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

by Lynn Shepherd

  This sad change in her, only increases her attractions for Sir Percival. He interprets it, I can see, to his own advantage. There is a feverish flush in her cheeks, a feverish brightness in her eyes, which he welcomes as the return of her beauty and the recovery of her spirits. She talked today at dinner with a gaiety and carelessness so false, so shockingly out of her character, that I secretly longed to silence her and take her away. Sir Percival’s delight and surprise appeared to be beyond all expression. The anxiety which I had noticed on his face when he arrived, totally disappeared from it; and he looked, even to my eyes, a good ten years younger than he really is.

  There can be no doubt—though some strange perversity prevents me from seeing it myself—there can be no doubt that Laura’s future husband is a very handsome man. Regular features form a personal advantage to begin with—and he has them. Bright brown eyes, either in man or woman, are a great attraction—and he has them. Even baldness when it is only baldness over the forehead (as in his case), is rather becoming, than not, in a man, for it heightens the head and adds to the intelligence of the face. Grace and ease of movement; perfect good breeding; ready, pliant, conversational powers—all these are unquestionable merits, and all these he certainly possesses. Surely, Mr. Gilmore, ignorant as he is of Laura’s secret, was not to blame for feeling surprised that she should repent of her marriage engagement? Any one else in his place, would have shared our good old friend’s opinion. If I were asked, at this moment, to say plainly what defects I have discovered in Sir Percival, I could only point out two. One, his incessant restlessness and excitability—which may be caused, naturally enough, by unusual energy of character. The other, his short, sharp, contemptuous manner of speaking to the servants—which may be only a bad habit, after all. No: I cannot dispute it, and I will not dispute it—Sir Percival is a very handsome and agreeable man. There! I have written it down, at last, and I am glad it’s over.

  18th. Feeling weary and depressed, this morning, I left Laura with Mrs. Vesey, and went out alone for one of my brisk mid-day walks, which I have discontinued too much of late. I took the dry airy road, over the moor, that leads to Todd’s Corner. After having been out half an hour, I was excessively surprised to see Sir Percival approaching me from the direction of the farm. He was walking rapidly, swinging his stick; his head erect as usual, and his shooting jacket flying open in the wind. When we met, he did not wait for me to ask any questions—he told me, that he had been to the farm to inquire if Mr. and Mrs. Todd had received any tidings, since his last visit to Limmeridge, of Anne Catherick.

  “You found, of course, that they had heard nothing?” I said.

  “Nothing whatever,” he replied. “I begin to be seriously afraid that we have lost her. Do you happen to know,” he continued, looking me in the face very attentively, “if the artist—Mr. Hartright—is in a position to give us any further information?”

  “He has neither heard of her, nor seen her, since he left Cumberland,” I answered.

  “Very sad,” said Sir Percival, speaking like a man who was disappointed, and yet, oddly enough, looking, at the same time, like a man who was relieved. “It is impossible to say what misfortunes may not have happened to the miserable creature. I am inexpressibly annoyed at the failure of all my efforts to restore her to the care and protection which she so urgently needs.”

  This time he really looked annoyed. I said a few sympathising words; and we then talked of other subjects, on our way back to the house. Surely, my chance meeting with him on the moor has disclosed another favourable trait in his character? Surely, it was singularly considerate and unselfish of him to think of Anne Catherick on the eve of his marriage, and to go all the way to Todd’s Corner to make inquiries about her, when he might have passed the time so much more agreeably in Laura’s society? Considering that he can only have acted from motives of pure charity, his conduct, under the circumstances, shows unusual good feeling, and deserves extraordinary praise. Well! I give him extraordinary praise—and there’s an end of it.

  19th. More discoveries in the inexhaustible mine of Sir Percival’s virtues.

  To-day, I approached the subject of my proposed sojourn under his wife’s roof, when he brings her back to England. I had hardly dropped my first hint in this direction, before he caught me warmly by the hand, and said I had made the very offer to him, which he had been, on his side most anxious to make to me. I was the companion of all others whom he most sincerely longed to secure for his wife; and he begged me to believe that I had conferred a lasting favour on him by making the proposal to live with Laura after her marriage, exactly as I had always lived with her before it.

  When I had thanked him, in her name and in mine, for his considerate kindness to both of us, we passed next to the subject of his wedding tour, and began to talk of the English society in Rome to which Laura was to be introduced. He ran over the names of several friends whom he expected to meet abroad this winter. They were all English, as well as I can remember, with one exception. The one exception was Count Fosco.

  The mention of the Count’s name, and the discovery that he and his wife are likely to meet the bride and bridegroom on the continent, puts Laura’s marriage, for the first time, in a distinctly favourable light. It is likely to be the means of healing a family feud. Hitherto, Madame Fosco has chosen to forget her obligations as Laura’s aunt, out of sheer spite against the late Mr. Fairlie for his conduct in the affair of the legacy. Now, however, she can persist in this course of conduct no longer. Sir Percival and Count Fosco are old and fast friends, and their wives will have no choice but to meet on civil terms. Madame Fosco, in her maiden days, was one of the most impertinent women I ever met with—capricious, exacting, and vain to the last degree of absurdity. If her husband has succeeded in bringing her to her senses, he deserves the gratitude of every member of the family—and he may have mine to begin with.

  I am becoming anxious to know the Count. He is the most intimate friend of Laura’s husband; and, in that capacity, he excites my strongest interest. Neither Laura nor I have ever seen him. All I know of him is that his accidental presence, years ago, on the steps of the Trinità del Monte at Rome, assisted Sir Percival’s escape from robbery and assassination, at the critical moment when he was wounded in the hand, and might, the next instant, have been wounded in the heart. I remember also that, at the time of the late Mr. Fairlie’s absurd objections to his sister’s marriage, the Count wrote him a very temperate and sensible letter on the subject, which, I am ashamed to say, remained unanswered. This is all I know of Sir Percival’s friend. I wonder if he will ever come to England? I wonder if I shall like him?

  My pen is running away into mere speculation. Let me return to sober matter of fact. It is certain that Sir Percival’s reception of my venturesome proposal to live with his wife, was more than kind, it was almost affectionate. I am sure Laura’s husband will have no reason to complain of me, if I can only go on as I have begun. I have already declared him to be handsome, agreeable, full of good feeling towards the unfortunate, and full of affectionate kindness towards me. Really, I hardly know myself again, in my new character of Sir Percival’s warmest friend.

  20th. I hate Sir Percival! I flatly deny his good looks. I consider him to be eminently disagreeable, and totally wanting in kindness and good feeling. Last night, the cards for the married couple were sent home. Laura opened the packet, and saw her future name in print, for the first time. Sir Percival looked over her shoulder familiarly at the new card which had already transformed Miss Fairlie into Lady Glyde—smiled with the most odious self-complacency—and whispered something in her ear. I don’t know what it was—Laura has refused to tell me—but I saw her face turn to such a deadly whiteness that I thought she would have fainted. He took no notice of the change: he seemed to be barbarously unconscious that he had said anything to pain her. All my old feelings of hostility towards him revived on the instant; and all the hours that have passed, since, have done nothing to dissipate them
. I am more unreasonable and more unjust than ever. In three words—how glibly my pen writes them!—in three words, I hate him.

  21st. Have the anxieties of this anxious time shaken me a little, at last? I have been writing, for the last few days, in a tone of levity which, Heaven knows, is far enough from my heart; and which it has rather shocked me to discover on looking back at the entries in my journal.

  Perhaps I may have caught the feverish excitement of Laura’s spirits, for the last week. If so, the fit has already passed away from me, and has left me in a very strange state of mind. A persistent idea has been forcing itself on my attention, ever since last night, that something will yet happen to prevent the marriage. What has produced this singular fancy? Is it the indirect result of my apprehensions for Laura’s future? Or has it been unconsciously suggested to me by the increasing restlessness and agitation which I have certainly observed in Sir Percival’s manner, as the wedding-day draws nearer and nearer? Impossible to say. I know that I have the idea—surely the wildest idea, under the circumstances, that ever entered a woman’s head?—but try as I may, I cannot trace it back to its source.

  Such a day of confusion and wretchedness as I hope never to see again.

  Kind Mrs. Vesey, whom we have all too much overlooked and forgotten of late, innocently caused us a sad morning to begin with. She has been, for months past, secretly making a warm Shetland shawl for her dear pupil—a most beautiful and surprising piece of work to be done by a woman at her age and with her habits. The gift was presented this morning; and poor warm-hearted Laura completely broke down when the shawl was put proudly on her shoulders by the loving old friend and guardian of her motherless childhood. I was hardly allowed time to quiet them both, or even to dry my own eyes, when I was sent for by Mr. Fairlie, to be favoured by a long recital of his arrangements for the preservation of his own tranquillity on the wedding-day.

  “Dear Laura” was to receive his present—a shabby ring, with her affectionate uncle’s hair for an ornament, instead of a precious stone, and with a heartless French inscription, inside, about congenial sentiments and eternal friendship—“dear Laura” was to receive this tender tribute from my hands immediately, so that she might have plenty of time to recover from the agitation produced by the gift, before she appeared in Mr. Fairlie’s presence. “Dear Laura” was to pay him a little visit that evening, and to be kind enough not to make a scene. “Dear Laura” was to pay him another little visit in her wedding dress, the next morning, and to be kind enough, again, not to make a scene. “Dear Laura” was to look in once more, for the third time, before going away, but without harrowing his feelings by saying when she was going away, and without tears—“in the name of pity, in the name of everything, dear Marian, that is most affectionate and most domestic and most delightfully and charmingly self-composed, without tears!” I was so exasperated by this miserable selfish trifling, at such a time, that I should certainly have shocked Mr. Fairlie by some of the hardest and rudest truths he has ever heard in his life, if the arrival of Mr. Arnold from Polesdean had not called me away to new duties down stairs.

  The rest of the day is indescribable. I believe no one in the house really knew how it passed. The confusion of small events, all huddled together one on the other, bewildered every one. There were dresses sent home, that had been forgotten; there were trunks to be packed and unpacked and packed again; there were presents from friends far and near, friends high and low. We were all needlessly hurried; all nervously expectant of the morrow. Sir Percival, especially, was too restless, now, to remain five minutes together in the same place. That short, sharp cough of his troubled him more than ever. He was in and out of the house all day long; and he seemed to grow so inquisitive, on a sudden, that he questioned the very strangers who came on small errands to the house. Add to all this, the one perpetual thought, in Laura’s mind and mine, that we were to part the next day, and the haunting dread, unexpressed by either of us, and yet ever present to both, that this deplorable marriage might prove to be the one fatal error of her life and the one hopeless sorrow of mine. For the first time in all the years of our close and happy intercourse we almost avoided looking each other in the face; and we refrained, by common consent, from speaking together in private, through the whole evening. I can dwell on it no longer. Whatever future sorrows may be in store for me, I shall always look back on this twenty-first of December as the most comfortless and most miserable day of my life.

  I am writing these lines in the solitude of my own room, long after midnight; having just come back from a stolen look at Laura in her pretty little white bed—the bed she has occupied since the days of her girlhood.

  There she lay, unconscious that I was looking at her—quiet, more quiet than I had dared to hope, but not sleeping. The glimmer of the night-light showed me that her eyes were only partially closed: the traces of tears glistened between her eyelids. My little keepsake—only a brooch—lay on the table at her bedside, with her prayer-book, and the miniature portrait of her father which she takes with her wherever she goes. I waited a moment, looking at her from behind her pillow, as she lay beneath me, with one arm and hand resting white on the white coverlid, so still, so quietly breathing, that the frill on her night-dress never moved—I waited looking at her, as I have seen her thousands of times, as I shall never see her again—and then stole back to my room. My own love! with all your wealth, and all your beauty, how friendless you are! The one man who would give his heart’s life to serve you, is far away, tossing, this stormy night, on the awful sea. Who else is left to you? No father, no brother—no living creature but the helpless, useless woman who writes these sad lines, and watches by you for the morning, in sorrow that she cannot compose, in doubt that she cannot conquer. Oh, what a trust is to be placed in that man’s hands to-morrow! If ever he forgets it; if ever he injures a hair of her head!——

  THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER. Seven o’clock. A wild unsettled morning. She has just risen—better and calmer, now that the time has come, than she was yesterday.

  Ten o’clock. She is dressed. We have kissed each other; we have promised each other not to lose courage. I am away for a moment in my own room. In the whirl and confusion of my thoughts, I can detect that strange fancy of some hindrance happening to stop the marriage, still hanging about my mind. Is it hanging about his mind, too? I see him from the window, moving hither and thither uneasily among the carriages at the door.—How can I write such folly! The marriage is a certainty. In less than half an hour we start for the church.

  Eleven o’clock. It is all over. They are married.

  Three o’clock. They are gone! I am blind with crying—I can write no more——

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  Blackwater Park, Hampshire

  June 11th, 1850.—Six months to look back on—six long, lonely months, since Laura and I last saw each other!

  How many days have I still to wait? Only one! Tomorrow, the twelfth, the travellers return to England. I can hardly realise my own happiness; I can hardly believe that the next four-and-twenty hours will complete the last day of separation between Laura and me.

  She and her husband have been in Italy all the winter, and afterwards in the Tyrol. They come back, accompanied by Count Fosco and his wife, who propose to settle somewhere in the neighbourhood of London, and who have engaged to stay at Blackwater Park for the summer months before deciding on a place of residence. So long as Laura returns, no matter who returns with her. Sir Percival may fill the house from floor to ceiling, if he likes, on condition that his wife and I inhabit it together.

  Meanwhile, here I am, established at Blackwater Park; “the ancient and interesting seat” (as the county history obligingly informs me) “of Sir Percival Glyde, Bart.”—and the future abiding-place (as I may now venture to add, on my own account) of plain Marian Halcombe, spinster, now settled in a snug little sitting-room, with a cup of tea by her side, and all her earthly posse
ssions ranged round her in three boxes and a bag.

  I left Limmeridge yesterday; having received Laura’s delightful letter from Paris, the day before. I had been previously uncertain whether I was to meet them in London, or in Hampshire; but this last letter informed me, that Sir Percival proposed to land at Southampton, and to travel straight on to his country-house. He has spent so much money abroad, that he has none left to defray the expenses of living in London, for the remainder of the season; and he is economically resolved to pass the summer and autumn quietly at Blackwater. Laura has had more than enough of excitement and change of scene; and is pleased at the prospect of country tranquillity and retirement which her husband’s prudence provides for her. As for me, I am ready to be happy anywhere in her society. We are all, therefore, well contented in our various ways, to begin with.

  Last night, I slept in London, and was delayed there so long, to-day, by various calls and commissions, that I did not reach Blackwater, this evening, till after dusk.

  Judging by my vague impressions of the place, thus far, it is the exact opposite of Limmeridge. The house is situated on a dead flat, and seems to be shut in—almost suffocated, to my north-country notions—by trees. I have seen nobody, but the man-servant who opened the door to me, and the housekeeper, a very civil person who showed me the way to my own room, and got me my tea. I have a nice little boudoir and bedroom, at the end of a long passage on the first floor. The servants’ and some of the spare rooms are on the second floor; and all the living rooms are on the ground floor. I have not seen one of them yet, and I know nothing about the house, except that one wing of it is said to be five hundred years old, that it had a moat round it once, and that it gets its name of Blackwater from a lake in the park.