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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “It is necessary to my plans and wishes,” replied the other, sulkily. “But that consideration, as you may have noticed, has no influence with Lady Glyde.”

  “Answer my plain question, plainly. Can the business of the signature be put off till to-morrow—Yes, or No?”

  “Yes—if you will have it so.”

  “Then, what are you wasting your time for, here? Let the signature wait till to-morrow—let it wait till you come back.”

  Sir Percival looked up with a frown and an oath.

  “You are taking a tone with me that I don’t like,” he said. “A tone I won’t bear from any man.”

  “I am advising you for your good,” returned the Count, with a smile of quiet contempt. “Give yourself time; give Lady Glyde time. Have you forgotten that your dog-cart is waiting at the door? My tone surprises you—ha? I dare say it does—it is the tone of a man who can keep his temper. How many doses of good advice have I given you in my time? More than you can count. Have I ever been wrong? I defy you to quote me an instance of it. Go! take your drive. The matter of the signature can wait till to-morrow. Let it wait—and renew it when you come back.”

  Sir Percival hesitated, and looked at his watch. His anxiety about the secret journey which he was to take that day, revived by the Count’s words, was now evidently disputing possession of his mind with his anxiety to obtain Laura’s signature. He considered for a little while; and then got up from his chair.

  “It is easy to argue me down,” he said, “when I have no time to answer you. I will take your advice, Fosco—not because I want it, or believe in it, but because I can’t stop here any longer.” He paused, and looked round darkly at his wife. “If you don’t give me your signature when I come back to-morrow——!” The rest was lost in the noise of his opening the bookcase cupboard again, and locking up the parchment once more. He took his hat and gloves off the table, and made for the door. Laura and I drew back to let him pass. “Remember to-morrow!” he said to his wife; and went out.

  We waited to give him time to cross the hall, and drive away. The Count approached us while we were standing near the door.

  “You have just seen Percival at his worst, Miss Halcombe,” he said. “As his old friend, I am sorry for him and ashamed of him. As his old friend, I promise you that he shall not break out to-morrow in the same disgraceful manner in which he has broken out to-day.”

  Laura had taken my arm while he was speaking, and she pressed it significantly when he had done. It would have been a hard trial to any woman to stand by and see the office of apologist for her husband’s misconduct quietly assumed by his male friend in her own house—and it was a hard trial to her. I thanked the Count civilly, and led her out. Yes! I thanked him: for I felt already, with a sense of inexpressible helplessness and humiliation, that it was either his interest or his caprice to make sure of my continuing to reside at Blackwater Park; and I knew, after Sir Percival’s conduct to me, that without the support of the Count’s influence, I could not hope to remain there. His influence, the influence of all others that I dreaded most, was actually the one tie which now held me to Laura in the hour of her utmost need!

  We heard the wheels of the dog-cart crashing on the gravel of the drive, as we came out into the hall. Sir Percival had started on his journey.

  “Where is he going to, Marian?” Laura whispered. “Every fresh thing he does, seems to terrify me about the future. Have you any suspicions?”

  After what she had undergone that morning, I was unwilling to tell her my suspicions.

  “How should I know his secrets,” I said, evasively.

  “I wonder if the housekeeper knows?” she persisted.

  “Certainly not,” I replied. “She must be quite as ignorant as we are.”

  Laura shook her head doubtfully.

  “Did you not hear from the housekeeper that there was a report of Anne Catherick having been seen in this neighbourhood? Don’t you think he may have gone away to look for her?”

  “I would rather compose myself, Laura, by not thinking about it, at all; and, after what has happened, you had better follow my example. Come into my room, and rest and quiet yourself a little.”

  We sat down together close to the window, and let the fragrant summer air breathe over our faces.

  “I am ashamed to look at you, Marian,” she said, “after what you submitted to down stairs, for my sake. Oh, my own love, I am almost heart-broken, when I think of it! But I will try to make it up to you—I will indeed!”

  “Hush! hush!” I replied; “don’t talk so. What is the trifling mortification of my pride compared to the dreadful sacrifice of your happiness?”

  “You heard what he said to me?” she went on, quickly and vehemently. “You heard the words—but you don’t know what they meant—you don’t know why I threw down the pen and turned my back on him.” She rose in sudden agitation, and walked about the room. “I have kept many things from your knowledge, Marian, for fear of distressing you, and making you unhappy at the outset of our new lives. You don’t know how he has used me. And yet, you ought to know, for you saw how he used me to-day. You heard him sneer at my presuming to be scrupulous; you heard him say I had made a virtue of necessity in marrying him.” She sat down again; her face flushed deeply, and her hands twisted and twined together in her lap. “I can’t tell you about it, now,” she said; “I shall burst out crying if I tell you now—later, Marian, when I am more sure of myself. My poor head aches, darling—aches, aches, aches. Where is your smelling bottle? Let me talk to you about yourself. I wish I had given him my signature, for your sake. Shall I give it to him, to-morrow? I would rather compromise myself than compromise you. After your taking my part against him, he will lay all the blame on you, if I refuse again. What shall we do? Oh, for a friend to help us and advise us!—a friend we could really trust!”

  She sighed bitterly. I saw in her face that she was thinking of Hartright—saw it the more plainly because her last words had set me thinking of him, too. In six months only from her marriage, we wanted the faithful service he had offered to us in his farewell words. How little I once thought that we should ever want it at all!

  “We must do what we can to help ourselves,” I said. “Let us try to talk it over calmly, Laura—let us do all in our power to decide for the best.”

  Putting what she knew of her husband’s embarrassments, and what I had heard of his conversation with the lawyer, together, we arrived necessarily at the conclusion that the parchment in the library had been drawn up for the purpose of borrowing money, and that Laura’s signature was absolutely necessary to fit it for the attainment of Sir Percival’s object.

  The second question, concerning the nature of the legal contract by which the money was to be obtained, and the degree of personal responsibility to which Laura might subject herself if she signed it in the dark, involved considerations which lay far beyond any knowledge and experience that either of us possessed. My own convictions led me to believe that the hidden contents of the parchment concealed a transaction of the meanest and the most fraudulent kind.

  I had not formed this conclusion in consequence of Sir Percival’s refusal to show the writing, or to explain it; for that refusal might well have proceeded from his obstinate disposition and his domineering temper alone. My sole motive for distrusting his honesty, sprang from the change which I had observed in his language and his manners at Blackwater Park, a change which convinced me that he had been acting a part throughout the whole period of his probation at Limmeridge House. His elaborate delicacy; his ceremonious politeness, which harmonised so agreeably with Mr. Gilmore’s old-fashioned notions; his modesty with Laura, his candour with me, his moderation with Mr. Fairlie—all these were the artifices of a mean, cunning, and brutal man, who had dropped his disguise when his practised duplicity had gained its end, and had openly shown himself in the library, on that very day. I say nothing of the grief which this discovery caused me on Laura’s account, for it is not to be
expressed by any words of mine. I only refer to it at all, because it decided me to oppose her signing the parchment, whatever the consequences might be, unless she was first made acquainted with the contents.

  Under these circumstances, the one chance for us, when to-morrow came, was to be provided with an objection to giving the signature, which might rest on sufficiently firm commercial or legal grounds to shake Sir Percival’s resolution, and to make him suspect that we two women understood the laws and obligations of business as well as himself.

  After some pondering, I determined to write to the only honest man within reach whom we could trust to help us discreetly, in our forlorn situation. That man was Mr. Gilmore’s partner—who conducted the business, now that our old friend had been obliged to withdraw from it, and to leave London on account of his health. I explained to Laura that I had Mr. Gilmore’s own authority for placing implicit confidence in his partner’s integrity, discretion, and accurate knowledge of all her affairs; and, with her full approval, I sat down at once to write the letter.

  I began by stating our position to him exactly as it was; and then asked for his advice in return, expressed in plain, downright terms which we could comprehend without any danger of misinterpretations and mistakes. My letter was as short as I could possibly make it, and was, I hope, unencumbered by needless apologies and needless details.

  Just as I was about to put the address on the envelope, an obstacle was discovered by Laura, which, in the effort and preoccupation of writing, had escaped my mind altogether.

  “How are we to get the answer in time?” she asked. “Your letter will not be delivered in London before tomorrow morning; and the post will not bring the reply here till the morning after.”

  The only way of overcoming this difficulty was to have the answer brought to us from the lawyer’s office by a special messenger. I wrote a postscript to that effect, begging that the messenger might be despatched with the reply by the eleven o’clock morning train, which would bring him to our station at twenty minutes past one, and so enable him to reach Blackwater Park by two o’clock at the latest. He was to be directed to ask for me, to answer no questions addressed to him by any one else, and to deliver his letter into no hands but mine.

  “In case Sir Percival should come back to-morrow before two o’clock,” I said to Laura, “the wisest plan for you to adopt is to be out in the grounds, all the morning, with your book or your work, and not to appear at the house till the messenger has had time to arrive with the letter. I will wait here for him, all the morning, to guard against any misadventures or mistakes. By following this arrangement I hope and believe we shall avoid being taken by surprise. Let us go down to the drawing-room now. We may excite suspicion if we remain shut up together too long.”

  “Suspicion?” she repeated. “Whose suspicion can we excite, now that Sir Percival has left the house? Do you mean Count Fosco?”

  “Perhaps I do, Laura.”

  “You are beginning to dislike him as much as I do, Marian.”

  “No; not to dislike him. Dislike is always, more or less, associated with contempt—I can see nothing in the Count to despise.”

  “You are not afraid of him, are you?”

  “Perhaps I am—a little.”

  “Afraid of him, after his interference in our favour to-day!”

  “Yes. I am more afraid of his interference, than I am of Sir Percival’s violence. Remember what I said to you in the library. Whatever you do, Laura, don’t make an enemy of the Count!”

  We went down stairs. Laura entered the drawing-room; while I proceeded across the hall, with my letter in my hand, to put it into the post-bag, which hung against the wall opposite to me.

  The house door was open; and, as I crossed past it, I saw Count Fosco and his wife standing talking together on the steps outside, with their faces turned towards me.

  The Countess came into the hall, rather hastily, and asked if I had leisure enough for five minutes’ private conversation. Feeling a little surprised by such an appeal from such a person, I put my letter into the bag, and replied that I was quite at her disposal. She took my arm with unaccustomed friendliness and familiarity; and instead of leading me into an empty room, drew me out with her to the belt of turf which surrounded the large fish-pond.

  As we passed the Count on the steps, he bowed and smiled, and then went at once into the house; pushing the hall-door to after him, but not actually closing it.

  The Countess walked me gently round the fish-pond. I expected to be made the depositary of some extraordinary confidence; and I was astonished to find that Madame Fosco’s communication for my private ear was nothing more than a polite assurance of her sympathy for me, after what had happened in the library. Her husband had told her of all that had passed, and of the insolent manner in which Sir Percival had spoken to me. This information had so shocked and distressed her, on my account and on Laura’s, that she had made up her mind, if anything of the sort happened again, to mark her sense of Sir Percival’s outrageous conduct by leaving the house. The Count had approved of her idea, and she now hoped that I approved of it, too.

  I thought this a very strange proceeding on the part of such a remarkably reserved woman as Madame Fosco—especially after the interchange of sharp speeches which had passed between us during the conversation in the boat-house, on that very morning. However, it was my plain duty to meet a polite and friendly advance, on the part of one of my elders, with a polite and friendly reply. I answered the Countess, accordingly, in her own tone; and then, thinking we had said all that was necessary on either side, made an attempt to get back to the house.

  But Madame Fosco seemed resolved not to part with me, and, to my unspeakable amazement, resolved also to talk. Hitherto, the most silent of women, she now persecuted me with fluent conventionalities on the subject of married life, on the subject of Sir Percival and Laura, on the subject of her own happiness, on the subject of the late Mr. Fairlie’s conduct to her in the matter of her legacy, and on half a dozen other subjects besides, until she had detained me, walking round and round the fish-pond for more than half an hour, and had quite wearied me out. Whether she discovered this, or not, I cannot say, but she stopped as abruptly as she had begun—looked towards the house door—resumed her icy manner in a moment—and dropped my arm of her own accord, before I could think of an excuse for accomplishing my own release from her.

  As I pushed open the door, and entered the hall, I found myself suddenly face to face with the Count again. He was just putting a letter into the post-bag.

  After he had dropped it in, and had closed the bag, he asked me where I had left Madame Fosco. I told him; and he went out at the hall door, immediately, to join his wife. His manner, when he spoke to me, was so unusually quiet and subdued that I turned and looked after him, wondering if he were ill or out of spirits.

  Why my next proceeding was to go straight up to the post-bag, and take out my own letter, and look at it again, with a vague distrust on me; and why the looking at it for the second time instantly suggested the idea to my mind of sealing the envelope for its greater security—are mysteries which are either too deep or too shallow for me to fathom. Women, as everybody knows, constantly act on impulses which they cannot explain even to themselves; and I can only suppose that one of those impulses was the hidden cause of my unaccountable conduct on this occasion.

  Whatever influence animated me, I found cause to congratulate myself on having obeyed it as soon as I prepared to seal the letter in my own room. I had originally closed the envelope, in the usual way, by moistening the adhesive point and pressing it on the paper beneath; and, when I now tried it with my finger, after a lapse of full three-quarters of an hour, the envelope opened on the instant, without sticking or tearing. Perhaps I had fastened it insufficiently? Perhaps there might have been some defect in the adhesive gum?

  Or, perhaps——No! it is quite revolting enough to feel that third conjecture stirring in my mind. I would rather not see it
confronting me, in plain black and white.

  I almost dread to-morrow—so much depends on my discretion and self-control. There are two precautions, at all events, which I am sure not to forget. One of them is, to keep up friendly appearances with the Count; and the other to be well on my guard, when the messenger from the office comes here with the answer to my letter.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  June 17th. When the dinner hour brought us together again, Count Fosco was in his usual excellent spirits. He exerted himself to interest and amuse us, as if he was determined to efface from our memories all recollection of what had passed in the library that afternoon. Lively descriptions of his adventures in travelling; amusing anecdotes of remarkable people whom he had met with abroad; quaint comparisons between the social customs of various nations, illustrated by examples drawn from men and women indiscriminately all over Europe; humorous confessions of the innocent follies of his own early life, when he ruled the fashions of a second-rate Italian town, and wrote preposterous romances, on the French model, for a second-rate Italian newspaper—all flowed in succession so easily and so gaily from his lips, and all addressed our various curiosities and various interests so directly and so delicately, that Laura and I listened to him with as much attention, and, inconsistent as it may seem, with as much admiration also, as Madame Fosco herself. Women can resist a man’s love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money; but they cannot resist a man’s tongue, when he knows how to talk to them.

  After dinner, while the favourable impression which he had produced on us was still vivid in our minds, the Count modestly withdrew to read in the library. Laura proposed a stroll in the grounds to enjoy the close of the long evening. It was necessary, in common politeness, to ask Madame Fosco to join us; but, this time, she had apparently received her orders beforehand, and she begged we would kindly excuse her. “The Count will probably want a fresh supply of cigarettes,” she remarked, by way of apology; “and nobody can make them to his satisfaction, but myself.” Her cold blue eyes almost warmed as she spoke the words—she looked actually proud of being the officiating medium through which her lord and master composed himself with tobacco-smoke!