The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  The effect of my information on him was, in one respect, curious enough. Intimately as he knows Sir Percival, and closely as he appears to be associated with Sir Percival’s private affairs in general, he is certainly as far as I am from knowing anything of the true story of Anne Catherick. The unsolved mystery in connexion with this unhappy woman is now rendered doubly suspicious, in my eyes, by the absolute conviction which I feel, that the clue to it has been hidden by Sir Percival from the most intimate friend he has in the world. It was impossible to mistake the eager curiosity of the Count’s look and manner while he drank in greedily every word that fell from my lips. There are many kinds of curiosity, I know—but there is no misinterpreting the curiosity of blank surprise: if I ever saw it in my life, I saw it in the Count’s face.

  While the questions and answers were going on, we had all been strolling quietly back, through the plantation. As soon as we reached the house, the first object that we saw in front of it was Sir Percival’s dog-cart, with the horse put to and the groom waiting by it in his stable-jacket. If these unexpected appearances were to be trusted, the examination of the housekeeper had produced important results already.

  “A fine horse, my friend,” said the Count, addressing the groom with the most engaging familiarity of manner. “You are going to drive out?”

  “I am not going, sir,” replied the man, looking at his stable-jacket, and evidently wondering whether the foreign gentleman took it for his livery. “My master drives himself.”

  “Aha?” said the Count, “does he indeed? I wonder he gives himself the trouble when he has got you to drive for him? Is he going to fatigue that nice, shining, pretty horse by taking him very far, to-day?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” answered the man. “The horse is a mare, if you please, sir. She’s the highest-couraged thing we’ve got in the stables. Her name’s Brown Molly, sir; and she’ll go till she drops. Sir Percival usually takes Isaac of York for the short distances.”

  “And your shining courageous Brown Molly for the long?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Logical inference, Miss Halcombe,” continued the Count, wheeling round briskly, and addressing me: “Sir Percival is going a long distance to-day.”

  I made no reply. I had my own inferences to draw, from what I knew through the housekeeper and from what I saw before me; and I did not choose to share them with Count Fosco.

  When Sir Percival was in Cumberland (I thought to myself), he walked away a long distance, on Anne’s account, to question the family at Todd’s Corner. Now he is in Hampshire, is he going to drive away a long distance, on Anne’s account again, to question Mrs. Catherick at Welmingham?

  We all entered the house. As we crossed the hall, Sir Percival came out from the library to meet us. He looked hurried and pale and anxious—but, for all that, he was in his most polite mood, when he spoke to us.

  “I am sorry to say, I am obliged to leave you,” he began—“a long drive—a matter that I can’t very well put off. I shall be back in good time to-morrow—but, before I go, I should like that little business-formality, which I spoke of this morning, to be settled. Laura, will you come into the library? It won’t take a minute—a mere formality. Countess, may I trouble you also? I want you and the Countess, Fosco, to be witnesses to a signature—nothing more. Come in at once, and get it over.”

  He held the library door open until they had passed in, followed them, and shut it softly.

  I remained, for a moment afterwards, standing alone in the hall, with my heart beating fast, and my mind misgiving me sadly. Then, I went on to the staircase, and ascended slowly to my own room.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  June 17th. Just as my hand was on the door of my room, I heard Sir Percival’s voice calling to me from below.

  “I must beg you to come down stairs again,” he said. “It is Fosco’s fault, Miss Halcombe, not mine. He has started some nonsensical objection to his wife being one of the witnesses, and has obliged me to ask you to join us in the library.”

  I entered the room immediately with Sir Percival. Laura was waiting by the writing-table, twisting and turning her garden hat uneasily in her hands. Madame Fosco sat near her, in an arm-chair, imperturbably admiring her husband, who stood by himself at the other end of the library, picking off the dead leaves from the flowers in the window.

  The moment I appeared, the Count advanced to meet me, and to offer his explanations.

  “A thousand pardons, Miss Halcombe,” he said. “You know the character which is given to my countrymen by the English? We Italians are all wily and suspicious by nature, in the estimation of the good John Bull. Set me down, if you please, as being no better than the rest of my race. I am a wily Italian and a suspicious Italian. You have thought so yourself, dear lady, have you not? Well! it is part of my wiliness and part of my suspicion to object to Madame Fosco being a witness to Lady Glyde’s signature, when I am also a witness myself.”

  “There is not the shadow of a reason for his objection,” interposed Sir Percival. “I have explained to him that the law of England allows Madame Fosco to witness a signature as well as her husband.”

  “I admit it,” resumed the Count. “The law of England says, Yes—but the conscience of Fosco says, No.” He spread out his fat fingers on the bosom of his blouse, and bowed solemnly, as if he wished to introduce his conscience to us all, in the character of an illustrious addition to the society. “What this document which Lady Glyde is about to sign, may be,” he continued, “I neither know nor desire to know. I only say this: circumstances may happen in the future which may oblige Percival, or his representatives, to appeal to the two witnesses; in which case it is certainly desirable that those witnesses should represent two opinions which are perfectly independent the one of the other. This cannot be if my wife signs as well as myself, because we have but one opinion between us, and that opinion is mine. I will not have it cast in my teeth, at some future day, that Madame Fosco acted under my coercion, and was, in plain fact, no witness at all. I speak in Percival’s interests when I propose that my name shall appear (as the nearest friend of the husband), and your name, Miss Halcombe (as the nearest friend of the wife). I am a Jesuit, if you please to think so—a splitter of straws—a man of trifles and crotchets and scruples—but you will humour me, I hope, in merciful consideration for my suspicious Italian character, and my uneasy Italian conscience.” He bowed again, stepped back a few paces, and withdrew his conscience from our society as politely as he had introduced it.

  The Count’s scruples might have been honourable and reasonable enough, but there was something in his manner of expressing them which increased my unwillingness to be concerned in the business of the signature. No consideration of less importance than my consideration for Laura, would have induced me to consent to be a witness at all. One look, however, at her anxious face, decided me to risk anything rather than desert her.

  “I will readily remain in the room,” I said. “And if I find no reason for starting any small scruples, on my side, you may rely on me as a witness.”

  Sir Percival looked at me sharply, as if he was about to say something. But, at the same moment, Madame Fosco attracted his attention by rising from her chair. She had caught her husband’s eye, and had evidently received her orders to leave the room.

  “You needn’t go,” said Sir Percival.

  Madame Fosco looked for her orders again, got them again, said she would prefer leaving us to our business, and resolutely walked out. The Count lit a cigarette, went back to the flowers in the window, and puffed little jets of smoke at the leaves, in a state of the deepest anxiety about killing the insects.

  Meanwhile, Sir Percival unlocked a cupboard beneath one of the bookcases, and produced from it a piece of parchment folded, longwise, many times over. He placed it on the table, opened the last fold only, and kept his hand on the rest. The last fold displayed a strip of blank parchment with li
ttle wafers stuck on it at certain places. Every line of the writing was hidden in the part which he still held folded up under his hand. Laura and I looked at each other. Her face was pale—but it showed no indecision and no fear.

  Sir Percival dipped a pen in ink, and handed it to his wife.

  “Sign your name, there,” he said, pointing to the place. “You and Fosco are to sign afterwards, Miss Halcombe, opposite those two wafers. Come here, Fosco! witnessing a signature is not to be done by mooning out of window and smoking into the flowers.”

  The Count threw away his cigarette, and joined us at the table, with his hands carelessly thrust into the scarlet belt of his blouse, and his eyes steadily fixed on Sir Percival’s face. Laura, who was on the other side of her husband, with the pen in her hand, looked at him, too. He stood between them, holding the folded parchment down firmly on the table, and glancing across at me, as I sat opposite to him, with such a sinister mixture of suspicion and embarrassment in his face, that he looked more like a prisoner at the bar than a gentleman in his own house.

  “Sign there,” he repeated, turning suddenly on Laura, and pointing once more to the place on the parchment.

  “What is it I am to sign?” she asked, quietly.

  “I have no time to explain,” he answered. “The dog-cart is at the door; and I must go directly. Besides, if I had time, you wouldn’t understand. It is a purely formal document—full of legal technicalities, and all that sort of thing. Come! come! sign your name, and let us have done as soon as possible.”

  “I ought surely to know what I am signing, Sir Percival, before I write my name?”

  “Nonsense! What have women to do with business? I tell you again, you can’t understand it.”

  “At any rate, let me try to understand it. Whenever Mr. Gilmore had any business for me to do, he always explained it, first; and I always understood him.”

  “I dare say he did. He was your servant, and was obliged to explain. I am your husband, and am not obliged. How much longer do you mean to keep me here? I tell you again, there is no time for reading anything: the dog-cart is waiting at the door. Once for all, will you sign, or will you not?”

  She still had the pen in her hand; but she made no approach to signing her name with it.

  “If my signature pledges me to anything,” she said, “surely, I have some claim to know what that pledge is?”

  He lifted up the parchment, and struck it angrily on the table.

  “Speak out!” he said. “You were always famous for telling the truth. Never mind Miss Halcombe; never mind Fosco—say, in plain terms, you distrust me.”

  The Count took one of his hands out of his belt, and laid it on Sir Percival’s shoulder. Sir Percival shook it off irritably. The Count put it on again with unruffled composure.

  “Control your unfortunate temper, Percival,” he said. “Lady Glyde is right.”

  “Right!” cried Sir Percival. “A wife right in distrusting her husband!”

  “It is unjust and cruel to accuse me of distrusting you,” said Laura. “Ask Marian if I am not justified in wanting to know what this writing requires of me, before I sign it?”

  “I won’t have any appeals made to Miss Halcombe,” retorted Sir Percival. “Miss Halcombe has nothing to do with the matter.”

  I had not spoken hitherto, and I would much rather not have spoken now. But the expression of distress in Laura’s face when she turned it towards me, and the insolent injustice of her husband’s conduct, left me no other alternative than to give my opinion, for her sake, as soon as I was asked for it.

  “Excuse me, Sir Percival,” I said—“but, as one of the witnesses to the signature, I venture to think that I have something to do with the matter. Laura’s objection seems to me to be a perfectly fair one; and, speaking for myself only, I cannot assume the responsibility of witnessing her signature, unless she first understands what the writing is which you wish her to sign.”

  “A cool declaration, upon my soul!” cried Sir Percival. “The next time you invite yourself to a man’s house, Miss Halcombe, I recommend you not to repay his hospitality by taking his wife’s side against him in a matter that doesn’t concern you.”

  I started to my feet as suddenly as if he had struck me. If I had been a man, I would have knocked him down on the threshold of his own door, and have left his house, never, on any earthly consideration, to enter it again. But I was only a woman—and I loved his wife so dearly!

  Thank God, that faithful love helped me, and I sat down again, without saying a word. She knew what I had suffered and what I had suppressed. She ran round to me, with the tears streaming from her eyes. “Oh, Marian!” she whispered softly. “If my mother had been alive, she could have done no more for me!”

  “Come back and sign!” cried Sir Percival, from the other side of the table.

  “Shall I?” she asked in my ear; “I will, if you tell me.”

  “No,” I answered. “The right and the truth are with you—sign nothing, unless you have read it first.”

  “Come back and sign!” he reiterated, in his loudest and angriest tones.

  The Count, who had watched Laura and me with a close and silent attention, interposed for the second time.

  “Percival!” he said. “I remember that I am in the presence of ladies. Be good enough, if you please, to remember it, too.”

  Sir Percival turned on him, speechless with passion. The Count’s firm hand slowly tightened its grasp on his shoulder, and the Count’s steady voice quietly repeated, “Be good enough, if you please, to remember it, too.”

  They both looked at each other. Sir Percival slowly drew his shoulder from under the Count’s hand; slowly turned his face away from the Count’s eyes; doggedly looked down for a little while at the parchment on the table; and then spoke, with the sullen submission of a tamed animal, rather than the becoming resignation of a convinced man.

  “I don’t want to offend anybody,” he said. “But my wife’s obstinacy is enough to try the patience of a saint. I have told her this is merely a formal document—and what more can she want? You may say what you please; but it is no part of a woman’s duty to set her husband at defiance. Once more, Lady Glyde, and for the last time, will you sign or will you not?”

  Laura returned to his side of the table, and took up the pen again.

  “I will sign with pleasure,” she said, “if you will only treat me as a responsible being. I care little what sacrifice is required of me, if it will affect no one else, and lead to no ill results——”

  “Who talked of a sacrifice being required of you?” he broke in, with a half-suppressed return of his former violence.

  “I only meant,” she resumed, “that I would refuse no concession which I could honourably make. If I have a scruple about signing my name to an engagement of which I know nothing, why should you visit it on me so severely? It is rather hard, I think, to treat Count Fosco’s scruples so much more indulgently than you have treated mine.”

  This unfortunate, yet most natural, reference to the Count’s extraordinary power over her husband, indirect as it was, set Sir Percival’s smouldering temper on fire again in an instant.

  “Scruples!” he repeated. “Your scruples! It is rather late in the day for you to be scrupulous. I should have thought you had got over all weakness of that sort, when you made a virtue of necessity by marrying me.”

  The instant he spoke those words, Laura threw down the pen—looked at him with an expression in her eyes, which, throughout all my experience of her, I had never seen in them before—and turned her back on him in dead silence.

  This strong expression of the most open and the most bitter contempt, was so entirely unlike herself, so utterly out of her character, that it silenced us all. There was something hidden, beyond a doubt, under the mere surface-brutality of the words which her husband had just addressed to her. There was some lurking insult beneath them, of which I was wholly ignorant, but which had left the mark of its profanation so
plainly on her face that even a stranger might have seen it.

  The Count, who was no stranger, saw it as distinctly as I did. When I left my chair to join Laura, I heard him whisper under his breath to Sir Percival: “You idiot!”

  Laura walked before me to the door as I advanced; and, at the same time, her husband spoke to her once more.

  “You positively refuse, then, to give me your signature?” he said, in the altered tone of a man who was conscious that he had let his own licence of language seriously injure him.

  “After what you have said to me,” she replied, firmly, “I refuse my signature until I have read every line in that parchment from the first word to the last. Come away, Marian, we have remained here long enough.”

  “One moment!” interposed the Count, before Sir Percival could speak again—“one moment, Lady Glyde, I implore you!”

  Laura would have left the room without noticing him; but I stopped her.

  “Don’t make an enemy of the Count!” I whispered. “Whatever you do, don’t make an enemy of the Count!”

  She yielded to me. I closed the door again; and we stood near it, waiting. Sir Percival sat down at the table, with his elbow on the folded parchment, and his head resting on his clenched fist. The Count stood between us—master of the dreadful position in which we were placed, as he was master of everything else.

  “Lady Glyde,” he said, with a gentleness which seemed to address itself to our forlorn situation instead of to ourselves, “pray pardon me, if I venture to offer one suggestion; and pray believe that I speak out of my profound respect and my friendly regard for the mistress of this house.” He turned sharply towards Sir Percival. “Is it absolutely necessary,” he asked, “that this thing here, under your elbow, should be signed to-day?”