched morning, noon, and night, till you
confess the truth.' He was deaf to everything I could say. He
took me straight upstairs into my own room. Fanny was sitting
there, doing some work for me, and he instantly ordered her out.
'I'll take good care YOU'RE not mixed up in the conspiracy,' he
said. 'You shall leave this house to-day. If your mistress wants
a maid, she shall have one of my choosing.' He pushed me into the
room, and locked the door on me. He set that senseless woman to
watch me outside, Marian! He looked and spoke like a madman. You
may hardly understand it—he did indeed."