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

by Lynn Shepherd

  Laura saw me thinking. “More difficulties!” she said, wearily; “more difficulties and more dangers!”

  “No dangers,” I replied. “Some little difficulty, perhaps. I am thinking of the safest way of putting my two letters into Fanny’s hands.”

  “You have really written them, then? Oh, Marian, run no risks—pray, pray run no risks!”

  “No, no—no fear. Let me see—what o’clock is it now?”

  It was a quarter to six. There would be time for me to get to the village inn, and to come back again, before dinner. If I waited till the evening, I might find no second opportunity of safely leaving the house.

  “Keep the key turned in the lock, Laura,” I said, “and don’t be afraid about me. If you hear any inquiries made, call through the door, and say that I am gone out for a walk.”

  “When shall you be back?”

  “Before dinner, without fail. Courage, my love. By this time to-morrow, you will have a clear-headed, trustworthy man acting for your good. Mr. Gilmore’s partner is our next best friend to Mr. Gilmore himself.”

  A moment’s reflection, as soon as I was alone, convinced me that I had better not appear in my walking-dress, until I had first discovered what was going on in the lower part of the house. I had not ascertained yet whether Sir Percival was in-doors or out.

  The singing of the canaries in the library, and the smell of tobacco-smoke that came through the door, which was not closed, told me at once where the Count was. I looked over my shoulder, as I passed the doorway; and saw, to my surprise, that he was exhibiting the docility of the birds, in his most engagingly polite manner, to the housekeeper. He must have specially invited her to see them—for she would never have thought of going into the library of her own accord. The man’s slightest actions had a purpose of some kind at the bottom of every one of them. What could be his purpose here?

  It was no time then to inquire into his motives. I looked about for Madame Fosco, next; and found her following her favourite circle, round and round the fish-pond. I was a little doubtful how she would meet me, after the outbreak of jealousy, of which I had been the cause so short a time since. But her husband had tamed her in the interval; and she now spoke to me with the same civility as usual. My only object in addressing myself to her was to ascertain if she knew what had become of Sir Percival. I contrived to refer to him indirectly; and, after a little fencing on either side, she at last mentioned that he had gone out.

  “Which of the horses has he taken?” I asked, carelessly.

  “None of them,” she replied. “He went away, two hours since, on foot. As I understood it, his object was to make fresh inquiries about the woman named Anne Catherick. He appears to be unreasonably anxious about tracing her. Do you happen to know if she is dangerously mad, Miss Halcombe?”

  “I do not, Countess.”

  “Are you going in?”

  “Yes, I think so. I suppose it will soon be time to dress for dinner.”

  We entered the house together. Madame Fosco strolled into the library, and closed the door. I went at once to fetch my hat and shawl. Every moment was of importance, if I was to get to Fanny at the inn and be back before dinner.

  When I crossed the hall again, no one was there; and the singing of the birds in the library had ceased. I could not stop to make any fresh investigations. I could only assure myself that the way was clear, and then leave the house, with the two letters safe in my pocket.

  On my way to the village, I prepared myself for the possibility of meeting Sir Percival. As long as I had him to deal with alone, I felt certain of not losing my presence of mind. Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper. I had no such fear of Sir Percival as I had of the Count. Instead of fluttering, it had composed me, to hear of the errand on which he had gone out. While the tracing of Anne Catherick was the great anxiety that occupied him, Laura and I might hope for some cessation of any active persecution at his hands. For our sakes now, as well as for hers, I hoped and prayed fervently that she might still escape him.

  I walked on as briskly as the heat would let me, till I reached the cross-road which led to the village; looking back, from time to time, to make sure that I was not followed by any one. Nothing was behind me, all the way, but an empty country waggon. The noise made by the lumbering wheels annoyed me; and when I found that the waggon took the road to the village, as well as myself, I stopped to let it go by, and pass out of hearing. As I looked towards it, more attentively than before, I thought I detected, at intervals, the feet of a man walking close behind it; the carter being in front, by the side of his horses. The part of the cross-road which I had just passed over was so narrow, that the waggon coming after me brushed the trees and thickets on either side; and I had to wait until it went by, before I could test the correctness of my impression. Apparently, that impression was wrong, for when the waggon had passed me, the road behind it was quite clear.

  I reached the inn without meeting Sir Percival, and without noticing anything more; and was glad to find that the landlady had received Fanny with all possible kindness. The girl had a little parlour to sit in, away from the noise of the tap-room, and a clean bed-chamber at the top of the house. She began crying again, at the sight of me; and said, poor soul, truly enough, that it was dreadful to feel herself turned out into the world, as if she had committed some unpardonable fault, when no blame could be laid at her door by anybody—not even by her master who had sent her away.

  “Try to make the best of it, Fanny,” I said. “Your mistress and I will stand your friends, and will take care that your character shall not suffer. Now, listen to me. I have very little time to spare, and I am going to put a great trust in your hands. I wish you to take care of these two letters. The one with the stamp on it you are to put into the post, when you reach London, to-morrow. The other, directed to Mr. Fairlie, you are to deliver to him yourself, as soon as you get home. Keep both the letters about you, and give them up to no one. They are of the last importance to your mistress’s interests.”

  Fanny put the letters into the bosom of her dress. “There they shall stop, miss,” she said, “till I have done what you tell me.”

  “Mind you are at the station in good time to-morrow morning,” I continued. “And, when you see the housekeeper at Limmeridge, give her my compliments, and say that you are in my service, until Lady Glyde is able to take you back. We may meet again sooner than you think. So keep a good heart, and don’t miss the seven o’clock train.”

  “Thank you, miss—thank you kindly. It gives one courage to hear your voice again. Please to offer my duty to my lady; and say I left all the things as tidy as I could in the time. Oh, dear! dear! who will dress her for dinner today? It really breaks my heart, miss, to think of it.”

  When I got back to the house, I had only a quarter of an hour to spare, to put myself in order for dinner, and to say two words to Laura before I went down stairs.

  “The letters are in Fanny’s hands,” I whispered to her, at the door. “Do you mean to join us at dinner?”

  “Oh, no, no—not for the world!”

  “Has anything happened? Has any one disturbed you?”

  “Yes—just now—Sir Percival——”

  “Did he come in?”

  “No: he frightened me by a thump on the door, outside. I said, ‘Who’s there?’ ‘You know,’ he answered. ‘Will you alter your mind, and tell me the rest? You shall! Sooner or later, I’ll wring it out of you. You know where Anne Catherick is, at this moment!’ ‘Indeed, indeed,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’ ‘You do!’ he called back. ‘I’ll crush your obstinacy—mind that!—I’ll wring it out of you!’ He went away, with those words—went away, Marian, hardly five minutes ago.”

  He had not found her. We were safe for that night—he had not found her yet.

  “You are going down stairs, Marian? Come up again in the evening.”

  “Yes, yes. Don’t be uneasy, if I am a little
late—I must be careful not to give offence by leaving them too soon.”

  The dinner-bell rang; and I hastened away.

  Sir Percival took Madame Fosco into the dining-room; and the Count gave me his arm. He was hot and flushed, and was not dressed with his customary care and completeness. Had he, too, been out before dinner, and been late in getting back? or was he only suffering from the heat a little more severely than usual?

  However this might be, he was unquestionably troubled by some secret annoyance or anxiety, which, with all his powers of deception, he was not able entirely to conceal. Through the whole of dinner, he was almost as silent as Sir Percival himself; and he, every now and then, looked at his wife with an expression of furtive uneasiness, which was quite new in my experience of him. The one social obligation which he seemed to be self-possessed enough to perform as carefully as ever, was the obligation of being persistently civil and attentive to me. What vile object he has in view, I cannot still discover; but, be the design what it may, invariable politeness towards myself, invariable humility towards Laura, and invariable suppression (at any cost) of Sir Percival’s clumsy violence, have been the means he has resolutely and impenetrably used to get to his end, ever since he set foot in this house. I suspected it, when he first interfered in our favour, on the day when the deed was produced in the library, and I feel certain of it, now.

  When Madame Fosco and I rose to leave the table, the Count rose also to accompany us back to the drawing-room.

  “What are you going away for?” asked Sir Percival—“I mean you, Fosco.”

  “I am going away, because I have had dinner enough, and wine enough,” answered the Count. “Be so kind, Percival, as to make allowances for my foreign habit of going out with the ladies, as well as coming in with them.”

  “Nonsense! Another glass of claret won’t hurt you. Sit down again like an Englishman. I want half an hour’s quiet talk with you over our wine.”

  “A quiet talk, Percival, with all my heart, but not now, and not over the wine. Later in the evening, if you please—later in the evening.”

  “Civil!” said Sir Percival, savagely. “Civil behaviour, upon my soul, to a man in his own house!”

  I had more than once seen him look at the Count uneasily during dinner-time, and had observed that the Count carefully abstained from looking at him in return. This circumstance, coupled with the host’s anxiety for a little quiet talk over the wine and the guest’s obstinate resolution not to sit down again at the table, revived in my memory the request which Sir Percival had vainly addressed to his friend, earlier in the day, to come out of the library and speak to him. The Count had deferred granting that private interview, when it was first asked for in the afternoon, and had again deferred granting it, when it was a second time asked for at the dinner-table. Whatever the coming subject of discussion between them might be, it was clearly an important subject in Sir Percival’s estimation—and perhaps (judging from his evident reluctance to approach it), a dangerous subject as well, in the estimation of the Count.

  These considerations occurred to me while we were passing from the dining-room to the drawing-room. Sir Percival’s angry commentary on his friend’s desertion of him had not produced the slightest effect. The Count obstinately accompanied us to the tea-table—waited a minute or two in the room—then went out into the hall and returned with the post-bag in his hands. It was then eight o’clock—the hour at which the letters were always despatched from Blackwater Park.

  “Have you any letter for the post, Miss Halcombe?” he asked, approaching me, with the bag.

  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 today.”

  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 up-stairs 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 up-stairs 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.

  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.