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

by Lynn Shepherd

  When the lad had departed on his errand, I returned to my own room for a little while, to put certain papers in order, so that they might be easily found, in case of the worst. The key of the old-fashioned bureau in which the papers were kept, I sealed up, and left it on my table, with Marian’s name written on the outside of the little packet. This done, I went down stairs to the sitting-room, in which I expected to find Laura and Marian awaiting my return from the Opera. I felt my hand trembling for the first time, when I laid it on the lock of the door.

  No one was in the room but Marian. She was reading; and she looked at her watch, in surprise, when I came in.

  “How early you are back!” she said. “You must have come away before the opera was over.”

  “Yes,” I replied; “neither Pesca nor I waited for the end. Where is Laura?”

  “She had one of her bad headaches this evening; and I advised her to go to bed, when we had done tea.”

  I left the room again, on the pretext of wishing to see whether Laura was asleep. Marian’s quick eyes were beginning to look inquiringly at my face; Marian’s quick instinct was beginning to discover that I had something weighing on my mind.

  When I entered the bed-chamber, and softly approached the bedside by the dim flicker of the night-lamp, my wife was asleep.

  We had not been married quite a month yet. If my heart was heavy, if my resolution for a moment faltered again, when I looked at her face turned faithfully to my pillow in her sleep, when I saw her hand resting open on the coverlid, as if it was waiting unconsciously for mine, surely there was some excuse for me? I only allowed myself a few minutes to kneel down at the bedside, and to look close at her—so close that her breath, as it came and went, fluttered on my face. I only touched her hand and her cheek with my lips, at parting. She stirred in her sleep, and murmured my name—but without waking. I lingered for an instant at the door to look at her again. “God bless and keep you, my darling!” I whispered—and left her.

  Marian was at the stair-head waiting for me. She had a folded slip of paper in her hand.

  “The landlord’s son has brought this for you,” she said. “He has got a cab at the door—he says you ordered him to keep it at your disposal.”

  “Quite right, Marian. I want the cab; I am going out again.”

  I descended the stairs as I spoke, and looked into the sitting-room to read the slip of paper by the light on the table. It contained these two sentences, in Pesca’s handwriting:

  “Your letter is received. If I don’t see you before the time you mention, I will break the seal when the clock strikes.”

  I placed the paper in my pocket-book and made for the door. Marian met me on the threshold, and pushed me back into the room where the candlelight fell full on my face. She held me by both hands, and her eyes fastened searchingly on mine.

  “I see!” she said, in a low eager whisper. “You are trying the last chance to-night.”

  “Yes—the last chance and the best,” I whispered back.

  “Not alone! Oh, Walter, for God’s sake, not alone! Let me go with you. Don’t refuse me because I’m only a woman. I must go! I will go! I’ll wait outside in the cab!”

  It was my turn, now, to hold her. She tried to break away from me, and get down first to the door.

  “If you want to help me,” I said, “stop here, and sleep in my wife’s room to-night. Only let me go away, with my mind easy about Laura, and I answer for everything else. Come, Marian, give me a kiss, and show that you have the courage to wait till I come back.”

  I dared not allow her time to say a word more. She tried to hold me again. I unclasped her hands—and was out of the room in a moment. The boy below heard me on the stairs, and opened the hall-door. I jumped into the cab, before the driver could get off the box. “Forest-road, St. John’s Wood,” I called to him through the front window. “Double fare, if you get there in a quarter of an hour.” “I’ll do it, sir.” I looked at my watch. Eleven o’clock—not a minute to lose.

  The rapid motion of the cab, the sense that every instant now was bringing me nearer to the Count, the conviction that I was embarked at last, without let or hindrance, on my hazardous enterprise, heated me into such a fever of excitement that I shouted to the man to go faster and faster. As we left the streets, and crossed St. John’s Wood-road, my impatience so completely overpowered me that I stood up in the cab and stretched my head out of the window, to see the end of the journey before we reached it. Just as a church clock in the distance struck the quarter past, we turned into the Forest-road. I stopped the driver a little away from the Count’s house—paid, and dismissed him—and walked on to the door.

  As I approached the garden gate, I saw another person advancing towards it also, from the direction opposite to mine. We met under the gas-lamp in the road, and looked at each other. I instantly recognised the light-haired foreigner, with the scar on his cheek; and I thought he recognised me. He said nothing; and, instead of stopping at the house, as I did, he slowly walked on. Was he in the Forest-road by accident? Or had he followed the Count home from the Opera?

  I did not pursue those questions. After waiting a little, till the foreigner had slowly passed out of sight, I rang the gate bell. It was then twenty minutes past eleven—late enough to make it quite easy for the Count to get rid of me by the excuse that he was in bed.

  The only way of providing against this contingency was to send in my name, without asking any preliminary questions, and to let him know, at the same time, that I had a serious motive for wishing to see him at that late hour. Accordingly, while I was waiting, I took out my card, and wrote under my name, “On important business.” The maid-servant answered the door, while I was writing the last word in pencil; and asked me distrustfully what I “pleased to want.”

  “Be so good as to take that to your master,” I replied, giving her the card.

  I saw, by the girl’s hesitation of manner, that if I had asked for the Count in the first instance, she would only have followed her instructions by telling me he was not at home. She was staggered by the confidence with which I gave her the card. After staring at me in great perturbation, she went back into the house with my message, closing the door, and leaving me to wait in the garden.

  In a minute or so, she reappeared. “Her master’s compliments, and would I be so obliging as to say what my business was?” “Take my compliments back,” I replied; “and say that the business cannot be mentioned to any one but your master.” She left me again—again returned—and, this time, asked me to walk in.

  There was no lamp in the hall; but by the dim light of the kitchen candle which the girl had brought up-stairs with her, I saw an elderly lady steal noiselessly out of a back room on the ground floor. She cast one viperish look at me as I entered the hall, but said nothing, and went slowly up-stairs, without returning my bow. My familiarity with Marian’s journal sufficiently assured me that the elderly lady was Madame Fosco.

  The servant led me to the room which the Countess had just left. I entered it; and found myself face to face with the Count.

  He was still in his evening dress, except his coat, which he had thrown across a chair. His shirt-sleeves were turned up at the wrists—but no higher. A carpet-bag was on one side of him, and a box on the other. Books, papers, and articles of wearing apparel were scattered about the room. On a table, at one side of the door, stood the cage, so well known to me by description, which contained his white mice. The canaries and the cockatoo were probably in some other room. He was seated before the box, packing it, when I went in, and rose with some papers in his hand to receive me. His face still betrayed plain traces of the shock that had overwhelmed him at the Opera. His fat cheeks hung loose; his cold grey eyes were furtively vigilant; his voice, look, and manner were all sharply suspicious alike, as he advanced a step to meet me, and requested, with distant civility, that I would take a chair.

  “You come here on business, sir?” he said. “I am at a loss to know what that bus
iness can possibly be.”

  The unconcealed curiosity with which he looked hard in my face while he spoke, convinced me that I had passed unnoticed by him at the Opera. He had seen Pesca first; and from that moment, till he left the theatre, he had evidently seen nothing else. My name would necessarily suggest to him that I had not come into his house with other than a hostile purpose towards himself—but he appeared to be utterly ignorant, thus far, of the real nature of my errand.

  “I am fortunate in finding you here to-night,” I said. “You seem to be on the point of taking a journey?”

  “Is your business connected with my journey?”

  “In some degree.”

  “In what degree? Do you know where I am going to?”

  “No. I only know why you are leaving London.”

  He slipped by me with the quickness of thought; locked the door of the room; and put the key in his pocket.

  “You and I, Mr. Hartright, are excellently well acquainted with one another by reputation,” he said. “Did it, by any chance, occur to you when you came to this house that I was not the sort of man you could trifle with?”

  “It did occur to me,” I replied. “And I have not come to trifle with you. I am here on a matter of life and death—and if that door which you have locked was open at this moment, nothing you could say or do would induce me to pass through it.”

  I walked farther into the room and stood opposite to him, on the rug before the fireplace. He drew a chair in front of the door, and sat down on it, with his left arm resting on the table. The cage with the white mice was close to him; and the little creatures scampered out of their sleeping-place, as his heavy arm shook the table, and peered at him through the gaps in the smartly painted wires.

  “On a matter of life and death?” he repeated to himself. “Those words are more serious, perhaps, than you think. What do you mean?”

  “What I say.”

  The perspiration broke out thickly on his broad forehead. His left hand stole over the edge of the table. There was a drawer in it, with a lock, and the key was in the lock. His finger and thumb closed over the key, but did not turn it.

  “So you know why I am leaving London?” he went on. “Tell me the reason, if you please.” He turned the key, and unlocked the drawer as he spoke.

  “I can do better than that,” I replied; “I can show you the reason, if you like.”

  “How can you show it?”

  “You have got your coat off,” I said. “Roll up the shirt-sleeve on your left arm—and you will see it there.”

  The same livid, leaden change passed over his face, which I had seen pass over it at the theatre. The deadly glitter in his eyes shone steady and straight into mine. He said nothing. But his left hand slowly opened the table drawer, and softly slipped into it. The harsh grating noise of something heavy that he was moving, unseen to me, sounded for a moment—then ceased. The silence that followed was so intense, that the faint ticking nibble of the white mice at their wires was distinctly audible where I stood.

  My life hung by a thread—and I knew it. At that final moment, I thought with his mind; I felt with his fingers—I was as certain, as if I had seen it, of what he kept hidden from me in the drawer.

  “Wait a little,” I said. “You have got the door locked—you see I don’t move—you see my hands are empty. Wait a little. I have something more to say.”

  “You have said enough,” he replied, with a sudden composure, so unnatural and so ghastly that it tried my nerves as no outbreak of violence could have tried them. “I want one moment for my own thoughts, if you please. Do you guess what I am thinking about?”

  “Perhaps I do.”

  “I am thinking,” he said, “whether I shall add to the disorder in this room, by scattering your brains about the fireplace.”

  If I had moved at that moment, I saw in his face that he would have done it.

  “I advise you to read two lines of writing which I have about me,” I rejoined, “before you finally decide that question.”

  The proposal appeared to excite his curiosity. He nodded his head. I took Pesca’s acknowledgment of the receipt of my letter out of my pocket-book; handed it to him at arm’s length; and returned to my former position in front of the fireplace.

  He read the lines aloud: “ ‘Your letter is received. If I don’t hear from you before the time you mention, I will break the seal when the clock strikes.’ ”

  Another man, in his position, would have needed some explanation of those words—the Count felt no such necessity. One reading of the note showed him the precaution that I had taken, as plainly as if he had been present at the time when I adopted it. The expression of his face changed on the instant; and his hand came out of the drawer, empty.

  “I don’t lock up my drawer, Mr. Hartright,” he said; “and I don’t say that I may not scatter your brains about the fireplace, yet. But I am a just man, even to my enemy—and I will acknowledge, beforehand, that they are cleverer brains than I thought them. Come to the point, sir! You want something of me?”

  “I do—and I mean to have it.”

  “On conditions?”

  “On no conditions.”

  His hand dropped into the drawer again.

  “Bah! we are travelling in a circle,” he said; “and those clever brains of yours are in danger again. Your tone is deplorably imprudent, sir—moderate it on the spot! The risk of shooting you on the place where you stand, is less to me, than the risk of letting you out of this house, except on conditions that I dictate and approve. You have not got my lamented friend to deal with, now—you are face to face with Fosco! If the lives of twenty Mr. Hartrights were the stepping-stones to my safety, over all those stones I would go, sustained by my sublime indifference, self-balanced by my impenetrable calm. Respect me, if you love your own life! I summon you to answer three questions, before you open your lips again. Hear them—they are necessary to this interview. Answer them—they are necessary to ME.” He held up one finger of his right hand. “First question!” he said. “You come here possessed of information, which may be true, or may be false—where did you get it?”

  “I decline to tell you.”

  “No matter: I shall find out. If that information is true—mind I say, with the whole force of my resolution, if—you are making your market of it here, by treachery of your own, or by treachery of some other man. I note that circumstance, for future use, in my memory which forgets nothing, and proceed.” He held up another finger. “Second question! Those lines you invited me to read, are without signature. Who wrote them?”

  “A man whom I have every reason to depend on; and whom you have every reason to fear.”

  My answer reached him to some purpose. His left hand trembled audibly in the drawer.

  “How long do you give me,” he asked, putting his third question in a quieter tone, “before the clock strikes and the seal is broken?”

  “Time enough for you to come to my terms,” I replied.

  “Give me a plainer answer, Mr. Hartright. What hour is the clock to strike?”

  “Nine, to-morrow morning.”

  “Nine, to-morrow morning? Yes, yes—your trap is laid for me, before I can get my passport regulated, and leave London. It is not earlier, I suppose? We will see about that, presently—I can keep you hostage here, and bargain with you to send for your letter before I let you go. In the mean time, be so good, next, as to mention your terms.”

  “You shall hear them. They are simple, and soon stated. You know whose interests I represent in coming here?”

  He smiled with the most supreme composure; and carelessly waved his right hand.

  “I consent to hazard a guess,” he said, jeeringly. “A lady’s interests, of course!”

  “My Wife’s interests.”

  He looked at me with the first honest expression that had crossed his face in my presence—an expression of blank amazement. I could see that I sank in his estimation, as a dangerous man, from that moment. H
e shut up the drawer at once, folded his arms over his breast, and listened to me with a smile of satirical attention.

  “You are well enough aware,” I went on, “of the course which my inquiries have taken for many months past, to know that any attempted denial of plain facts will be quite useless in my presence. You are guilty of an infamous conspiracy. And the gain of a fortune of ten thousand pounds was your motive for it.”

  He said nothing. But his face became overclouded suddenly by a lowering anxiety.

  “Keep your gain,” I said. (His face lightened again immediately, and his eyes opened on me in wider and wider astonishment.) “I am not here to disgrace myself by bargaining for money which has passed through your hands, and which has been the price of a vile crime——”

  “Gently, Mr. Hartright. Your moral claptraps have an excellent effect in England—keep them for yourself and your own countrymen, if you please. The ten thousand pounds was a legacy left to my excellent wife by the late Mr. Fairlie. Place the affair on those grounds; and I will discuss it, if you please. To a man of my sentiments, however, the subject is deplorably sordid. I prefer to pass it over. I invite you to resume the discussion of your terms. What do you demand?”

  “In the first place, I demand a full confession of the conspiracy, written and signed in my presence, by yourself.”

  He raised his finger again. “One!” he said, checking me off with the steady attention of a practical man.

  “In the second place, I demand a plain proof, which does not depend on your personal asseveration, of the date at which my wife left Blackwater Park, and travelled to London.”

  “So! so! you can lay your finger, I see, on the weak place,” he remarked, composedly. “Any more?”

  “At present, no more.”

  “Good! You have mentioned your terms; now listen to mine. The responsibility to myself of admitting, what you are pleased to call the ‘conspiracy,’ is less, perhaps, upon the whole, than the responsibility of laying you dead on that hearth-rug. Let us say that I meet your proposal—on my own conditions. The statement you demand of me shall be written; and the plain proof shall be produced. You call a letter from my late lamented friend, informing me of the day and hour of his wife’s arrival in London, written, signed, and dated by himself, a proof, I suppose? I can give you this. I can also send you to the man of whom I hired the carriage to fetch my visitor from the railway, on the day when she arrived—his order-book may help you to your date, even if his coachman who drove me proves to be of no use. These things I can do, and will do, on conditions. I recite them. First condition! Madame Fosco and I leave this house, when and how we please, without interference of any kind, on your part. Second condition! You wait here, in company with me, to see my agent, who is coming at seven o’clock in the morning to regulate my affairs. You give my agent a written order to the man who has got your sealed letter to resign his possession of it. You wait here till my agent places that letter unopened in my hands; and you then allow me one clear half-hour to leave the house—after which you resume your own freedom of action, and go where you please. Third condition! You give me the satisfaction of a gentleman, for your intrusion into my private affairs, and for the language you have allowed yourself to use to me, at this conference. The time and place, abroad, to be fixed in a letter from my hand when I am safe on the Continent; and that letter to contain a strip of paper measuring accurately the length of my sword. Those are my terms. Inform me if you accept them—Yes, or No.”