The Woman in White (53 page)

I felt, of course, at the time, that this temporising on my part
would probably end in bringing Marian here in a state of virtuous
indignation, banging doors. But then, the other course of
proceeding might end in bringing Sir Percival here in a state of
virtuous indignation, banging doors also, and of the two
indignations and bangings I preferred Marian's, because I was used
to her. Accordingly I despatched the letter by return of post.
It gained me time, at all events—and, oh dear me! what a point
that was to begin with.

When I am totally prostrated (did I mention that I was totally
prostrated by Marian's letter?) it always takes me three days to
get up again. I was very unreasonable—I expected three days of
quiet. Of course I didn't get them.

The third day's post brought me a most impertinent letter from a
person with whom I was totally unacquainted. He described himself
as the acting partner of our man of business—our dear, pig-headed
old Gilmore—and he informed me that he had lately received, by
the post, a letter addressed to him in Miss Halcombe's
handwriting. On opening the envelope, he had discovered, to his
astonishment, that it contained nothing but a blank sheet of
notepaper. This circumstance appeared to him so suspicious (as
suggesting to his restless legal mind that the letter had been
tampered with) that he had at once written to Miss Halcombe, and
had received no answer by return of post. In this difficulty,
instead of acting like a sensible man and letting things take
their proper course, his next absurd proceeding, on his own
showing, was to pester me by writing to inquire if I knew anything
about it. What the deuce should I know about it? Why alarm me as
well as himself? I wrote back to that effect. It was one of my
keenest letters. I have produced nothing with a sharper
epistolary edge to it since I tendered his dismissal in writing to
that extremely troublesome person, Mr. Walter Hartright.

My letter produced its effect. I heard nothing more from the
lawyer.

This perhaps was not altogether surprising. But it was certainly
a remarkable circumstance that no second letter reached me from
Marian, and that no warning signs appeared of her arrival. Her
unexpected absence did me amazing good. It was so very soothing
and pleasant to infer (as I did of course) that my married
connections had made it up again. Five days of undisturbed
tranquillity, of delicious single blessedness, quite restored me.
On the sixth day I felt strong enough to send for my photographer,
and to set him at work again on the presentation copies of my art-
treasures, with a view, as I have already mentioned, to the
improvement of taste in this barbarous neighbourhood. I had just
dismissed him to his workshop, and had just begun coquetting with
my coins, when Louis suddenly made his appearance with a card in
his hand.

"Another Young Person?" I said. "I won't see her. In my state of
health Young Persons disagree with me. Not at home."

"It is a gentleman this time, sir."

A gentleman of course made a difference. I looked at the card.

Gracious Heaven! my tiresome sister's foreign husband, Count
Fosco.

Is it necessary to say what my first impression was when I looked
at my visitor's card? Surely not! My sister having married a
foreigner, there was but one impression that any man in his senses
could possibly feel. Of course the Count had come to borrow money
of me.

"Louis," I said, "do you think he would go away if you gave him
five shillings?"

Louis looked quite shocked. He surprised me inexpressibly by
declaring that my sister's foreign husband was dressed superbly,
and looked the picture of prosperity. Under these circumstances
my first impression altered to a certain extent. I now took it
for granted that the Count had matrimonial difficulties of his own
to contend with, and that he had come, like the rest of the
family, to cast them all on my shoulders.

"Did he mention his business?" I asked.

"Count Fosco said he had come here, sir, because Miss Halcombe was
unable to leave Blackwater Park."

Fresh troubles, apparently. Not exactly his own, as I had
supposed, but dear Marian's. Troubles, anyway. Oh dear!

"Show him in," I said resignedly.

The Count's first appearance really startled me. He was such an
alarmingly large person that I quite trembled. I felt certain
that he would shake the floor and knock down my art-treasures. He
did neither the one nor the other. He was refreshingly dressed in
summer costume—his manner was delightfully self-possessed and
quiet—he had a charming smile. My first impression of him was
highly favourable. It is not creditable to my penetration—as the
sequel will show—to acknowledge this, but I am a naturally candid
man, and I DO acknowledge it notwithstanding.

"Allow me to present myself, Mr. Fairlie," he said. "I come from
Blackwater Park, and I have the honour and the happiness of being
Madame Fosco's husband. Let me take my first and last advantage
of that circumstance by entreating you not to make a stranger of
me. I beg you will not disturb yourself—I beg you will not
move."

"You are very good," I replied. "I wish I was strong enough to
get up. Charmed to see you at Limmeridge. Please take a chair."

"I am afraid you are suffering to-day," said the Count.

"As usual," I said. "I am nothing but a bundle of nerves dressed
up to look like a man."

"I have studied many subjects in my time," remarked this
sympathetic person. "Among others the inexhaustible subject of
nerves. May I make a suggestion, at once the simplest and the
most profound? Will you let me alter the light in your room?"

"Certainly—if you will be so very kind as not to let any of it in
on me."

He walked to the window. Such a contrast to dear Marian! so
extremely considerate in all his movements!

"Light," he said, in that delightfully confidential tone which is
so soothing to an invalid, "is the first essential. Light
stimulates, nourishes, preserves. You can no more do without it,
Mr. Fairlie, than if you were a flower. Observe. Here, where you
sit, I close the shutters to compose you. There, where you do NOT
sit, I draw up the blind and let in the invigorating sun. Admit
the light into your room if you cannot bear it on yourself.
Light, sir, is the grand decree of Providence. You accept
Providence with your own restrictions. Accept light on the same
terms."

I thought this very convincing and attentive. He had taken me in
up to that point about the light, he had certainly taken me in.

"You see me confused," he said, returning to his place—"on my
word of honour, Mr. Fairlie, you see me confused in your
presence."

"Shocked to hear it, I am sure. May I inquire why?"

"Sir, can I enter this room (where you sit a sufferer), and see
you surrounded by these admirable objects of Art, without
discovering that you are a man whose feelings are acutely
impressionable, whose sympathies are perpetually alive? Tell me,
can I do this?"

If I had been strong enough to sit up in my chair I should, of
course, have bowed. Not being strong enough, I smiled my
acknowledgments instead. It did just as well, we both understood
one another.

"Pray follow my train of thought," continued the Count. "I sit
here, a man of refined sympathies myself, in the presence of
another man of refined sympathies also. I am conscious of a
terrible necessity for lacerating those sympathies by referring to
domestic events of a very melancholy kind. What is the inevitable
consequence? I have done myself the honour of pointing it out to
you already. I sit confused."

Was it at this point that I began to suspect he was going to bore
me? I rather think it was.

"Is it absolutely necessary to refer to these unpleasant matters?"
I inquired. "In our homely English phrase, Count Fosco, won't
they keep?"

The Count, with the most alarming solemnity, sighed and shook his
head.

"Must I really hear them?"

He shrugged his shoulders (it was the first foreign thing he had
done since he had been in the room), and looked at me in an
unpleasantly penetrating manner. My instincts told me that I had
better close my eyes. I obeyed my instincts.

"Please break it gently," I pleaded. "Anybody dead?"

"Dead!" cried the Count, with unnecessary foreign fierceness.
"Mr. Fairlie, your national composure terrifies me. In the name
of Heaven, what have I said or done to make you think me the
messenger of death?"

"Pray accept my apologies," I answered. "You have said and done
nothing. I make it a rule in these distressing cases always to
anticipate the worst. It breaks the blow by meeting it half-way,
and so on. Inexpressibly relieved, I am sure, to hear that nobody
is dead. Anybody ill?"

I opened my eyes and looked at him. Was he very yellow when he
came in, or had he turned very yellow in the last minute or two? I
really can't say, and I can't ask Louis, because he was not in the
room at the time.

"Anybody ill?" I repeated, observing that my national composure
still appeared to affect him.

"That is part of my bad news, Mr. Fairlie. Yes. Somebody is
ill."

"Grieved, I am sure. Which of them is it?"

"To my profound sorrow, Miss Halcombe. Perhaps you were in some
degree prepared to hear this? Perhaps when you found that Miss
Halcombe did not come here by herself, as you proposed, and did
not write a second time, your affectionate anxiety may have made
you fear that she was ill?"

I have no doubt my affectionate anxiety had led to that melancholy
apprehension at some time or other, but at the moment my wretched
memory entirely failed to remind me of the circumstance. However,
I said yes, in justice to myself. I was much shocked. It was so
very uncharacteristic of such a robust person as dear Marian to be
ill, that I could only suppose she had met with an accident. A
horse, or a false step on the stairs, or something of that sort.

"Is it serious?" I asked.

"Serious—beyond a doubt," he replied. "Dangerous—I hope and
trust not. Miss Halcombe unhappily exposed herself to be wetted
through by a heavy rain. The cold that followed was of an
aggravated kind, and it has now brought with it the worst
consequence—fever."

When I heard the word fever, and when I remembered at the same
moment that the unscrupulous person who was now addressing me had
just come from Blackwater Park, I thought I should have fainted on
the spot.

"Good God!" I said. "Is it infectious?"

"Not at present," he answered, with detestable composure. "It may
turn to infection—but no such deplorable complication had taken
place when I left Blackwater Park. I have felt the deepest
interest in the case, Mr. Fairlie—I have endeavoured to assist
the regular medical attendant in watching it—accept my personal
assurances of the uninfectious nature of the fever when I last saw
it."

Accept his assurances! I never was farther from accepting anything
in my life. I would not have believed him on his oath. He was
too yellow to be believed. He looked like a walking-West-Indian-
epidemic. He was big enough to carry typhus by the ton, and to
dye the very carpet he walked on with scarlet fever. In certain
emergencies my mind is remarkably soon made up. I instantly
determined to get rid of him.

"You will kindly excuse an invalid," I said—"but long conferences
of any kind invariably upset me. May I beg to know exactly what
the object is to which I am indebted for the honour of your
visit?"

I fervently hoped that this remarkably broad hint would throw him
off his balance—confuse him—reduce him to polite apologies—in
short, get him out of the room. On the contrary, it only settled
him in his chair. He became additionally solemn, and dignified,
and confidential. He held up two of his horrid fingers and gave
me another of his unpleasantly penetrating looks. What was I to
do? I was not strong enough to quarrel with him. Conceive my
situation, if you please. Is language adequate to describe it? I
think not.

"The objects of my visit," he went on, quite irrepressibly, "are
numbered on my fingers. They are two. First, I come to bear my
testimony, with profound sorrow, to the lamentable disagreements
between Sir Percival and Lady Glyde. I am Sir Percival's oldest
friend—I am related to Lady Glyde by marriage—I am an eye-
witness of all that has happened at Blackwater Park. In those
three capacities I speak with authority, with confidence, with
honourable regret. Sir, I inform you, as the head of Lady Glyde's
family, that Miss Halcombe has exaggerated nothing in the letter
which she wrote to your address. I affirm that the remedy which
that admirable lady has proposed is the only remedy that will
spare you the horrors of public scandal. A temporary separation
between husband and wife is the one peaceable solution of this
difficulty. Part them for the present, and when all causes of
irritation are removed, I, who have now the honour of addressing
you—I will undertake to bring Sir Percival to reason. Lady Glyde
is innocent, Lady Glyde is injured, but—follow my thought here!—
she is, on that very account (I say it with shame), the cause of
irritation while she remains under her husband's roof. No other
house can receive her with propriety but yours. I invite you to
open it."

Cool. Here was a matrimonial hailstorm pouring in the South of
England, and I was invited, by a man with fever in every fold of
his coat, to come out from the North of England and take my share
of the pelting. I tried to put the point forcibly, just as I have
put it here. The Count deliberately lowered one of his horrid
fingers, kept the other up, and went on—rode over me, as it were,
without even the common coach-manlike attention of crying "Hi!"
before he knocked me down.