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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “Don’t think too seriously of it, Marian,” she said, simply, as she pulled her sleeve down again. “It doesn’t hurt me, now.”

  “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?”

  “Yes; all. He insisted on it—I was alone with him—I could conceal nothing.”

  “Did he say anything when you had done?”

  “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 up-stairs 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 watchdog 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.”

  “What can we do, Marian? Oh, if we could only leave this house, never to see it again!”

  “Listen to me, my love—and try to think that you are not quite helpless so long as I am here with you.”

  “I will think so—I think so. Don’t altogether forget poor Fanny, in thinking of me. She wants help and comfort, too.”

  “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.”

  “What letters?”

  “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 today. 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!”

  “But, think of the exposure, Marian!”

  “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.”

  Laura shook her head sorrowfully.

  “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.”

  Saying that, I rose again; and again Laura tried to make me resume my seat.

  “Don’t leave me,” she said, uneasily. “My desk is on that table. You can write here.”

  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 down stairs. 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.”

  “Is the key in the door, Marian? Can I lock it on the inside?”

  “Yes; here is the key. Lock the door; and open it to nobody, until I come up-stairs again.”

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  June 19th. I had only got as far as the top of the stairs, when the locking of Laura’s door suggested to me the precaution of also locking my own door, and keeping the key safely about me while I was out of the room. My j
ournal was already secured, with other papers, in the table-drawer, but my writing materials were left out. These included a seal, bearing the common device of two doves drinking out of the same cup; and some sheets of blotting-paper, which had the impression on them of the closing lines of my writing in these pages, traced during the past night. Distorted by the suspicion which had now become a part of myself, even such trifles as these looked too dangerous to be trusted without a guard—even the locked table-drawer seemed to be not sufficiently protected, in my absence, until the means of access to it had been carefully secured as well.

  I found no appearance of any one having entered the room while I had been talking with Laura. My writing materials (which I had given the servant instructions never to meddle with) were scattered over the table much as usual. The only circumstance in connexion with them that at all struck me was, that the seal lay tidily in the tray with the pencils and the wax. It was not in my careless habits (I am sorry to say) to put it there; neither did I remember putting it there. But, as I could not call to mind, on the other hand, where else I had thrown it down, and as I was also doubtful whether I might not, for once, have laid it mechanically in the right place, I abstained from adding to the perplexity with which the day’s events had filled my mind, by troubling it afresh about a trifle. I locked the door; put the key in my pocket; and went down stairs.

  Madame Fosco was alone in the hall, looking at the weather-glass.

  “Still falling,” she said. “I am afraid we must expect more rain.”

  Her face was composed again to its customary expression and its customary colour. But the hand with which she pointed to the dial of the weather-glass still trembled. Could she have told her husband already, that she had overheard Laura reviling him, in my company, as a “Spy”? My strong suspicion that she must have told him; my irresistible dread (all the more overpowering from its very vagueness) of the consequences which might follow; my fixed conviction, derived from various little self-betrayals which women notice in each other, that Madame Fosco, in spite of her well-assumed external civility, had not forgiven her niece for innocently standing between her and the legacy of ten thousand pounds—all rushed upon my mind together; all impelled me to speak, in the vain hope of using my own influence and my own powers of persuasion for the atonement of Laura’s offence.

  “May I trust to your kindness to excuse me, Madame Fosco, if I venture to speak to you on an exceedingly painful subject?”

  She crossed her hands in front of her, and bowed her head solemnly, without uttering a word, and without taking her eyes off mine for a moment.

  “When you were so good as to bring me back my handkerchief,” I went on, “I am very, very much afraid you must have accidentally heard Laura say something which I am unwilling to repeat, and which I will not attempt to defend. I will only venture to hope that you have not thought it of sufficient importance to be mentioned to the Count?”

  “I think it of no importance whatever,” said Madame Fosco, sharply and suddenly. “But,” she added, resuming her icy manner in a moment, “I have no secrets from my husband, even in trifles. When he noticed, just now, that I looked distressed, it was my painful duty to tell him why I was distressed; and I frankly acknowledge to you, Miss Halcombe, that I have told him.”

  I was prepared to hear it, and yet she turned me cold all over when she said those words.

  “Let me earnestly entreat you, Madame Fosco—let me earnestly entreat the Count—to make some allowances for the sad position in which my sister is placed. She spoke while she was smarting under the insult and injustice inflicted on her by her husband—and she was not herself when she said those rash words. May I hope that they will be considerately and generously forgiven?”

  “Most assuredly,” said the Count’s quiet voice, behind me. He had stolen on us, with his noiseless tread, and his book in his hand, from the library.

  “When Lady Glyde said those hasty words,” he went on, “she did me an injustice, which I lament—and forgive. Let us never return to the subject, Miss Halcombe; let us all comfortably combine to forget it, from this moment.”

  “You are very kind,” I said; “you relieve me inexpressibly——”

  I tried to continue—but his eyes were on me; his deadly smile, that hides everything, was set, hard and unwavering, on his broad, smooth face. My distrust of his unfathomable falseness, my sense of my own degradation in stooping to conciliate his wife and himself, so disturbed and confused me, that the next words failed on my lips, and I stood there in silence.

  “I beg you on my knees to say no more, Miss Halcombe—I am truly shocked that you should have thought it necessary to say so much.” With that polite speech, he took my hand—oh, how I despise myself! oh, how little comfort there is, even in knowing that I submitted to it for Laura’s sake!—he took my hand, and put it to his poisonous lips. Never did I know all my horror of him till then. That innocent familiarity turned my blood, as if it had been the vilest insult that a man could offer me. Yet I hid my disgust from him—I tried to smile—I, who once mercilessly despised deceit in other women, was as false as the worst of them, as false as the Judas whose lips had touched my hand.

  I could not have maintained my degrading self-control—it is all that redeems me in my own estimation to know that I could not—if he had still continued to keep his eyes on my face. His wife’s tigerish jealousy came to my rescue, and forced his attention away from me, the moment he possessed himself of my hand. Her cold blue eyes caught light; her dull white cheeks flushed into bright colour; she looked years younger than her age, in an instant.

  “Count!” she said. “Your foreign forms of politeness are not understood by Englishwomen.”

  “Pardon me, my angel! The best and dearest Englishwoman in the world understands them.” With those words, he dropped my hand, and quietly raised his wife’s hand to his lips, in place of it.

  I ran back up the stairs, to take refuge in my own room. If there had been time to think, my thoughts, when I was alone again, would have caused me bitter suffering. But there was no time to think. Happily for the preservation of my calmness and my courage, there was time for nothing but action.

  The letters to the lawyer and to Mr. Fairlie, were still to be written; and I sat down at once, without a moment’s hesitation, to devote myself to them. There was no multitude of resources to perplex me—there was absolutely no one to depend on, in the first instance, but myself. Sir Percival had neither friends nor relatives in the neighbourhood whose intercession I could attempt to employ. He was on the coldest terms—in some cases, on the worst terms—with the families of his own rank and station who lived near him. We two women had neither father, nor brother, to come to the house, and take our parts. There was no choice, but to write those two doubtful letters—or to put Laura in the wrong and myself in the wrong, and to make all peaceable negotiation in the future impossible, by secretly escaping from Blackwater Park. Nothing but the most imminent personal peril could justify our taking that second course. The letters must be tried first; and I wrote them.

  I said nothing to the lawyer about Anne Catherick; because (as I had already hinted to Laura) that topic was connected with a mystery which we could not yet explain, and which it would therefore be useless to write about to a professional man. I left my correspondent to attribute Sir Percival’s disgraceful conduct, if he pleased, to fresh disputes about money matters; and simply consulted him on the possibility of taking legal proceedings for Laura’s protection, in the event of her husband’s refusal to allow her to leave Blackwater Park for a time, and return with me to Limmeridge. I referred him to Mr. Fairlie for the details of this last arrangement—I assured him that I wrote with Laura’s authority—and I ended by entreating him to act in her name, to the utmost extent of his power, and with the least possible loss of time.

  The letter to Mr. Fairlie occupied me next. I appealed to him on the terms which I had mentioned to Laura as the most likely to make him bestir himself; I e
nclosed a copy of my letter to the lawyer, to show him how serious the case was; and I represented our removal to Limmeridge as the only compromise which would prevent the danger and distress of Laura’s present position from inevitably affecting her uncle as well as herself, at no very distant time.

  When I had done, and had sealed and directed the two envelopes, I went back with the letters to Laura’s room, to show her that they were written.

  “Has anybody disturbed you?” I asked, when she opened the door to me.

  “Nobody has knocked,” she replied. “But I heard some one in the outer room.”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “A woman. I heard the rustling of her gown.”

  “A rustling like silk?”

  “Yes; like silk.”

  Madame Fosco had evidently been watching outside. The mischief she might do by herself, was little to be feared. But the mischief she might do, as a willing instrument in her husband’s hands, was too formidable to be overlooked.

  “What became of the rustling of the gown when you no longer heard it in the ante-room?” I inquired. “Did you hear it go past your wall, along the passage?”

  “Yes. I kept still, and listened; and just heard it.”

  “Which way did it go?”

  “Towards your room.”

  I considered again. The sound had not caught my ears. But, then, I was deeply absorbed in my letters; and I write with a heavy hand, and a quill pen, scraping and scratching noisily over the paper. It was more likely that Madame Fosco would hear the scraping of my pen than that I should hear the rustling of her dress. Another reason (if I had wanted one) for not trusting my letters to the post-bag in the hall.