The Woman in White

Chapter 7

June 19th.--The events of yesterday warned me to be ready, sooner

or later, to meet the worst. To-day is not yet at an end, and the

worst has come.

Judging by the closest calculation of time that Laura and I could

make, we arrived at the conclusion that Anne Catherick must have

appeared at the boat-house at half-past two o'clock on the

afternoon of yesterday. I accordingly arranged that Laura should

just show herself at the luncheon-table to-day, and should then

slip out at the first opportunity, leaving me behind to preserve

appearances, and to follow her as soon as I could safely do so.

This mode of proceeding, if no obstacles occurred to thwart us,

would enable her to be at the boat-house before half-past two, and

(when I left the table, in my turn) would take me to a safe

position in the plantation before three.

The change in the weather, which last night's wind warned us to

expect, came with the morning. It was raining heavily when I got

up, and it continued to rain until twelve o'clock--when the clouds

dispersed, the blue sky appeared, and the sun shone again with the

bright promise of a fine afternoon.

My anxiety to know how Sir Percival and the Count would occupy the

early part of the day was by no means set at rest, so far as Sir

Percival was concerned, by his leaving us immediately after

breakfast, and going out by himself, in spite of the rain. He

neither told us where he was going nor when we might expect him

back. We saw him pass the breakfast-room window hastily, with his

high boots and his waterproof coat on--and that was all.

The Count passed the morning quietly indoors, some part of it in

the library, some part in the drawing-room, playing odds and ends

of music on the piano, and humming to himself. Judging by

appearances, the sentimental side of his character was

persistently inclined to betray itself still. He was silent and

sensitive, and ready to sigh and languish ponderously (as only fat

men CAN sigh and languish) on the smallest provocation.

Luncheon-time came and Sir Percival did not return. The Count

took his friend's place at the table, plaintively devoured the

greater part of a fruit tart, submerged under a whole jugful of

cream, and explained the full merit of the achievement to us as

soon as he had done. "A taste for sweets," he said in his softest

tones and his tenderest manner, "is the innocent taste of women

and children. I love to share it with them--it is another bond,

dear ladies, between you and me."

Laura left the table in ten minutes' time. I was sorely tempted

to accompany her. But if we had both gone out together we must

have excited suspicion, and worse still, if we allowed Anne

Catherick to see Laura, accompanied by a second person who was a

stranger to her, we should in all probability forfeit her

confidence from that moment, never to regain it again.

I waited, therefore, as patiently as I could, until the servant

came in to clear the table. When I quitted the room, there were

no signs, in the house or out of it, of Sir Percival's return. I

left the Count with a piece of sugar between his lips, and the

vicious cockatoo scrambling up his waistcoat to get at it, while

Madame Fosco, sitting opposite to her husband, watched the

proceedings of his bird and himself as attentively as if she had

never seen anything of the sort before in her life. On my way to

the plantation I kept carefully beyond the range of view from the

luncheon-room window. Nobody saw me and nobody followed me. It

was then a quarter to three o'clock by my watch.

Once among the trees I walked rapidly, until I had advanced more

than half-way through the plantation. At that point I slackened

my pace and proceeded cautiously, but I saw no one, and heard no

voices. By little and little I came within view of the back of

the boat-house--stopped and listened--then went on, till I was

close behind it, and must have heard any persons who were talking

inside. Still the silence was unbroken--still far and near no

sign of a living creature appeared anywhere.

After skirting round by the back of the building, first on one

side and then on the other, and making no discoveries, I ventured

in front of it, and fairly looked in. The place was empty.

I called, "Laura!"--at first softly, then louder and louder. No

one answered and no one appeared. For all that I could see and

hear, the only human creature in the neighbourhood of the lake and

the plantation was myself.

My heart began to beat violently, but I kept my resolution, and

searched, first the boat-house and then the ground in front of it,

for any signs which might show me whether Laura had really reached

the place or not. No mark of her presence appeared inside the

building, but I found traces of her outside it, in footsteps on

the sand.

I detected the footsteps of two persons--large footsteps like a

man's, and small footsteps, which, by putting my own feet into

them and testing their size in that manner, I felt certain were

Laura's. The ground was confusedly marked in this way just before

the boat-house. Close against one side of it, under shelter of

the projecting roof, I discovered a little hole in the sand--a

hole artificially made, beyond a doubt. I just noticed it, and

then turned away immediately to trace the footsteps as far as I

could, and to follow the direction in which they might lead me.

They led me, starting from the left-hand side of the boat-house,

along the edge of the trees, a distance, I should think, of

between two and three hundred yards, and then the sandy ground

showed no further trace of them. Feeling that the persons whose

course I was tracking must necessarily have entered the plantation

at this point, I entered it too. At first I could find no path,

but I discovered one afterwards, just faintly traced among the

trees, and followed it. It took me, for some distance, in the

direction of the village, until I stopped at a point where another

foot-track crossed it. The brambles grew thickly on either side

of this second path. I stood looking down it, uncertain which way

to take next, and while I looked I saw on one thorny branch some

fragments of fringe from a woman's shawl. A closer examination of

the fringe satisfied me that it had been torn from a shawl of

Laura's, and I instantly followed the second path. It brought me

out at last, to my great relief, at the back of the house. I say

to my great relief, because I inferred that Laura must, for some

unknown reason, have returned before me by this roundabout way. I

went in by the court-yard and the offices. The first person whom

I met in crossing the servants' hall was Mrs. Michelson, the

housekeeper.

"My lady came in a little while ago with Sir Percival," answered

the housekeeper. "I am afraid, Miss Halcombe, something very

distressing has happened."

"No, no--thank God, no accident. But my lady ran up-stairs to her

own room in tears, and Sir Percival has ordered me to give Fanny

warning to leave in an hour's time."

Fanny was Laura's maid--a good affectionate girl who had been with

her for years--the only person in the house whose fidelity and

devotion we could both depend upon.

She could give me no explanation whatever of her sudden dismissal.

Sir Percival had ordered that she should have a month's wages, in

place of a month's warning, and go. No reason had been assigned--

no objection had been made to her conduct. She had been forbidden

to appeal to her mistress, forbidden even to see her for a moment

to say good-bye. She was to go without explanations or farewells,

and to go at once.

After soothing the poor girl by a few friendly words, I asked

where she proposed to sleep that night. She replied that she

thought of going to the little inn in the village, the landlady of

which was a respectable woman, known to the servants at Blackwater

Park. The next morning, by leaving early, she might get back to

her friends in Cumberland without stopping in London, where she

was a total stranger.

I felt directly that Fanny's departure offered us a safe means of

communication with London and with Limmeridge House, of which it

might be very important to avail ourselves. Accordingly, I told

her that she might expect to hear from her mistress or from me in

the course of the evening, and that she might depend on our both

doing all that lay in our power to help her, under the trial of

leaving us for the present. Those words said, I shook hands with

her and went upstairs.

The door which led to Laura's room was the door of an ante-chamber

opening on to the passage. When I tried it, it was bolted on the

inside.

I knocked, and the door was opened by the same heavy, over-grown

housemaid whose lumpish insensibility had tried my patience so

severely on the day when I found the wounded dog.

I had, since that time, discovered that her name was Margaret

Porcher, and that she was the most awkward, slatternly, and

obstinate servant in the house.

She stretched out a great red hand and arm on each side of her, so

as to bar the doorway, and slowly nodded her addle head at me.

I had need of all my self-control to warn me against contesting

the matter with HER, and to remind me that the next words I had to

say must be addressed to her master. I turned my back on her, and

instantly went downstairs to find him. My resolution to keep my

temper under all the irritations that Sir Percival could offer

was, by this time, as completely forgotten--I say so to my shame--

as if I had never made it. It did me good, after all I had

suffered and suppressed in that house--it actually did me good to

feel how angry I was.

The drawing-room and the breakfast-room were both empty. I went

on to the library, and there I found Sir Percival, the Count, and

Madame Fosco. They were all three standing up, close together,

and Sir Percival had a little slip of paper in his hand. As I

opened the door I heard the Count say to him, "No--a thousand

times over, no."

"Am I to understand, Sir Percival, that your wife's room is a

prison, and that your housemaid is the gaoler who keeps it?" I

asked.

"Yes, that is what you are to understand," he answered. "Take

care my gaoler hasn't got double duty to do--take care your room

is not a prison too."

"Take YOU care how you treat your wife, and how you threaten ME,"

I broke out in the heat of my anger. "There are laws in England

to protect women from cruelty and outrage. If you hurt a hair of

Laura's head, if you dare to interfere with my freedom, come what

may, to those laws I will appeal."

Even in the vehemence of my anger I felt his calm, cold, grey eyes

on my face. They turned away from me as soon as he had spoken,

and looked significantly at his wife. Madame Fosco immediately

moved close to my side, and in that position addressed Sir

Percival before either of us could speak again.

"Favour me with your attention for one moment," she said, in her

clear icily-suppressed tones. "I have to thank you, Sir Percival,

for your hospitality, and to decline taking advantage of it any

longer. I remain in no house in which ladies are treated as your

wife and Miss Halcombe have been treated here to-day!"

Sir Percival drew back a step, and stared at her in dead silence.

The declaration he had just heard--a declaration which he well

knew, as I well knew, Madame Fosco would not have ventured to make

without her husband's permission--seemed to petrify him with

surprise. The Count stood by, and looked at his wife with the

most enthusiastic admiration.

"She is sublime!" he said to himself. He approached her while he

spoke, and drew her hand through his arm. "I am at your service,

Eleanor," he went on, with a quiet dignity that I had never

noticed in him before. "And at Miss Halcombe's service, if she

will honour me by accepting all the assistance I can offer her."

"At other times I mean what I say, but at this time I mean what my

wife says," replied the impenetrable Italian. "We have changed

places, Percival, for once, and Madame Fosco's opinion is--mine."

Sir Percival crumpled up the paper in his hand, and pushing past

the Count, with another oath, stood between him and the door.

"Have your own way," he said, with baffled rage in his low, half-

whispering tones. "Have your own way--and see what comes of it."

With those words he left the room.

"It means that you and I together have brought the worst-tempered

man in all England to his senses," answered the Count. "It means,

Miss Halcombe, that Lady Glyde is relieved from a gross indignity,

and you from the repetition of an unpardonable insult. Suffer me

to express my admiration of your conduct and your courage at a

very trying moment."

I had no longer the strength of my first angry resistance to

outrage and injury to support me. My heart-sick anxiety to see

Laura, my sense of my own helpless ignorance of what had happened

at the boat-house, pressed on me with an intolerable weight. I

tried to keep up appearances by speaking to the Count and his wife

in the tone which they had chosen to adopt in speaking to me, but

the words failed on my lips--my breath came short and thick--my

eyes looked longingly, in silence, at the door. The Count,

understanding my anxiety, opened it, went out, and pulled it to

after him. At the same time Sir Percival's heavy step descended

the stairs. I heard them whispering together outside, while

Madame Fosco was assuring me, in her calmest and most conventional

manner, that she rejoiced, for all our sakes, that Sir Percival's

conduct had not obliged her husband and herself to leave

Blackwater Park. Before she had done speaking the whispering

ceased, the door opened, and the Count looked in.

"Miss Halcombe," he said, "I am happy to inform you that Lady

Glyde is mistress again in her own house. I thought it might be

more agreeable to you to hear of this change for the better from

me than from Sir Percival, and I have therefore expressly returned

to mention it."

"Admirable delicacy!" said Madame Fosco, paying back her husband's

tribute of admiration with the Count's own coin, in the Count's

own manner. He smiled and bowed as if he had received a formal

compliment from a polite stranger, and drew back to let me pass

out first.

Sir Percival was standing in the hall. As I hurried to the stairs

I heard him call impatiently to the Count to come out of the

library.

Neither he nor his friend said any more. I gained the top of the

stairs and ran along the passage. In my haste and my agitation I

left the door of the ante-chamber open, but I closed the door of

the bedroom the moment I was inside it.

Laura was sitting alone at the far end of the room, her arms

resting wearily on a table, and her face hidden in her hands. She

started up with a cry of delight when she saw me.

In my overpowering anxiety to hear what she had to tell me, I

could not answer her--I could only put questions on my side.

Laura's eagerness to know what had passed downstairs proved,

however, too strong to be resisted. She persistently repeated her

inquiries.

I had not yet sat down, and I went first to see who it was. When

I opened the door Madame Fosco confronted me with my handkerchief

in her hand.

"You dropped this downstairs, Miss Halcombe," she said, "and I

thought I could bring it to you, as I was passing by to my own

room."

Her face, naturally pale, had turned to such a ghastly whiteness

that I started at the sight of it. Her hands, so sure and steady

at all other times, trembled violently, and her eyes looked

wolfishly past me through the open door, and fixed on Laura.

She had been listening before she knocked! I saw it in her white

face, I saw it in her trembling hands, I saw it in her look at

Laura.

"You would have called him so yourself, Marian, if you had known

what I know. Anne Catherick was right. There was a third person

watching us in the plantation yesterday, and that third person---"

"I am absolutely certain. He was Sir Percival's spy--he was Sir

Percival's informer--he set Sir Percival watching and waiting, all

the morning through, for Anne Catherick and for me."

"I went in and sat waiting for a few minutes. But my restlessness

made me get up again, to walk about a little. As I passed out I

saw some marks on the sand, close under the front of the boat-

house. I stooped down to examine them, and discovered a word

written in large letters on the sand. The word was--LOOK."

"Yes, I scraped away the sand on the surface, and in a little

while I came to a strip of paper hidden beneath, which had writing

on it. The writing was signed with Anne Catherick's initials."

"I was seen with you, yesterday, by a tall, stout old man, and had

to run to save myself. He was not quick enough on his feet to

follow me, and he lost me among the trees. I dare not risk coming

back here to-day at the same time. I write this, and hide it in

the sand, at six in the morning, to tell you so. When we speak

next of your wicked husband's Secret we must speak safely, or not

at all. Try to have patience. I promise you shall see me again

and that soon.--A. C."

The reference to the "tall, stout old man" (the terms of which

Laura was certain that she had repeated to me correctly) left no

doubt as to who the intruder had been. I called to mind that I

had told Sir Percival, in the Count's presence the day before,

that Laura had gone to the boat-house to look for her brooch. In

all probability he had followed her there, in his officious way,

to relieve her mind about the matter of the signature, immediately

after he had mentioned the change in Sir Percival's plans to me in

the drawing-room. In this case he could only have got to the

neighbourhood of the boat-house at the very moment when Anne

Catherick discovered him. The suspiciously hurried manner in

which she parted from Laura had no doubt prompted his useless

attempt to follow her. Of the conversation which had previously

taken place between them he could have heard nothing. The

distance between the house and the lake, and the time at which he

left me in the drawing-room, as compared with the time at which

Laura and Anne Catherick had been speaking together, proved that

fact to us at any rate, beyond a doubt.

Having arrived at something like a conclusion so far, my next

great interest was to know what discoveries Sir Percival had made

after Count Fosco had given him his information.

"After reading it once through," she replied, "I took it into the

boat-house with me to sit down and look over it a second time.

While I was reading a shadow fell across the paper. I looked up,

and saw Sir Percival standing in the doorway watching me."

"I tried, but he stopped me. 'You needn't trouble to hide that,'

he said. 'I happen to have read it.' I could only look at him

helplessly--I could say nothing. 'You understand?' he went on; 'I

have read it. I dug it up out of the sand two hours since, and

buried it again, and wrote the word above it again, and left it

ready to your hands. You can't lie yourself out of the scrape

now. You saw Anne Catherick in secret yesterday, and you have got

her letter in your hand at this moment. I have not caught HER

yet, but I have caught YOU. Give me the letter.' He stepped close

up to me--I was alone with him, Marian--what could I do?--I gave

him the letter."

"At first he said nothing. He took me by the arm, and led me out

of the boat-house, and looked about him on all sides, as if he was

afraid of our being seen or heard. Then he clasped his hand fast

round my arm, and whispered to me, 'What did Anne Catherick say to

you yesterday? I insist on hearing every word, from first to

last.'"

"I want to see it, Laura, because our endurance must end, and our

resistance must begin to-day. That mark is a weapon to strike him

with. Let me see it now--I may have to swear to it at some future

time."

She showed me the marks. I was past grieving over them, past

crying over them, past shuddering over them. They say we are

either better than men, or worse. If the temptation that has

fallen in some women's way, and made them worse, had fallen in

mine at that moment Thank God! my face betrayed nothing that his

wife could read. The gentle, innocent, affectionate creature

thought I was frightened for her and sorry for her, and thought no

more.

"I will try to think quietly of it, my love, for your sake.--Well!

well! And you told him all that Anne Catherick had said to you--

all that you told me?"

"He looked at me, and laughed to himself in a mocking, bitter way.

'I mean to have the rest out of you,' he said, 'do you hear?--the

rest.' I declared to him solemnly that I had told him everything I

knew. 'Not you,' he answered, 'you know more than you choose to

tell. Won't you tell it? You shall! I'll wring it out of you at

home if I can't wring it out of you here.' He led me away by a

strange path through the plantation--a path where there was no

hope of our meeting you--and he spoke no more till we came within

sight of the house. Then he stopped again, and said, 'Will you

take a second chance, if I give it to you? Will you think better

of it, and tell me the rest?' I could only repeat the same words I

had spoken before. He cursed my obstinacy, and went on, and took

me with him to the house. 'You can't deceive me,' he said, 'you

know more than you choose to tell. I'll have your secret out of

you, and I'll have it out of that sister of yours as well. There

shall be no more plotting and whispering between you. Neither you

nor she shall see each other again till you have confessed the

truth. I'll have you watched morning, noon, and night, till you

confess the truth.' He was deaf to everything I could say. He

took me straight upstairs into my own room. Fanny was sitting

there, doing some work for me, and he instantly ordered her out.

'I'll take good care YOU'RE not mixed up in the conspiracy,' he

said. 'You shall leave this house to-day. If your mistress wants

a maid, she shall have one of my choosing.' He pushed me into the

room, and locked the door on me. He set that senseless woman to

watch me outside, Marian! He looked and spoke like a madman. You

may hardly understand it--he did indeed."

"I do understand it, Laura. He is mad--mad with the terrors of a

guilty conscience. Every word you have said makes me positively

certain that when Anne Catherick left you yesterday you were on

the eve of discovering a secret which might have been your vile

husband's ruin, and he thinks you HAVE discovered it. Nothing you

can say or do will quiet that guilty distrust, and convince his

false nature of your truth. I don't say this, my love, to alarm

you. I say it to open your eyes to your position, and to convince

you of the urgent necessity of letting me act, as I best can, for

your protection while the chance is our own. Count Fosco's

interference has secured me access to you to-day, but he may

withdraw that interference to-morrow. Sir Percival has already

dismissed Fanny because she is a quick-witted girl, and devotedly

attached to you, and has chosen a woman to take her place who

cares nothing for your interests, and whose dull intelligence

lowers her to the level of the watch-dog in the yard. It is

impossible to say what violent measures he may take next, unless

we make the most of our opportunities while we have them."

"I will not forget her. I saw her before I came up here, and I

have arranged to communicate with her to-night. Letters are not

safe in the post-bag at Blackwater Park, and I shall have two to

write to-day, in your interests, which must pass through no hands

but Fanny's."

"I mean to write first, Laura, to Mr. Gilmore's partner, who has

offered to help us in any fresh emergency. Little as I know of

the law, I am certain that it can protect a woman from such

treatment as that ruffian has inflicted on you to-day. I will go

into no details about Anne Catherick, because I have no certain

information to give. But the lawyer shall know of those bruises

on your arm, and of the violence offered to you in this room--he

shall, before I rest to-night!"

"I am calculating on the exposure. Sir Percival has more to dread

from it than you have. The prospect of an exposure may bring him

to terms when nothing else will."

I rose as I spoke, but Laura entreated me not to leave her. "You

will drive him to desperation," she said, "and increase our

dangers tenfold."

I felt the truth--the disheartening truth--of those words. But I

could not bring myself plainly to acknowledge it to her. In our

dreadful position there was no help and no hope for us but in

risking the worst. I said so in guarded terms. She sighed

bitterly, but did not contest the matter. She only asked about

the second letter that I had proposed writing. To whom was it to

be addressed?

"To Mr. Fairlie," I said. "Your uncle is your nearest male

relative, and the head of the family. He must and shall

interfere."

"Yes, yes," I went on, "your uncle is a weak, selfish, worldly

man, I know, but he is not Sir Percival Glyde, and he has no such

friend about him as Count Fosco. I expect nothing from his

kindness or his tenderness of feeling towards you or towards me,

but he will do anything to pamper his own indolence, and to secure

his own quiet. Let me only persuade him that his interference at

this moment will save him inevitable trouble and wretchedness and

responsibility hereafter, and he will bestir himself for his own

sake. I know how to deal with him, Laura--I have had some

practice."

"If you could only prevail on him to let me go back to Limmeridge

for a little while and stay there quietly with you, Marian, I

could be almost as happy again as I was before I was married!"

Those words set me thinking in a new direction. Would it be

possible to place Sir Percival between the two alternatives of

either exposing himself to the scandal of legal interference on

his wife's behalf, or of allowing her to be quietly separated from

him for a time under pretext of a visit to her uncle's house? And

could he, in that case, be reckoned on as likely to accept the

last resource? It was doubtful--more than doubtful. And yet,

hopeless as the experiment seemed, surely it was worth trying. I

resolved to try it in sheer despair of knowing what better to do.

"Your uncle shall know the wish you have just expressed," I said,

"and I will ask the lawyer's advice on the subject as well. Good

may come of it--and will come of it, I hope."

It tried me to the quick to refuse her, even in her own interests.

But we had been too long shut up alone together already. Our

chance of seeing each other again might entirely depend on our not

exciting any fresh suspicions. It was full time to show myself,

quietly and unconcernedly, among the wretches who were at that

very moment, perhaps, thinking of us and talking of us downstairs.

I explained the miserable necessity to Laura, and prevailed on her

to recognise it as I did.

"I will come back again, love, in an hour or less," I said. "The

worst is over for to-day. Keep yourself quiet and fear nothing."

I kissed her and left her. It was a relief to me as I walked away

to hear the key turned in the lock, and to know that the door was

at her own command.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.