The Woman in White (46 page)

"I do understand it, Laura. He is mad—mad with the terrors of a
guilty conscience. Every word you have said makes me positively
certain that when Anne Catherick left you yesterday you were on
the eve of discovering a secret which might have been your vile
husband's ruin, and he thinks you HAVE discovered it. Nothing you
can say or do will quiet that guilty distrust, and convince his
false nature of your truth. I don't say this, my love, to alarm
you. I say it to open your eyes to your position, and to convince
you of the urgent necessity of letting me act, as I best can, for
your protection while the chance is our own. Count Fosco's
interference has secured me access to you to-day, but he may
withdraw that interference to-morrow. Sir Percival has already
dismissed Fanny because she is a quick-witted girl, and devotedly
attached to you, and has chosen a woman to take her place who
cares nothing for your interests, and whose dull intelligence
lowers her to the level of the watch-dog in the yard. It is
impossible to say what violent measures he may take next, unless
we make the most of our opportunities while we have them."

"What can we do, Marian? Oh, if we could only leave this house,
never to see it again!"

"Listen to me, my love, and try to think that you are not quite
helpless so long as I am here with you."

"I will think so—I do think so. Don't altogether forget poor
Fanny in thinking of me. She wants help and comfort too."

"I will not forget her. I saw her before I came up here, and I
have arranged to communicate with her to-night. Letters are not
safe in the post-bag at Blackwater Park, and I shall have two to
write to-day, in your interests, which must pass through no hands
but Fanny's."

"What letters?"

"I mean to write first, Laura, to Mr. Gilmore's partner, who has
offered to help us in any fresh emergency. Little as I know of
the law, I am certain that it can protect a woman from such
treatment as that ruffian has inflicted on you to-day. I will go
into no details about Anne Catherick, because I have no certain
information to give. But the lawyer shall know of those bruises
on your arm, and of the violence offered to you in this room—he
shall, before I rest to-night!"

"But think of the exposure, Marian!"

"I am calculating on the exposure. Sir Percival has more to dread
from it than you have. The prospect of an exposure may bring him
to terms when nothing else will."

I rose as I spoke, but Laura entreated me not to leave her. "You
will drive him to desperation," she said, "and increase our
dangers tenfold."

I felt the truth—the disheartening truth—of those words. But I
could not bring myself plainly to acknowledge it to her. In our
dreadful position there was no help and no hope for us but in
risking the worst. I said so in guarded terms. She sighed
bitterly, but did not contest the matter. She only asked about
the second letter that I had proposed writing. To whom was it to
be addressed?

"To Mr. Fairlie," I said. "Your uncle is your nearest male
relative, and the head of the family. He must and shall
interfere."

Laura shook her head sorrowfully.

"Yes, yes," I went on, "your uncle is a weak, selfish, worldly
man, I know, but he is not Sir Percival Glyde, and he has no such
friend about him as Count Fosco. I expect nothing from his
kindness or his tenderness of feeling towards you or towards me,
but he will do anything to pamper his own indolence, and to secure
his own quiet. Let me only persuade him that his interference at
this moment will save him inevitable trouble and wretchedness and
responsibility hereafter, and he will bestir himself for his own
sake. I know how to deal with him, Laura—I have had some
practice."

"If you could only prevail on him to let me go back to Limmeridge
for a little while and stay there quietly with you, Marian, I
could be almost as happy again as I was before I was married!"

Those words set me thinking in a new direction. Would it be
possible to place Sir Percival between the two alternatives of
either exposing himself to the scandal of legal interference on
his wife's behalf, or of allowing her to be quietly separated from
him for a time under pretext of a visit to her uncle's house? And
could he, in that case, be reckoned on as likely to accept the
last resource? It was doubtful—more than doubtful. And yet,
hopeless as the experiment seemed, surely it was worth trying. I
resolved to try it in sheer despair of knowing what better to do.

"Your uncle shall know the wish you have just expressed," I said,
"and I will ask the lawyer's advice on the subject as well. Good
may come of it—and will come of it, I hope."

Saying that I rose again, and again Laura tried to make me resume
my seat.

"Don't leave me," she said uneasily. "My desk is on that table.
You can write here."

It tried me to the quick to refuse her, even in her own interests.
But we had been too long shut up alone together already. Our
chance of seeing each other again might entirely depend on our not
exciting any fresh suspicions. It was full time to show myself,
quietly and unconcernedly, among the wretches who were at that
very moment, perhaps, thinking of us and talking of us downstairs.
I explained the miserable necessity to Laura, and prevailed on her
to recognise it as I did.

"I will come back again, love, in an hour or less," I said. "The
worst is over for to-day. Keep yourself quiet and fear nothing."

"Is the key in the door, Marian? Can I lock it on the inside?"

"Yes, here is the key. Lock the door, and open it to nobody until
I come upstairs again."

I kissed her and left her. It was a relief to me as I walked away
to hear the key turned in the lock, and to know that the door was
at her own command.

June 19th.—I had only got as far as the top of the stairs when
the locking of Laura's door suggested to me the precaution of also
locking my own door, and keeping the key safely about me while I
was out of the room. My journal was already secured with other
papers in the table drawer, but my writing materials were left
out. These included a seal bearing the common device of two doves
drinking out of the same cup, and some sheets of blotting-paper,
which had the impression on them of the closing lines of my
writing in these pages traced during the past night. Distorted by
the suspicion which had now become a part of myself, even such
trifles as these looked too dangerous to be trusted without a
guard—even the locked table drawer seemed to be not sufficiently
protected in my absence until the means of access to it had been
carefully secured as well.

I found no appearance of any one having entered the room while I
had been talking with Laura. My writing materials (which I had
given the servant instructions never to meddle with) were
scattered over the table much as usual. The only circumstance in
connection with them that at all struck me was that the seal lay
tidily in the tray with the pencils and the wax. It was not in my
careless habits (I am sorry to say) to put it there, neither did I
remember putting it there. But as I could not call to mind, on
the other hand, where else I had thrown it down, and as I was also
doubtful whether I might not for once have laid it mechanically in
the right place, I abstained from adding to the perplexity with
which the day's events had filled my mind by troubling it afresh
about a trifle. I locked the door, put the key in my pocket, and
went downstairs.

Madame Fosco was alone in the hall looking at the weather-glass.

"Still falling," she said. "I am afraid we must expect more
rain."

Her face was composed again to its customary expression and its
customary colour. But the hand with which she pointed to the dial
of the weather-glass still trembled.

Could she have told her husband already that she had overheard
Laura reviling him, in my company, as a "spy?" My strong
suspicion that she must have told him, my irresistible dread (all
the more overpowering from its very vagueness) of the consequences
which might follow, my fixed conviction, derived from various
little self-betrayals which women notice in each other, that
Madame Fosco, in spite of her well-assumed external civility, had
not forgiven her niece for innocently standing between her and the
legacy of ten thousand pounds—all rushed upon my mind together,
all impelled me to speak in the vain hope of using my own
influence and my own powers of persuasion for the atonement of
Laura's offence.

"May I trust to your kindness to excuse me, Madame Fosco, if I
venture to speak to you on an exceedingly painful subject?"

She crossed her hands in front of her and bowed her head solemnly,
without uttering a word, and without taking her eyes off mine for
a moment.

"When you were so good as to bring me back my handkerchief," I
went on, "I am very, very much afraid you must have accidentally
heard Laura say something which I am unwilling to repeat, and
which I will not attempt to defend. I will only venture to hope
that you have not thought it of sufficient importance to be
mentioned to the Count?"

"I think it of no importance whatever," said Madame Fosco sharply
and suddenly. "But," she added, resuming her icy manner in a
moment, "I have no secrets from my husband even in trifles. When
he noticed just now that I looked distressed, it was my painful
duty to tell him why I was distressed, and I frankly acknowledge
to you, Miss Halcombe, that I HAVE told him."

I was prepared to hear it, and yet she turned me cold all over
when she said those words.

"Let me earnestly entreat you, Madame Fosco—let me earnestly
entreat the Count—to make some allowances for the sad position in
which my sister is placed. She spoke while she was smarting under
the insult and injustice inflicted on her by her husband, and she
was not herself when she said those rash words. May I hope that
they will be considerately and generously forgiven?"

"Most assuredly," said the Count's quiet voice behind me. He had
stolen on us with his noiseless tread and his book in his hand
from the library.

"When Lady Glyde said those hasty words," he went on, "she did me
an injustice which I lament—and forgive. Let us never return to
the subject, Miss Halcombe; let us all comfortably combine to
forget it from this moment."

"You are very kind," I said, "you relieve me inexpressibly."

I tried to continue, but his eyes were on me; his deadly smile
that hides everything was set, hard, and unwavering on his broad,
smooth face. My distrust of his unfathomable falseness, my sense
of my own degradation in stooping to conciliate his wife and
himself, so disturbed and confused me, that the next words failed
on my lips, and I stood there in silence.

"I beg you on my knees to say no more, Miss Halcombe—I am truly
shocked that you should have thought it necessary to say so much."
With that polite speech he took my hand—oh, how I despise myself!
oh, how little comfort there is even in knowing that I submitted
to it for Laura's sake!—he took my hand and put it to his
poisonous lips. Never did I know all my horror of him till then.
That innocent familiarity turned my blood as if it had been the
vilest insult that a man could offer me. Yet I hid my disgust
from him—I tried to smile—I, who once mercilessly despised
deceit in other women, was as false as the worst of them, as false
as the Judas whose lips had touched my hand.

I could not have maintained my degrading self-control—it is all
that redeems me in my own estimation to know that I could not—if
he had still continued to keep his eyes on my face. His wife's
tigerish jealousy came to my rescue and forced his attention away
from me the moment he possessed himself of my hand. Her cold blue
eyes caught light, her dull white cheeks flushed into bright
colour, she looked years younger than her age in an instant.

"Count!" she said. "Your foreign forms of politeness are not
understood by Englishwomen."

"Pardon me, my angel! The best and dearest Englishwoman in the
world understands them." With those words he dropped my hand and
quietly raised his wife's hand to his lips in place of it.

I ran back up the stairs to take refuge in my own room. If there
had been time to think, my thoughts, when I was alone again, would
have caused me bitter suffering. But there was no time to think.
Happily for the preservation of my calmness and my courage there
was time for nothing but action.

The letters to the lawyer and to Mr. Fairlie were still to be
written, and I sat down at once without a moment's hesitation to
devote myself to them.

There was no multitude of resources to perplex me—there was
absolutely no one to depend on, in the first instance, but myself.
Sir Percival had neither friends nor relatives in the
neighbourhood whose intercession I could attempt to employ. He
was on the coldest terms—in some cases on the worst terms with
the families of his own rank and station who lived near him. We
two women had neither father nor brother to come to the house and
take our parts. There was no choice but to write those two
doubtful letters, or to put Laura in the wrong and myself in the
wrong, and to make all peaceable negotiation in the future
impossible by secretly escaping from Blackwater Park. Nothing but
the most imminent personal peril could justify our taking that
second course. The letters must be tried first, and I wrote them.

I said nothing to the lawyer about Anne Catherick, because (as I
had already hinted to Laura) that topic was connected with a
mystery which we could not yet explain, and which it would
therefore be useless to write about to a professional man. I left
my correspondent to attribute Sir Percival's disgraceful conduct,
if he pleased, to fresh disputes about money matters, and simply
consulted him on the possibility of taking legal proceedings for
Laura's protection in the event of her husband's refusal to allow
her to leave Blackwater Park for a time and return with me to
Limmeridge. I referred him to Mr. Fairlie for the details of this
last arrangement—I assured him that I wrote with Laura's
authority—and I ended by entreating him to act in her name to the
utmost extent of his power and with the least possible loss of
time.