The Woman in White (91 page)

"In the first place, I demand a full confession of the conspiracy,
written and signed in my presence by yourself."

He raised his finger again. "One!" he said, checking me off with
the steady attention of a practical man.

"In the second place, I demand a plain proof, which does not
depend on your personal asseveration, of the date at which my wife
left Blackwater Park and travelled to London."

"So! so! you can lay your finger, I see, on the weak place," he
remarked composedly. "Any more?"

"At present, no more."

"Good! you have mentioned your terms, now listen to mine. The
responsibility to myself of admitting what you are pleased to call
the 'conspiracy' is less, perhaps, upon the whole, than the
responsibility of laying you dead on that hearthrug. Let us say
that I meet your proposal—on my own conditions. The statement
you demand of me shall be written, and the plain proof shall be
produced. You call a letter from my late lamented friend
informing me of the day and hour of his wife's arrival in London,
written, signed, and dated by himself, a proof, I suppose? I can
give you this. I can also send you to the man of whom I hired the
carriage to fetch my visitor from the railway, on the day when she
arrived—his order-book may help you to your date, even if his
coachman who drove me proves to be of no use. These things I can
do, and will do, on conditions. I recite them. First condition!
Madame Fosco and I leave this house when and how we please,
without interference of any kind on your part. Second condition!
You wait here, in company with me, to see my agent, who is coming
at seven o'clock in the morning to regulate my affairs. You give
my agent a written order to the man who has got your sealed letter
to resign his possession of it. You wait here till my agent
places that letter unopened in my hands, and you then allow me one
clear half-hour to leave the house—after which you resume your
own freedom of action and go where you please. Third condition!
You give me the satisfaction of a gentleman for your intrusion
into my private affairs, and for the language you have allowed
yourself to use to me at this conference. The time and place,
abroad, to be fixed in a letter from my hand when I am safe on the
Continent, and that letter to contain a strip of paper measuring
accurately the length of my sword. Those are my terms. Inform me
if you accept them—Yes or No."

The extraordinary mixture of prompt decision, far-sighted cunning,
and mountebank bravado in this speech, staggered me for a moment—
and only for a moment. The one question to consider was, whether
I was justified or not in possessing myself of the means of
establishing Laura's identity at the cost of allowing the
scoundrel who had robbed her of it to escape me with impunity. I
knew that the motive of securing the just recognition of my wife
in the birthplace from which she had been driven out as an
impostor, and of publicly erasing the lie that still profaned her
mother's tombstone, was far purer, in its freedom from all taint
of evil passion, than the vindictive motive which had mingled
itself with my purpose from the first. And yet I cannot honestly
say that my own moral convictions were strong enough to decide the
struggle in me by themselves. They were helped by my remembrance
of Sir Percival's death. How awfully, at the last moment, had the
working of the retribution THERE been snatched from my feeble
hands! What right had I to decide, in my poor mortal ignorance of
the future, that this man, too, must escape with impunity because
he escaped ME? I thought of these things—perhaps with the
superstition inherent in my nature, perhaps with a sense worthier
of me than superstition. It was hard, when I had fastened my hold
on him at last, to loosen it again of my own accord—but I forced
myself to make the sacrifice. In plainer words, I determined to
be guided by the one higher motive of which I was certain, the
motive of serving the cause of Laura and the cause of Truth.

"I accept your conditions," I said. "With one reservation on my
part."

"What reservation may that be?" he asked.

"It refers to the sealed letter," I answered. "I require you to
destroy it unopened in my presence as soon as it is placed in your
hands."

My object in making this stipulation was simply to prevent him
from carrying away written evidence of the nature of my
communication with Pesca. The fact of my communication he would
necessarily discover, when I gave the address to his agent in the
morning. But he could make no use of it on his own unsupported
testimony—even if he really ventured to try the experiment—which
need excite in me the slightest apprehension on Pesca's account.

"I grant your reservation," he replied, after considering the
question gravely for a minute or two. "It is not worth dispute—
the letter shall be destroyed when it comes into my hands."

He rose, as he spoke, from the chair in which he had been sitting
opposite to me up to this time. With one effort he appeared to
free his mind from the whole pressure on it of the interview
between us thus far. "Ouf!" he cried, stretching his arms
luxuriously, "the skirmish was hot while it lasted. Take a seat,
Mr. Hartright. We meet as mortal enemies here-after—let us, like
gallant gentlemen, exchange polite attentions in the meantime.
Permit me to take the liberty of calling for my wife."

He unlocked and opened the door. "Eleanor!" he called out in his
deep voice. The lady of the viperish face came in "Madame Fosco—
Mr. Hartright," said the Count, introducing us with easy dignity.
"My angel," he went on, addressing his wife, "will your labours of
packing up allow you time to make me some nice strong coffee? I
have writing business to transact with Mr. Hartright—and I
require the full possession of my intelligence to do justice to
myself."

Madame Fosco bowed her head twice—once sternly to me, once
submissively to her husband, and glided out of the room.

The Count walked to a writing-table near the window, opened his
desk, and took from it several quires of paper and a bundle of
quill pens. He scattered the pens about the table, so that they
might lie ready in all directions to be taken up when wanted, and
then cut the paper into a heap of narrow slips, of the form used
by professional writers for the press. "I shall make this a
remarkable document," he said, looking at me over his shoulder.
"Habits of literary composition are perfectly familiar to me. One
of the rarest of all the intellectual accomplishments that a man
can possess is the grand faculty of arranging his ideas. Immense
privilege! I possess it. Do you?"

He marched backwards and forwards in the room, until the coffee
appeared, humming to himself, and marking the places at which
obstacles occurred in the arrangement of his ideas, by striking
his forehead from time to time with the palm of his hand. The
enormous audacity with which he seized on the situation in which I
placed him, and made it the pedestal on which his vanity mounted
for the one cherished purpose of self-display, mastered my
astonishment by main force. Sincerely as I loathed the man, the
prodigious strength of his character, even in its most trivial
aspects, impressed me in spite of myself.

The coffee was brought in by Madame Fosco. He kissed her hand in
grateful acknowledgment, and escorted her to the door; returned,
poured out a cup of coffee for himself, and took it to the
writing-table.

"May I offer you some coffee, Mr. Hartright?" he said, before he
sat down.

I declined.

"What! you think I shall poison you?" he said gaily. "The English
intellect is sound, so far as it goes," he continued, seating
himself at the table; "but it has one grave defect—it is always
cautious in the wrong place."

He dipped his pen in the ink, placed the first slip of paper
before him with a thump of his hand on the desk, cleared his
throat, and began. He wrote with great noise and rapidity, in so
large and bold a hand, and with such wide spaces between the
lines, that he reached the bottom of the slip in not more than two
minutes certainly from the time when he started at the top. Each
slip as he finished it was paged, and tossed over his shoulder out
of his way on the floor. When his first pen was worn out, THAT
went over his shoulder too, and he pounced on a second from the
supply scattered about the table. Slip after slip, by dozens, by
fifties, by hundreds, flew over his shoulders on either side of
him till he had snowed himself up in paper all round his chair.
Hour after hour passed—and there I sat watching, there he sat
writing. He never stopped, except to sip his coffee, and when
that was exhausted, to smack his forehead from time to time. One
o'clock struck, two, three, four—and still the slips flew about
all round him; still the untiring pen scraped its way ceaselessly
from top to bottom of the page, still the white chaos of paper
rose higher and higher all round his chair. At four o'clock I
heard a sudden splutter of the pen, indicative of the flourish
with which he signed his name. "Bravo!" he cried, springing to
his feet with the activity of a young man, and looking me straight
in the face with a smile of superb triumph.

"Done, Mr. Hartright!" he announced with a self-renovating thump
of his fist on his broad breast. "Done, to my own profound
satisfaction—to YOUR profound astonishment, when you read what I
have written. The subject is exhausted: the man—Fosco—is not.
I proceed to the arrangement of my slips—to the revision of my
slips—to the reading of my slips—addressed emphatically to your
private ear. Four o'clock has just struck. Good! Arrangement,
revision, reading, from four to five. Short snooze of restoration
for myself from five to six. Final preparations from six to
seven. Affair of agent and sealed letter from seven to eight. At
eight, en route. Behold the programme!"

He sat down cross-legged on the floor among his papers, strung
them together with a bodkin and a piece of string—revised them,
wrote all the titles and honours by which he was personally
distinguished at the head of the first page, and then read the
manuscript to me with loud theatrical emphasis and profuse
theatrical gesticulation. The reader will have an opportunity,
ere long, of forming his own opinion of the document. It will be
sufficient to mention here that it answered my purpose.

He next wrote me the address of the person from whom he had hired
the fly, and handed me Sir Percival's letter. It was dated from
Hampshire on the 25th of July, and it announced the journey of
"Lady Glyde" to London on the 26th. Thus, on the very day (the
25th) when the doctor's certificate declared that she had died in
St. John's Wood, she was alive, by Sir Percival's own showing, at
Blackwater—and, on the day after, she was to take a journey! When
the proof of that journey was obtained from the flyman, the
evidence would be complete.

"A quarter-past five," said the Count, looking at his watch.
"Time for my restorative snooze. I personally resemble Napoleon
the Great, as you may have remarked, Mr. Hartright—I also
resemble that immortal man in my power of commanding sleep at
will. Excuse me one moment. I will summon Madame Fosco, to keep
you from feeling dull."

Knowing as well as he did, that he was summoning Madame Fosco to
ensure my not leaving the house while he was asleep, I made no
reply, and occupied myself in tying up the papers which he had
placed in my possession.

The lady came in, cool, pale, and venomous as ever. "Amuse Mr.
Hartright, my angel," said the Count. He placed a chair for her,
kissed her hand for the second time, withdrew to a sofa, and, in
three minutes, was as peacefully and happily asleep as the most
virtuous man in existence.

Madame Fosco took a book from the table, sat down, and looked at
me, with the steady vindictive malice of a woman who never forgot
and never forgave.

"I have been listening to your conversation with my husband," she
said. "If I had been in HIS place—I would have laid you dead on
the hearthrug."

With those words she opened her book, and never looked at me or
spoke to me from that time till the time when her husband woke.

He opened his eyes and rose from the sofa, accurately to an hour
from the time when he had gone to sleep.

"I feel infinitely refreshed," he remarked. "Eleanor, my good
wife, are you all ready upstairs? That is well. My little packing
here can be completed in ten minutes—my travelling-dress assumed
in ten minutes more. What remains before the agent comes?" He
looked about the room, and noticed the cage with his white mice in
it. "Ah!" he cried piteously, "a last laceration of my sympathies
still remains. My innocent pets! my little cherished children!
what am I to do with them? For the present we are settled nowhere;
for the present we travel incessantly—the less baggage we carry
the better for ourselves. My cockatoo, my canaries, and my little
mice—who will cherish them when their good Papa is gone?"

He walked about the room deep in thought. He had not been at all
troubled about writing his confession, but he was visibly
perplexed and distressed about the far more important question of
the disposal of his pets. After long consideration he suddenly
sat down again at the writing-table.

"An idea!" he exclaimed. "I will offer my canaries and my
cockatoo to this vast Metropolis—my agent shall present them in
my name to the Zoological Gardens of London. The Document that
describes them shall be drawn out on the spot."

He began to write, repeating the words as they flowed from his
pen.

"Number one. Cockatoo of transcendent plumage: attraction, of
himself, to all visitors of taste. Number two. Canaries of
unrivalled vivacity and intelligence: worthy of the garden of
Eden, worthy also of the garden in the Regent's Park. Homage to
British Zoology. Offered by Fosco."