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

by Lynn Shepherd

  The interest which I really cannot help feeling in this strangely original man, has led me to question Sir Percival about his past life. Sir Percival either knows little, or will tell me little, about it. He and the Count first met, many years ago, at Rome, under the dangerous circumstances to which I have alluded elsewhere. Since that time, they have been perpetually together in London, in Paris, and in Vienna—but never in Italy again; the Count having, oddly enough, not crossed the frontiers of his native country for years past. Perhaps he has been made the victim of some political persecution? At all events, he seems to be patriotically anxious not to lose sight of any of his own countrymen who may happen to be in England. On the evening of his arrival, he asked how far we were from the nearest town, and whether we knew of any Italian gentlemen who might happen to be settled there. He is certainly in correspondence with people on the Continent, for his letters have all sorts of odd stamps on them; and I saw one for him, this morning, waiting in his place at the breakfast-table, with a huge official-looking seal on it. Perhaps he is in correspondence with his government? And yet, that is hardly to be reconciled, either, with my other idea that he may be a political exile.

  How much I seem to have written about Count Fosco! And what does it all amount to?—as poor, dear Mr. Gilmore would ask, in his impenetrable business-like way. I can only repeat that I do assuredly feel, even on this short acquaintance, a strange, half-willing, half-unwilling liking for the Count. He seems to have established over me the same sort of ascendancy which he has evidently gained over Sir Percival. Free, and even rude, as he may occasionally be in his manner towards his fat friend, Sir Percival is nevertheless afraid, as I can plainly see, of giving any serious offence to the Count. I wonder whether I am afraid, too? I certainly never saw a man, in all my experience, whom I should be so sorry to have for an enemy. Is this because I like him, or because I am afraid of him? Chi sa?—as Count Fosco might say in his own language. Who knows?

  June 16th.—Something to chronicle, to-day, besides my own ideas and impressions. A visitor has arrived—quite unknown to Laura and to me; and, apparently, quite unexpected by Sir Percival.

  We were all at lunch, in the room with the new French windows that open into the verandah; and the Count (who devours pastry as I have never yet seen it devoured by any human beings but girls at boarding-schools) had just amused us by asking gravely for his fourth tart—when the servant entered, to announce the visitor.

  “Mr. Merriman has just come, Sir Percival, and wishes to see you immediately.”

  Sir Percival started, and looked at the man, with an expression of angry alarm.

  “Mr. Merriman?” he repeated, as if he thought his own ears must have deceived him.

  “Yes, Sir Percival: Mr. Merriman, from London.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the library, Sir Percival.”

  He left the table the instant the last answer was given; and hurried out of the room without saying a word to any of us.

  “Who is Mr. Merriman?” asked Laura, appealing to me.

  “I have not the least idea,” was all I could say in reply.

  The Count had finished his fourth tart, and had gone to a side-table to look after his vicious cockatoo. He turned round to us, with the bird perched on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Merriman is Sir Percival’s solicitor,” he said, quietly.

  Sir Percival’s solicitor. It was a perfectly straightforward answer to Laura’s question; and yet, under the circumstances, it was not satisfactory. If Mr. Merriman had been specially sent for by his client, there would have been nothing very wonderful in his leaving town to obey the summons. But when a lawyer travels from London to Hampshire, without being sent for, and when his arrival at a gentleman’s house seriously startles the gentleman himself, it may be safely taken for granted that the legal visitor is the bearer of some very important and very unexpected news—news which may be either very good or very bad, but which cannot, in either case, be of the common, everyday kind.

  Laura and I sat silent at the table, for a quarter of an hour or more, wondering uneasily what had happened, and waiting for the chance of Sir Percival’s speedy return. There were no signs of his return; and we rose to leave the room.

  The Count, attentive as usual, advanced from the corner in which he had been feeding his cockatoo, with the bird still perched on his shoulder, and opened the door for us. Laura and Madame Fosco went out first. Just as I was on the point of following them, he made a sign with his hand, and spoke to me, before I passed him, in the oddest manner.

  “Yes,” he said; quietly answering the unexpressed idea at that moment in my mind, as if I had plainly confided it to him in so many words—“yes, Miss Halcombe; something has happened.”

  I was on the point of answering, “I never said so.” But the vicious cockatoo ruffled his clipped wings, and gave a screech that set all my nerves on edge in an instant, and made me only too glad to get out of the room.

  I joined Laura at the foot of the stairs. The thought in her mind was the same as the thought in mine, which Count Fosco had surprised—and, when she spoke, her words were almost the echo of his. She, too, said to me, secretly, that she was afraid something had happened.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  June 16th. I have a few lines more to add to this day’s entry before I go to bed to-night.

  About two hours after Sir Percival rose from the luncheon-table to receive his solicitor, Mr. Merriman, in the library, I left my room, alone, to take a walk in the plantations. Just as I was at the end of the landing, the library door opened, and the two gentlemen came out. Thinking it best not to disturb them by appearing on the stairs, I resolved to defer going down till they had crossed the hall. Although they spoke to each other in guarded tones, their words were pronounced with sufficient distinctness of utterance to reach my ears.

  “Make your mind easy, Sir Percival,” I heard the lawyer say. “It all rests with Lady Glyde.”

  I had turned to go back to my own room, for a minute or two; but the sound of Laura’s name, on the lips of a stranger, stopped me instantly. I dare say it was very wrong and very discreditable to listen—but where is the woman, in the whole range of our sex, who can regulate her actions by the abstract principles of honour, when those principles point one way, and when her affections, and the interests which grow out of them, point the other?

  I listened; and, under similar circumstances, I would listen again—yes! with my ear at the keyhole, if I could not possibly manage it in any other way.

  “You quite understand, Sir Percival?” the lawyer went on. “Lady Glyde is to sign her name in the presence of a witness—or of two witnesses, if you wish to be particularly careful—and is then to put her finger on the seal, and say, ‘I deliver this as my act and deed.’ If that is done in a week’s time, the arrangement will be perfectly successful, and the anxiety will be all over. If not——”

  “What do you mean by ‘if not’?” asked Sir Percival, angrily. “If the thing must be done, it shall be done. I promise you that, Merriman.”

  “Just so, Sir Percival—just so; but there are two alternatives in all transactions; and we lawyers like to look both of them in the face boldly. If through any extraordinary circumstance the arrangement should not be made, I think I may be able to get the parties to accept bills at three months. But how the money is to be raised when the bills fall due——”

  “Damn the bills! The money is only to be got in one way; and in that way, I tell you again, it shall be got. Take a glass of wine, Merriman, before you go.”

  “Much obliged, Sir Percival; I have not a moment to lose if I am to catch the up-train. You will let me know as soon as the arrangement is complete? and you will not forget the caution I recommended——”

  “Of course I won’t. There’s the dog-cart at the door for you. Jump in. My groom will get you to the station in no time. Benjamin, drive like mad! If Mr. Merriman misses
the train, you lose your place. Hold fast, Merriman, and if you are upset, trust to the devil to save his own.” With that parting benediction, the baronet turned about, and walked back to the library.

  I had not heard much; but the little that had reached my ears was enough to make me feel uneasy. The “something” that “had happened,” was but too plainly a serious money-embarrassment; and Sir Percival’s relief from it depended upon Laura. The prospect of seeing her involved in her husband’s secret difficulties filled me with dismay, exaggerated, no doubt, by my ignorance of business and my settled distrust of Sir Percival. Instead of going out, as I had proposed, I went back immediately to Laura’s room to tell her what I had heard.

  She received my bad news so composedly as to surprise me. She evidently knows more of her husband’s character and her husband’s embarrassments than I have suspected up to this time.

  “I feared as much,” she said, “when I heard of that strange gentleman who called, and declined to leave his name.”

  “Who do you think the gentleman was, then?” I asked.

  “Some person who has heavy claims on Sir Percival,” she answered; “and who has been the cause of Mr. Merriman’s visit here to-day.”

  “Do you know anything about those claims?”

  “No; I know no particulars.”

  “You will sign nothing, Laura, without first looking at it?”

  “Certainly not, Marian. Whatever I can harmlessly and honestly do to help him I will do—for the sake of making your life and mine, love, as easy and as happy as possible. But I will do nothing, ignorantly, which we might, one day, have reason to feel ashamed of. Let us say no more about it, now. You have got your hat on—suppose we go and dream away the afternoon in the grounds?”

  On leaving the house, we directed our steps to the nearest shade. As we passed an open space among the trees in front of the house, there was Count Fosco, slowly walking backwards and forwards on the grass, sunning himself in the full blaze of the hot June afternoon. He had a broad straw hat on, with a violet-coloured ribbon round it. A blue blouse, with profuse white fancy-work over the bosom, covered his prodigious body, and was girt about the place where his waist might once have been, with a broad scarlet leather belt. Nankeen trousers, displaying more white fancy-work over the ankles, and purple morocco slippers adorned his lower extremities. He was singing Figaro’s famous song in the Barber of Seville, with that crisply fluent vocalisation which is never heard from any other than an Italian throat; accompanying himself on the concertina, which he played with ecstatic throwings-up of his arms, and graceful twistings, and turnings of his head, like a fat St. Cecilia masquerading in male attire. “Figaro quà! Figaro là! Figaro sù! Figaro giù!” sang the Count, jauntily tossing up the concertina at arm’s length, and bowing to us, on one side of the instrument, with the airy grace and elegance of Figaro himself at twenty years of age.

  “Take my word for it, Laura, that man knows something of Sir Percival’s embarrassments,” I said, as we returned the Count’s salutation from a safe distance.

  “What makes you think that?” she asked.

  “How should he have known, otherwise, that Mr. Merriman was Sir Percival’s solicitor?” I rejoined. “Besides, when I followed you out of the luncheon-room, he told me, without a single word of inquiry on my part, that something had happened. Depend upon it, he knows more than we do.”

  “Don’t ask him any questions, if he does. Don’t take him into our confidence!”

  “You seem to dislike him, Laura, in a very determined manner. What has he said or done to justify you?”

  “Nothing, Marian. On the contrary, he was all kindness and attention on our journey home, and he several times checked Sir Percival’s outbreaks of temper, in the most considerate manner towards me. Perhaps, I dislike him because he has so much more power over my husband than I have. Perhaps it hurts my pride to be under any obligations to his interference. All I know is, that I do dislike him.”

  The rest of the day and the evening passed quietly enough. The Count and I played at chess. For the first two games he politely allowed me to conquer him; and then, when he saw that I had found him out, begged my pardon, and, at the third game, checkmated me in ten minutes. Sir Percival never once referred, all through the evening, to the lawyer’s visit. But either that event, or something else, had produced a singular alteration for the better in him. He was as polite and agreeable to all of us, as he used to be in the days of his probation at Limmeridge; and he was so amazingly attentive and kind to his wife, that even icy Madame Fosco was roused into looking at him with a grave surprise. What does this mean? I think I can guess; I am afraid Laura can guess; and I am quite sure Count Fosco knows. I caught Sir Percival looking at him for approval more than once in the course of the evening.

  June 17th. A day of events. I most fervently hope and pray I may not have to add, a day of disasters as well.

  Sir Percival was as silent at breakfast as he had been the evening before, on the subject of the mysterious “arrangement” (as the lawyer called it), which is hanging over our heads. An hour afterwards, however, he suddenly entered the morning-room, where his wife and I were waiting, with our hats on, for Madame Fosco to join us; and inquired for the Count.

  “We expect to see him here directly,” I said.

  “The fact is,” Sir Percival went on, walking nervously about the room, “I want Fosco and his wife in the library, for a mere business formality; and I want you there, Laura, for a minute, too.” He stopped, and appeared to notice, for the first time, that we were in our walking costume. “Have you just come in?” he asked, “or were you just going out?”

  “We were all thinking of going to the lake this morning,” said Laura. “But if you have any other arrangement to propose——”

  “No, no,” he answered, hastily. “My arrangement can wait. After lunch will do as well for it, as after breakfast. All going to the lake, eh? A good idea. Let’s have an idle morning; I’ll be one of the party.”

  There was no mistaking his manner, even if it had been possible to mistake the uncharacteristic readiness which his words expressed, to submit his own plans and projects to the convenience of others. He was evidently relieved at finding any excuse for delaying the business formality in the library, to which his own words had referred. My heart sank within me, as I drew the inevitable inference.

  The Count and his wife joined us, at that moment. The lady had her husband’s embroidered tobacco-pouch, and her store of paper in her hand, for the manufacture of the eternal cigarettes. The gentleman, dressed, as usual, in his blouse and straw hat, carried the gay little pagoda-cage, with his darling white mice in it, and smiled on them, and on us, with a bland amiability which it was impossible to resist.

  “With your kind permission,” said the Count, “I will take my small family, here—my poor-little-harmless-pretty-Mouseys, out for an airing along with us. There are dogs about the house, and shall I leave my forlorn white children at the mercies of the dogs? Ah, never!”

  He chirruped paternally at his small white children through the bars of the pagoda; and we all left the house for the lake.

  In the plantation, Sir Percival strayed away from us. It seems to be part of his restless disposition always to separate himself from his companions on these occasions, and always to occupy himself, when he is alone, in cutting new walking-sticks for his own use. The mere act of cutting and lopping, at hazard, appears to please him. He has filled the house with walking-sticks of his own making, not one of which he ever takes up for a second time. When they have been once used, his interest in them is all exhausted, and he thinks of nothing but going on, and making more.

  At the old boat-house, he joined us again. I will put down the conversation that ensued, when we were all settled in our places, exactly as it passed. It is an important conversation, so far as I am concerned, for it has seriously disposed me to distrust the influence which Count Fosco has exercised over my thoughts and feelings, and
to resist it, for the future, as resolutely as I can.

  The boat-house was large enough to hold us all; but Sir Percival remained outside, trimming the last new stick with his pocket-axe. We three women found plenty of room on the large seat. Laura took her work, and Madame Fosco began her cigarettes. I, as usual, had nothing to do. My hands always were, and always will be, as awkward as a man’s. The Count good-humouredly took a stool, many sizes too small for him, and balanced himself on it with his back against the side of the shed, which creaked and groaned under his weight. He put the pagoda-cage on his lap, and let out the mice to crawl over him as usual. They are pretty, innocent-looking little creatures; but the sight of them creeping about a man’s body is, for some reason, not pleasant to me. It excites a strange, responsive creeping in my own nerves; and suggests hideous ideas of men dying in prison, with the crawling creatures of the dungeon preying on them undisturbed.

  The morning was windy and cloudy; and the rapid alternations of shadow and sunlight over the waste of the lake, made the view look doubly wild, weird, and gloomy.

  “Some people call that picturesque,” said Sir Percival, pointing over the wide prospect with his half-finished walking-stick. “I call it a blot on a gentleman’s property. In my great-grandfather’s time, the lake flowed to this place. Look at it now! It is not four feet deep anywhere, and it is all puddles and pools. I wish I could afford to drain it, and plant it all over. My bailiff (a superstitious idiot) says he is quite sure the lake has a curse on it, like the Dead Sea. What do you think, Fosco? It looks just the place for a murder, doesn’t it?”