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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “Yes, yes; bully and bluster as much as you like,” he said, sulkily; “the difficulty about the money is not the only difficulty. You would be for taking strong measures with the women, yourself—if you knew as much as I do.”

  “We will come to that second difficulty, all in good time,” rejoined the Count. “You may confuse yourself, Percival, as much as you please, but you shall not confuse me. Let the question of the money be settled first. Have I convinced your obstinacy? have I shown you that your temper will not let you help yourself?—Or must I go back, and (as you put it in your dear straightforward English) bully and bluster a little more?”

  “Pooh! It’s easy enough to grumble at me. Say what is to be done—that’s a little harder.”

  “Is it? Bah! This is what is to be done: You give up all direction in the business from to-night; you leave it, for the future, in my hands only. I am talking to a Practical British Man—ha? Well, Practical, will that do for you?”

  “What do you propose, if I leave it all to you?”

  “Answer me first. Is it to be in my hands or not?”

  “Say it is in your hands—what then?”

  “A few questions, Percival, to begin with. I must wait a little, yet, to let circumstances guide me; and I must know, in every possible way, what those circumstances are likely to be. There is no time to lose. I have told you already that Miss Halcombe has written to the lawyer to-day, for the second time.”

  “How did you find it out? What did she say?”

  “If I told you, Percival, we should only come back at the end to where we are now. Enough that I have found out—and the finding has caused that trouble and anxiety which made me so inaccessible to you all through to-day. Now, to refresh my memory about your affairs—it is some time since I talked them over with you. The money has been raised, in the absence of your wife’s signature, by means of bills at three months—raised at a cost that makes my poverty-stricken foreign hair stand on end to think of it! When the bills are due, is there really and truly no earthly way of paying them but by the help of your wife?”

  “None.”

  “What! You have no money at the banker’s!”

  “A few hundreds, when I want as many thousands.”

  “Have you no other security to borrow upon?”

  “Not a shred.”

  “What have you actually got with your wife, at the present moment?”

  “Nothing, but the interest of her twenty thousand pounds—barely enough to pay our daily expenses.”

  “What do you expect from your wife?”

  “Three thousand a year, when her uncle dies.”

  “A fine fortune, Percival. What sort of a man is this uncle? Old?”

  “No—neither old nor young.”

  “A good-tempered, freely-living man? Married? No—I think my wife told me, not married.”

  “Of course not. If he was married, and had a son, Lady Glyde would not be next heir to the property. I’ll tell you what he is. He’s a maudlin, twaddling, selfish fool, and bores everybody who comes near him about the state of his health.”

  “Men of that sort, Percival, live long, and marry malevolently when you least expect it. I don’t give you much, my friend, for your chance of the three thousand a year. Is there nothing more that comes to you from your wife?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Absolutely nothing?”

  “Absolutely nothing—except in case of her death.”

  “Aha? in the case of her death.”

  There was another pause. The Count moved from the verandah to the gravel walk outside. I knew that he had moved, by his voice. “The rain has come at last,” I heard him say. It had come. The state of my cloak showed that it had been falling thickly for some little time.

  The Count went back under the verandah—I heard the chair creak beneath his weight as he sat down in it again.

  “Well, Percival,” he said; “and, in the case of Lady Glyde’s death, what do you get then?”

  “If she leaves no children——”

  “Which she is likely to do?”

  “Which she is not in the least likely to do——”

  “Yes?”

  “Why, then I get her twenty thousand pounds.”

  “Paid down?”

  “Paid down.”

  They were silent once more. As their voices ceased, Madame Fosco’s shadow darkened the blind again. Instead of passing this time, it remained, for a moment, quite still. I saw her fingers steal round the corner of the blind, and draw it on one side. The dim white outline of her face, looking out straight over me, appeared behind the window. I kept quite still, shrouded from head to foot in my black cloak. The rain, which was fast wetting me, dripped over the glass, blurred it, and prevented her from seeing anything. “More rain!” I heard her say to herself. She dropped the blind—and I breathed again freely.

  The talk went on below me; the Count resuming it, this time.

  “Percival! do you care about your wife?”

  “Fosco! that’s rather a downright question.”

  “I am a downright man; and I repeat it.”

  “Why the devil do you look at me in that way?”

  “You won’t answer me? Well, then; let us say your wife dies before the summer is out——”

  “Drop it, Fosco!”

  “Let us say your wife dies——”

  “Drop it, I tell you!”

  “In that case, you would gain twenty thousand pounds; and you would lose——”

  “I should lose the chance of three thousand a year.”

  “The remote chance, Percival—the remote chance only. And you want money, at once. In your position, the gain is certain—the loss doubtful.”

  “Speak for yourself as well as for me. Some of the money I want has been borrowed for you. And if you come to gain, my wife’s death would be ten thousand pounds in your wife’s pocket. Sharp as you are, you seem to have conveniently forgotten Madame Fosco’s legacy. Don’t look at me in that way! I won’t have it! What with your looks and your questions, upon my soul, you make my flesh creep!”

  “Your flesh? Does flesh mean conscience in English? I speak of your wife’s death, as I speak of a possibility. Why not? The respectable lawyers who scribble-scrabble your deeds and your wills, look the deaths of living people in the face. Do lawyers make your flesh creep? Why should I? It is my business tonight, to clear up your position beyond the possibility of mistake—and I have now done it. Here is your position. If your wife lives, you pay those bills with her signature to the parchment. If your wife dies, you pay them with her death.”

  As he spoke, the light in Madame Fosco’s room was extinguished; and the whole second floor of the house was now sunk in darkness.

  “Talk! talk!” grumbled Sir Percival. “One would think, to hear you, that my wife’s signature to the deed was got already.”

  “You have left the matter in my hands,” retorted the Count; “and I have more than two months before me to turn round in. Say no more about it, if you please, for the present. When the bills are due, you will see for yourself if my ‘talk! talk!’ is worth something, or if it is not. And now, Percival, having done with the money matters, for to-night, I can place my attention at your disposal, if you wish to consult me on that second difficulty, which has mixed itself up with our little embarrassments, and which has so altered you for the worse, that I hardly know you again. Speak, my friend—and pardon me if I shock your fiery national tastes by mixing myself a second glass of sugar-and-water.”

  “It’s very well to say speak,” replied Sir Percival, in a far more quiet and more polite tone than he had yet adopted; “but it’s not so easy to know how to begin.”

  “Shall I help you?” suggested the Count. “Shall I give this private difficulty of yours a name? What, if I call it—Anne Catherick?”

  “Look here, Fosco, you and I have known each other for a long time; and, if you have helped me out of one or two scrapes before this, I have done
the best I could to help you in return, as far as money would go. We have made as many friendly sacrifices, on both sides, as men could; but we have had our secrets from each other, of course—haven’t we?”

  “You have had a secret from me, Percival. There is a skeleton in your cupboard here at Blackwater Park, that has peeped out, in these last few days, at other people besides yourself.”

  “Well, suppose it has. If it doesn’t concern you, you needn’t be curious about it, need you?”

  “Do I look curious about it?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “So! so! my face speaks the truth, then? What an immense foundation of good there must be in the nature of a man who arrives at my age, and whose face has not yet lost the habit of speaking the truth!—Come, Glyde! let us be candid one with the other. This secret of yours has sought me: I have not sought it. Let us say I am curious—do you ask me, as your old friend, to respect your secret, and to leave it, once for all, in your own keeping?”

  “Yes—that’s just what I do ask.”

  “Then my curiosity is at an end. It dies in me, from this moment.”

  “Do you really mean that?”

  “What makes you doubt me?”

  “I have had some experience, Fosco, of your roundabout ways; and I am not so sure that you won’t worm it out of me, after all.”

  The chair below suddenly creaked again—I felt the trellis-work pillar under me shake from top to bottom. The Count had started to his feet and struck it with his hand, in indignation.

  “Percival! Percival!” he cried, passionately, “do you know me no better than that? Has all your experience shown you nothing of my character yet? I am a man of the antique type! I am capable of the most exalted acts of virtue—when I have the chance of performing them. It has been the misfortune of my life that I have had few chances. My conception of friendship is sublime! Is it my fault that your skeleton has peeped out at me? Why do I confess my curiosity? You poor superficial Englishman, it is to magnify my own self-control. I could draw your secret out of you, if I liked, as I draw this finger out of the palm of my hand—you know I could! But you have appealed to my friendship; and the duties of friendship are sacred to me. See! I trample my base curiosity under my feet. My exalted sentiments lift me above it. Recognise them, Percival! imitate them, Percival! Shake hands—I forgive you.”

  His voice faltered over the last words—faltered, as if he was actually shedding tears!

  Sir Percival confusedly attempted to excuse himself. But the Count was too magnanimous to listen to him.

  “No!” he said. “When my friend has wounded me, I can pardon him without apologies. Tell me, in plain words, do you want my help?”

  “Yes, badly enough.”

  “And you can ask for it without compromising yourself?”

  “I can try, at any rate.”

  “Try, then.”

  “Well, this is how it stands:—I told you, to-day, that I had done my best to find Anne Catherick, and failed.”

  “Yes; you did.”

  “Fosco! I’m a lost man, if I don’t find her.”

  “Ha! Is it so serious as that?”

  A little stream of light travelled out under the verandah, and fell over the gravel-walk. The Count had taken the lamp from the inner part of the room, to see his friend clearly by the light of it.

  “Yes!” he said. “Your face speaks the truth this time. Serious, indeed—as serious as the money matters themselves.”

  “More serious. As true as I sit here, more serious!”

  The light disappeared again, and the talk went on.

  “I showed you the letter to my wife that Anne Catherick hid in the sand,” Sir Percival continued. “There’s no boasting in that letter, Fosco—she does know the Secret.”

  “Say as little as possible, Percival, in my presence, of the Secret. Does she know it from you?”

  “No; from her mother.”

  “Two women in possession of your private mind—bad, bad, bad, my friend! One question here, before we go any farther. The motive of your shutting up the daughter in the asylum, is now plain enough to me—but the manner of her escape is not quite so clear. Do you suspect the people in charge of her of closing their eyes purposely, at the instance of some enemy, who could afford to make it worth their while?”

  “No; she was the best-behaved patient they had—and, like fools, they trusted her. She’s just mad enough to be shut up, and just sane enough to ruin me when she’s at large—if you understand that?”

  “I do understand it. Now, Percival, come at once to the point; and then I shall know what to do. Where is the danger of your position at the present moment?”

  “Anne Catherick is in this neighbourhood, and in communication with Lady Glyde—there’s the danger, plain enough. Who can read the letter she hid in the sand, and not see that my wife is in possession of the Secret, deny it as she may?”

  “One moment, Percival. If Lady Glyde does know the Secret, she must know also that it is a compromising secret for you. As your wife, surely it is her interest to keep it?”

  “Is it? I’m coming to that. It might be her interest if she cared two straws about me. But I happen to be an encumbrance in the way of another man. She was in love with him, before she married me—she’s in love with him now—an infernal vagabond of a drawing-master, named Hartright.”

  “My dear friend! what is there extraordinary in that? They are all in love with some other man. Who gets the first of a woman’s heart? In all my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One. Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One, never! He exists, of course—but, I have not met with him.”

  “Wait! I haven’t done yet. Who do you think helped Anne Catherick to get the start, when the people from the madhouse were after her? Hartright. Who do you think saw her again in Cumberland? Hartright. Both times, he spoke to her alone. Stop! don’t interrupt me. The scoundrel’s as sweet on my wife, as she is on him. He knows the Secret, and she knows the Secret. Once let them both get together again, and it’s her interest and his interest to turn their information against me.”

  “Gently, Percival—gently! Are you insensible to the virtue of Lady Glyde?”

  “That for the virtue of Lady Glyde! I believe in nothing about her but her money. Don’t you see how the case stands? She might be harmless enough by herself; but if she and that vagabond Hartright——”

  “Yes, yes, I see. Where is Mr. Hartright?”

  “Out of the country. If he means to keep a whole skin on his bones, I recommend him not to come back in a hurry.”

  “Are you sure he is out of the country?”

  “Certain. I had him watched from the time he left Cumberland to the time he sailed. Oh, I’ve been careful, I can tell you! Anne Catherick lived with some people at a farm-house near Limmeridge. I went there, myself, after she had given me the slip, and made sure that they knew nothing. I gave her mother a form of letter to write to Miss Halcombe, exonerating me from any bad motive in putting her under restraint. I’ve spent, I’m afraid to say how much, in trying to trace her. And, in spite of it all, she turns up here, and escapes me on my own property! How do I know who else may see her, who else may speak to her? That prying scoundrel, Hartright, may come back without my knowing it, and may make use of her to-morrow——”

  “Not he, Percival! While I am on the spot, and while that woman is in the neighbourhood, I will answer for our laying hands on her, before Mr. Hartright—even if he does come back. I see! yes, yes, I see! The finding of Anne Catherick is the first necessity: make your mind easy about the rest. Your wife is here, under your thumb; Miss Halcombe is inseparable from her, and is, therefore, under your thumb also; and Mr. Hartright is out of the country. This invisible Anne of yours, is all we have to think of for the present. You have made your inquiries?”

  “Yes. I have been to her mother; I have ransacked the village—and all to no purpose.”

  “Is her moth
er to be depended on?”

  “Yes.”

  “She has told your secret once.”

  “She won’t tell it again.”

  “Why not? Are her own interests concerned in keeping it, as well as yours?”

  “Yes—deeply concerned.”

  “I am glad to hear it, Percival, for your sake. Don’t be discouraged, my friend. Our money matters, as I told you, leave me plenty of time to turn round in; and I may search for Anne Catherick to-morrow to better purpose than you. One last question, before we go to bed.”

  “What is it?”

  “It is this. When I went to the boat-house to tell Lady Glyde that the little difficulty of her signature was put off, accident took me there in time to see a strange woman parting in a very suspicious manner from your wife. But accident did not bring me near enough to see this same woman’s face plainly. I must know how to recognise our invisible Anne. What is she like?”

  “Like? Come! I’ll tell you in two words. She’s a sickly likeness of my wife.”

  The chair creaked, and the pillar shook once more. The Count was on his feet again—this time in astonishment.

  “What!!!” he exclaimed, eagerly.

  “Fancy my wife, after a bad illness, with a touch of something wrong in her head—and there is Anne Catherick for you,” answered Sir Percival.

  “Are they related to each other?”

  “Not a bit of it.”

  “And yet, so like?”

  “Yes, so like. What are you laughing about?”

  There was no answer, and no sound of any kind. The Count was laughing in his smooth, silent, internal way.

  “What are you laughing about?” reiterated Sir Percival.

  “Perhaps, at my own fancies, my good friend. Allow me my Italian humour—do I not come of the illustrious nation which invented the exhibition of Punch? Well, well, well, I shall know Anne Catherick when I see her—and so enough for to-night. Make your mind easy, Percival. Sleep, my son, the sleep of the just; and see what I will do for you, when daylight comes to help us both. I have my projects and my plans, here in my big head. You shall pay those bills and find Anne Catherick—my sacred word of honour on it, but you shall! Am I a friend to be treasured in the best corner of your heart, or am I not? Am I worth those loans of money which you so delicately reminded me of a little while since? Whatever you do, never wound me in my sentiments any more. Recognise them, Percival! imitate them! I forgive you again; I shake hands again. Good night!”