The Woman in White

Chapter 4

"I must beg you to come downstairs 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.

"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 interest, 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 crochets

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.

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

book-cases, 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 little 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 on his face that he looked more like a

prisoner at the bar than a gentleman in his own house.

"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."

"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?"

"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.

"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 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!"

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?"

"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--"

"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 i***t!"

"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 just 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."

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?"

"It is necessary to my plans and wishes," returned the other

sulkily. "But that consideration, as you may have noticed, has no

influence with Lady Glyde."

"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 book-case 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 trial to HER. I thanked the Count civilly,

and let 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 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?"

"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."

"I am ashamed to look at you, Marian," she said, "after what you

submitted to downstairs, for my sake. Oh, my own love, I am

almost heartbroken 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 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, Mr. Kyrle,

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 Mr. Kyrle exactly as it was,

and then asked for his advice in return, expressed in plain,

downright terms which he 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 to-morrow 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?"

"No, not to dislike him. Dislike is always more or less

associated with contempt--I can see nothing in the Count to

despise."

"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 downstairs. 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. I must be careful to keep up friendly

appearances with the Count, and I must be well on my guard when

the messenger from the office comes here with the answer to my

letter.

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