The Woman in White (48 page)

I saw Madame Fosco, who was making the tea, pause, with the sugar-
tongs in her hand, to listen for my answer.

"No, Count, thank you. No letters to-day."

He gave the bag to the servant, who was then in the room; sat down
at the piano, and played the air of the lively Neapolitan street-
song, "La mia Carolina," twice over. His wife, who was usually
the most deliberate of women in all her movements, made the tea as
quickly as I could have made it myself—finished her own cup in
two minutes, and quietly glided out of the room.

I rose to follow her example—partly because I suspected her of
attempting some treachery upstairs with Laura, partly because I
was resolved not to remain alone in the same room with her
husband.

Before I could get to the door the Count stopped me, by a request
for a cup of tea. I gave him the cup of tea, and tried a second
time to get away. He stopped me again—this time by going back to
the piano, and suddenly appealing to me on a musical question in
which he declared that the honour of his country was concerned.

I vainly pleaded my own total ignorance of music, and total want
of taste in that direction. He only appealed to me again with a
vehemence which set all further protest on my part at defiance.
"The English and the Germans (he indignantly declared) were always
reviling the Italians for their inability to cultivate the higher
kinds of music. We were perpetually talking of our Oratorios, and
they were perpetually talking of their Symphonies. Did we forget
and did they forget his immortal friend and countryman, Rossini?
What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime oratorio, which was acted on
the stage instead of being coldly sung in a concert-room? What was
the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony under another name?
Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this, and this, and
this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand had ever
been composed by mortal man?"—And without waiting for a word of
assent or dissent on my part, looking me hard in the face all the
time, he began thundering on the piano, and singing to it with
loud and lofty enthusiasm—only interrupting himself, at
intervals, to announce to me fiercely the titles of the different
pieces of music: "Chorus of Egyptians in the Plague of Darkness,
Miss Halcombe!"—"Recitativo of Moses with the tables of the
Law."—"Prayer of Israelites, at the passage of the Red Sea. Aha!
Aha! Is that sacred? is that sublime?" The piano trembled under
his powerful hands, and the teacups on the table rattled, as his
big bass voice thundered out the notes, and his heavy foot beat
time on the floor.

There was something horrible—something fierce and devilish—in
the outburst of his delight at his own singing and playing, and in
the triumph with which he watched its effect upon me as I shrank
nearer and nearer to the door. I was released at last, not by my
own efforts, but by Sir Percival's interposition. He opened the
dining-room door, and called out angrily to know what "that
infernal noise" meant. The Count instantly got up from the piano.
"Ah! if Percival is coming," he said, "harmony and melody are both
at an end. The Muse of Music, Miss Halcombe, deserts us in
dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale the rest of my
enthusiasm in the open air!" He stalked out into the verandah, put
his hands in his pockets, and resumed the Recitativo of Moses,
sotto voce, in the garden.

I heard Sir Percival call after him from the dining-room window.
But he took no notice—he seemed determined not to hear. That
long-deferred quiet talk between them was still to be put off, was
still to wait for the Count's absolute will and pleasure.

He had detained me in the drawing-room nearly half an hour from
the time when his wife left us. Where had she been, and what had
she been doing in that interval?

I went upstairs to ascertain, but I made no discoveries, and when
I questioned Laura, I found that she had not heard anything.
Nobody had disturbed her, no faint rustling of the silk dress had
been audible, either in the ante-room or in the passage.

It was then twenty minutes to nine. After going to my room to get
my journal, I returned, and sat with Laura, sometimes writing,
sometimes stopping to talk with her. Nobody came near us, and
nothing happened. We remained together till ten o'clock. I then
rose, said my last cheering words, and wished her good-night. She
locked her door again after we had arranged that I should come in
and see her the first thing in the morning.

I had a few sentences more to add to my diary before going to bed
myself, and as I went down again to the drawing-room after leaving
Laura for the last time that weary day, I resolved merely to show
myself there, to make my excuses, and then to retire an hour
earlier than usual for the night.

Sir Percival, and the Count and his wife, were sitting together.
Sir Percival was yawning in an easy-chair, the Count was reading,
Madame Fosco was fanning herself. Strange to say, HER face was
flushed now. She, who never suffered from the heat, was most
undoubtedly suffering from it to-night.

"I am afraid, Countess, you are not quite so well as usual?" I
said.

"The very remark I was about to make to you," she replied. "You
are looking pale, my dear."

My dear! It was the first time she had ever addressed me with that
familiarity! There was an insolent smile too on her face when she
said the words.

"I am suffering from one of my bad headaches," I answered coldly.

"Ah, indeed? Want of exercise, I suppose? A walk before dinner
would have been just the thing for you." She referred to the
"walk" with a strange emphasis. Had she seen me go out? No matter
if she had. The letters were safe now in Fanny's hands.

"Come and have a smoke, Fosco," said Sir Percival, rising, with
another uneasy look at his friend.

"With pleasure, Percival, when the ladies have gone to bed,"
replied the Count.

"Excuse me, Countess, if I set you the example of retiring," I
said. "The only remedy for such a headache as mine is going to
bed."

I took my leave. There was the same insolent smile on the woman's
face when I shook hands with her. Sir Percival paid no attention
to me. He was looking impatiently at Madame Fosco, who showed no
signs of leaving the room with me. The Count smiled to himself
behind his book. There was yet another delay to that quiet talk
with Sir Percival—and the Countess was the impediment this time.

June 19th.—Once safely shut into my own room, I opened these
pages, and prepared to go on with that part of the day's record
which was still left to write.

For ten minutes or more I sat idle, with the pen in my hand,
thinking over the events of the last twelve hours. When I at last
addressed myself to my task, I found a difficulty in proceeding
with it which I had never experienced before. In spite of my
efforts to fix my thoughts on the matter in hand, they wandered
away with the strangest persistency in the one direction of Sir
Percival and the Count, and all the interest which I tried to
concentrate on my journal centred instead in that private
interview between them which had been put off all through the day,
and which was now to take place in the silence and solitude of the
night.

In this perverse state of my mind, the recollection of what had
passed since the morning would not come back to me, and there was
no resource but to close my journal and to get away from it for a
little while.

I opened the door which led from my bedroom into my sitting-room,
and having passed through, pulled it to again, to prevent any
accident in case of draught with the candle left on the dressing-
table. My sitting-room window was wide open, and I leaned out
listlessly to look at the night.

It was dark and quiet. Neither moon nor stars were visible.
There was a smell like rain in the still, heavy air, and I put my
hand out of window. No. The rain was only threatening, it had
not come yet.

I remained leaning on the window-sill for nearly a quarter of an
hour, looking out absently into the black darkness, and hearing
nothing, except now and then the voices of the servants, or the
distant sound of a closing door, in the lower part of the house.

Just as I was turning away wearily from the window to go back to
the bedroom and make a second attempt to complete the unfinished
entry in my journal, I smelt the odour of tobacco-smoke stealing
towards me on the heavy night air. The next moment I saw a tiny
red spark advancing from the farther end of the house in the pitch
darkness. I heard no footsteps, and I could see nothing but the
spark. It travelled along in the night, passed the window at
which I was standing, and stopped opposite my bedroom window,
inside which I had left the light burning on the dressing-table.

The spark remained stationary for a moment, then moved back again
in the direction from which it had advanced. As I followed its
progress I saw a second red spark, larger than the first,
approaching from the distance. The two met together in the
darkness. Remembering who smoked cigarettes and who smoked
cigars, I inferred immediately that the Count had come out first
to look and listen under my window, and that Sir Percival had
afterwards joined him. They must both have been walking on the
lawn—or I should certainly have heard Sir Percival's heavy
footfall, though the Count's soft step might have escaped me, even
on the gravel walk.

I waited quietly at the window, certain that they could neither of
them see me in the darkness of the room.

"What's the matter?" I heard Sir Percival say in a low voice.
"Why don't you come in and sit down?"

"I want to see the light out of that window," replied the Count
softly.

"What harm does the light do?"

"It shows she is not in bed yet. She is sharp enough to suspect
something, and bold enough to come downstairs and listen, if she
can get the chance. Patience, Percival—patience."

"Humbug! You're always talking of patience."

"I shall talk of something else presently. My good friend, you
are on the edge of your domestic precipice, and if I let you give
the women one other chance, on my sacred word of honour they will
push you over it!"

"What the devil do you mean?"

"We will come to our explanations, Percival, when the light is out
of that window, and when I have had one little look at the rooms
on each side of the library, and a peep at the staircase as well."

They slowly moved away, and the rest of the conversation between
them (which had been conducted throughout in the same low tones)
ceased to be audible. It was no matter. I had heard enough to
determine me on justifying the Count's opinion of my sharpness and
my courage. Before the red sparks were out of sight in the
darkness I had made up my mind that there should be a listener
when those two men sat down to their talk—and that the listener,
in spite of all the Count's precautions to the contrary, should be
myself. I wanted but one motive to sanction the act to my own
conscience, and to give me courage enough for performing it—and
that motive I had. Laura's honour, Laura's happiness—Laura's
life itself—might depend on my quick ears and my faithful memory
to-night.

I had heard the Count say that he meant to examine the rooms on
each side of the library, and the staircase as well, before he
entered on any explanation with Sir Percival. This expression of
his intentions was necessarily sufficient to inform me that the
library was the room in which he proposed that the conversation
should take place. The one moment of time which was long enough
to bring me to that conclusion was also the moment which showed me
a means of baffling his precautions—or, in other words, of
hearing what he and Sir Percival said to each other, without the
risk of descending at all into the lower regions of the house.

In speaking of the rooms on the ground floor I have mentioned
incidentally the verandah outside them, on which they all opened
by means of French windows, extending from the cornice to the
floor. The top of this verandah was flat, the rain-water being
carried off from it by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the
house. On the narrow leaden roof, which ran along past the
bedrooms, and which was rather less, I should think, than three
feet below the sills of the window, a row of flower-pots was
ranged, with wide intervals between each pot—the whole being
protected from falling in high winds by an ornamental iron railing
along the edge of the roof.

The plan which had now occurred to me was to get out at my
sitting-room window on to this roof, to creep along noiselessly
till I reached that part of it which was immediately over the
library window, and to crouch down between the flower-pots, with
my ear against the outer railing. If Sir Percival and the Count
sat and smoked to-night, as I had seen them sitting and smoking
many nights before, with their chairs close at the open window,
and their feet stretched on the zinc garden seats which were
placed under the verandah, every word they said to each other
above a whisper (and no long conversation, as we all know by
experience, can be carried on IN a whisper) must inevitably reach
my ears. If, on the other hand, they chose to-night to sit far
back inside the room, then the chances were that I should hear
little or nothing—and in that case, I must run the far more
serious risk of trying to outwit them downstairs.

Strongly as I was fortified in my resolution by the desperate
nature of our situation, I hoped most fervently that I might
escape this last emergency. My courage was only a woman's courage
after all, and it was very near to failing me when I thought of
trusting myself on the ground floor, at the dead of night, within
reach of Sir Percival and the Count.