When I got back to the house I had only a quarter of an hour to spare to put myself in order for dinner, and to say two words to Laura before I went downstairs.
'The letters are in Fanny's hands,' I whispered to her at the door. 'Do you mean to join us at dinner?'
'Oh, no, no not for the world.'
'Has anything happened? Has any one disturbed you?'
'Yes just now Sir Percival-'
'Did he come in?'
'No, he frightened me by a thump on the door outside. I said, "Who's there?" "You know," he answered. "Will you alter your mind, and tell me the rest? You shall! Sooner or later I'll wring it out of you. You know where Anne Catherick is at this moment." "Indeed, indeed," I said, "I don't." "You do!" he called back. "I'll crush your obstinacy mind that! I'll wring it out of you!" He went away with those words went away, Marian, hardly five minutes ago.'
He had not found Anne! We were safe for that night he had not found her yet.
'You are going downstairs, Marian? Come up again in the evening.'
'Yes, yes. Don't be uneasy if I am a little late I must be careful not to give offence by leaving them too soon.'
The dinner-bell rang and I hastened away.
Sir Percival took Madame Fosco into the dining-room, and the Count gave me his arm. He was hot and flushed, and was not dressed with his customary care and completeness. Had he, too, been out before dinner, and been late in getting back? or was he only suffering from the heat a little more severely than usual?
However this might be, he was unquestionably troubled by some secret annoyance or anxiety, which, with all his powers of deception, he was not able entirely to conceal. Through the whole of dinner he was almost as silent as Sir Percival himself, and he, every now and then, looked at his wife with an expression of furtive uneasiness which was quite new in my experience of him. The one social obligation which he seemed to be self-possessed enough to perform as carefully as ever was the obligation of being persistently civil and attentive to me. What vile object he has in view I cannot still discover, but be the design what it may, invariable politeness towards myself, invariable humility towards Laura, and invariable suppression (at any cost) of Sir Percival's clumsy violence, have been the means he has resolutely and impenetrably used to get to his end ever since he set foot in this house. I suspected it when he first interfered in our favour, on the day when the deed was produced in the library, and I feel certain of it now.
When Madame Fosco and I rose to leave the table, the Count rose also to accompany us back to the drawing-room.
'What are you going away for?' asked Sir Percival 'I mean you, Fosco.'
'I am going away because I have had dinner enough, and wine enough,' answered the Count. 'Be so kind, Percival, as to make allowances for my foreign habit of going out with the ladies, as well as coming in with them.'
'Nonsense! Another glass of claret won't hurt you. Sit down again like an Englishman. I want half an hour's quiet talk with you over our wine.'
'A quiet talk, Percival, with all my heart, but not now, and not over the wine. Later in the evening, if you please later in the evening.'
'Civil!' said Sir Percival savagely. 'Civil behaviour, upon my soul, to a man in his own house!'
I had more than once seen him look at the Count uneasily during dinner-time, and had observed that the Count carefully abstained from looking at him in return. This circumstance, coupled with the host's anxiety for a little quiet talk over the wine, and the guest's obstinate resolution not to sit down again at the table, revived in my memory the request which Sir Percival had vainly addressed to his friend earlier in the day, to come out of the library and speak to him. The Count had deferred granting that private interview, when it was first asked for in the afternoon, and had again deferred granting it, when it was a second time asked for at the dinner-table. Whatever the coming subject of discussion between them might be, it was clearly an important subject in Sir Percival's estimation and perhaps (judging from his evident reluctance to approach it) a dangerous subject as well, in the estimation of the Count.
These considerations occurred to me while we were passing from the dining-room to the drawing-room. Sir Percival's angry commentary on his friend's desertion of him had not produced the slightest effect. The Count obstinately accompanied us to the tea-table waited a minute or two in the room went out into the hall and returned with the post-bag in his hands. It was then eight o'clock the hour at which the letters were always despatched from Blackwater Park.
'Have you any letter for the post, Miss Halcombe?' he asked, approaching me with the bag.
I saw Madame Fosco, who was making the tea, pause, with the sugar-tongs in her hand, to listen for my answer.
'No, Count, thank you. No letters to-day.'
He gave the bag to the servant, who was then in the room; sat down at the piano, and played the air of the lively Neapolitan street-song, 'La mia Carolina,' twice over. His wife, who was usually the most deliberate of women in all her movements, made the tea as quickly as I could have made it myself finished her own cup in two minutes, and quietly glided out of the room.
I rose to follow her example partly because I suspected her of attempting some treachery upstairs with Laura, partly because I was resolved not to remain alone in the same room with her husband.
Before I could get to the door the Count stopped me, by a request for a cup of tea. I gave him the cup of tea, and tried a second time to get away. He stopped me again this time by going back to the piano, and suddenly appealing to me on a musical question in which he declared that the honour of his country was concerned.
I vainly pleaded my own total ignorance of music, and total want of taste in that direction. He only appealed to me again with a vehemence which set all further protest on my part at defiance. 'The English and the Germans (he indignantly declared) were always reviling the Italians for their inability to cultivate the higher kinds of music. We were perpetually talking of our Oratorios, and they were perpetually talking of their Symphonies. Did we forget and did they forget his immortal friend and countryman, Rossini? What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in a concert-room? What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony under another name? Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this, and this, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand had ever been composed by mortal man?' And without waiting for a word of assent or dissent on my part, looking me hard in the face all the time, he began thundering on the piano, and singing to it with loud and lofty enthusiasm only interrupting himself, at intervals, to announce to me fiercely the titles of the different pieces of music: 'Chorus of Egyptians in the Plague of Darkness, Miss Halcombe!' 'Recitativo of Moses with the tables of the Law.' 'Prayer of Israelites, at the passage of the Red Sea. Aha! Aha! Is that sacred? is that sublime?' The piano trembled under his powerful hands, and the teacups on the table rattled, as his big bass voice thundered out the notes, and his heavy foot beat time on the floor.
There was something horrible something fierce and devilish in the outburst of his delight at his own singing and playing, and in the triumph with which he watched its effect upon me as I shrank nearer and nearer to the door. I was released at last, not by my own efforts, but by Sir Percival's interposition. He opened the dining-room door, and called out angrily to know what 'that infernal noise' meant. The Count instantly got up from the piano. 'Ah! if Percival is coming,' he said, 'harmony and melody are both at an end. The Muse of Music, Miss Halcombe, deserts us in dismay, and I, the fat old minstrel, exhale the rest of my enthusiasm in the open air!' He stalked out into the verandah, put his hands in his pockets, and resumed the Recitativo of Moses, sotto voce, in the garden.
I heard Sir Percival call after him from the dining-room window. But he took no notice he seemed determined not to hear. That long-deferred quiet talk between them was still to be put off, was still to wait for the Count's absolute will and pleasure.
He had detained me in the drawing-room nearly half an hour from the time when his wife left us. Where had she been, and what had she been doing in that interval?
I went upstairs to ascertain, but I made no discoveries, and when I questioned Laura, I found that she had not heard anything. Nobody had disturbed her, no faint rustling of the silk dress had been audible, either in the ante-room or in the passage.
It was then twenty minutes to nine. After going to my room to get my journal, I returned, and sat with Laura, sometimes writing, sometimes stopping to talk with her. Nobody came near us, and nothing happened. We remained together till ten o'clock. I then rose, said my last cheering words, and wished her goodnight. She locked her door again after we had arranged that I should come in and see her the first thing in the morning.
I had a few sentences more to add to my diary before going to bed myself, and as I went down again to the drawing-room after leaving Laura for the last time that weary day, I resolved merely to show myself there, to make my excuses, and then to retire an hour earlier than usual for the night.
Sir Percival, and the Count and his wife, were sitting together. Sir Percival was yawning in an easy-chair, the Count was reading, Madame Fosco was fanning herself. Strange to say, her face was flushed now. She, who never suffered from the heat, was most undoubtedly suffering from it to-night.
'I am afraid, Countess, you are not quite so well as usual?' I said.
'The very remark I was about to make to you,' she replied. 'You are looking pale, my dear.'
My dear! It was the first time she had ever addressed me with that familiarity! There was an insolent smile too on her face when she said the words.
'I am suffering from one of my bad headaches,' I answered coldly.
'Ah, indeed? Want of exercise, I suppose? A walk before dinner would have been just the thing for you.' She referred to the 'walk' with a strange emphasis. Had she seen me go out? No matter if she had. The letters were safe now in Fanny's hands.
'Come and have a smoke, Fosco,' said Sir Percival, rising, with another uneasy look at his friend.
'With pleasure, Percival, when the ladies have gone to bed,' replied the Count.
'Excuse me, Countess, if I set you the example of retiring,' I said. 'The only remedy for such a headache as mine is going to bed.'
I took my leave. There was the same insolent smile on the woman's face when I shook hands with her. Sir Percival paid no attention to me. He was looking impatiently at Madame Fosco, who showed no signs of leaving the room with me. The Count smiled to himself behind his book. There was yet another delay to that quiet talk with Sir Percival and the Countess was the impediment this time.
IX.
June 19th. Once safely shut into my own room, I opened these pages, and prepared to go on with that part of the day's record which was still left to write.
For ten minutes or more I sat idle, with the pen in my hand, thinking over the events of the last twelve hours. When I at last addressed myself to my task, I found a difficulty in proceeding with it which I had never experienced before. In spite of my efforts to fix my thoughts on the matter in hand, they wandered away with the strangest persistency in the one direction of Sir Percival and the Count, and all the interest which I tried to concentrate on my journal centred instead in that private interview between them which had been put off all through the day, and which was now to take place in the silence and solitude of the night.
In this perverse state of my mind, the recollection of what had passed since the morning would not come back to me, and there was no resource but to close my journal and to get away from it for a little while.
I opened the door which led from my bedroom into my sitting-room, and having passed through, pulled it to again, to prevent any accident in case of draught with the candle left on the dressing-table. My sitting-room window was wide open, and I leaned out listlessly to look at the night.
It was dark and quiet. Neither moon nor stars were visible. There was a smell like rain in the still, heavy air, and I put my hand out of window. No. The rain was only threatening, it had not come yet.
I remained leaning on the window-sill for nearly a quarter of an hour, looking out absently into the black darkness, and hearing nothing, except now and then the voices of the servants, or the distant sound of a closing door, in the lower part of the house.
Just as I was turning away wearily from the window to go back to the bedroom and make a second attempt to complete the unfinished entry in my journal, I smelt the odour of tobacco-smoke stealing towards me on the heavy night air. The next moment I saw a tiny red spark advancing from the farther end of the house in the pitch darkness. I heard no footsteps, and I could see nothing but the spark. It travelled along in the night, passed the window at which I was standing, and stopped opposite my bedroom window, inside which I had left the light burning on the dressing-table.
The spark remained stationary for a moment, then moved back again in the direction from which it had advanced. As I followed its progress I saw a second red spark, larger than the first, approaching from the distance. The two met together in the darkness. Remembering who smoked cigarettes and who smoked cigars, I inferred immediately that the Count had come out first to look and listen under my window, and that Sir Percival had afterwards joined him. They must both have been walking on the lawn or I should certainly have heard Sir Percival's heavy footfall, though the Count's soft step might have escaped me, even on the gravel walk.
I waited quietly at the window, certain that they could neither of them see me in the darkness of the room.
'What's the matter?' I heard Sir Percival say in a low voice. 'Why don't you come in and sit down?'
'I want to see the light out of that window,' replied the Count softly.
'What harm does the light do?'
'It shows she is not in bed yet. She is sharp enough to suspect something, and bold enough to come downstairs and listen, if she can get the chance. Patience, Percival patience.'
'Humbug! You're always talking of patience.'
'I shall talk of something else presently. My good friend, you are on the edge of your domestic precipice, and if I let you give the women one other chance, on my sacred word of honour they will push you over it!'
'What the devil do you mean?'
'We will come to our explanations, Percival, when the light is out of that window, and when I have had one little look at the rooms on each side of the library, and a peep at the staircase as well.'
They slowly moved away, and the rest of the conversation between them (which had been conducted throughout in the same low tones) ceased to be audible. It was no matter. I had heard enough to determine me on justifying the Count's opinion of my sharpness and my courage. Before the red sparks were out of sight in the darkness I had made up my mind that there should be a listener when those two men sat down to their talk and that the listener, in spite of all the Count's precautions to the contrary, should be myself. I wanted but one motive to sanction the act to my own conscience, and to give me courage enough for performing it and that motive I had. Laura's honour, Laura's happiness Laura's life itself might depend on my quick ears and my faithful memory to-night.
I had heard the Count say that he meant to examine the rooms on each side of the library, and the staircase as well, before he entered on any explanation with Sir Percival. This expression of his intentions was necessarily sufficient to inform me that the library was the room in which he proposed that the conversation should take place. The one moment of time which was long enough to bring me to that conclusion was also the moment which showed me a means of baffling his precautions or, in other words, of hearing what he and Sir Percival said to each other, without the risk of descending at all into the lower regions of the house.
In speaking of the rooms on the ground floor I have mentioned incidentally the verandah outside them, on which they all opened by means of French windows, extending from the cornice to the floor. The top of this verandah was flat, the rain-water being carried off from it by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the house. On the narrow leaden roof, which ran along past the bedrooms, and which was rather less, I should think, than three feet below the sills of the window, a row of flower-pots was ranged, with wide intervals between each pot the whole being protected from falling in high winds by an ornamental iron railing along the edge of the roof.
The plan which had now occurred to me was to get out at my sitting-room window on to this roof, to creep along noiselessly till I reached that part of it which was immediately over the library window, and to crouch down between the flower-pots, with my ear against the outer railing. If Sir Percival and the Count sat and smoked to-night, as I had seen them sitting and smoking many nights before, with their chairs close at the open window, and their feet stretched on the zinc garden seats which were placed under the verandah, every word they said to each other above a whisper (and no long conversation, as we all know by experience, can be carried on in a whisper) must inevitably reach my ears. If, on the other hand, they chose to-night to sit far back inside the room, then the chances were that I should hear little or nothing and in that case, I must run the far more serious risk of trying to outwit them downstairs.
Strongly as I was fortified in my resolution by the desperate nature of our situation, I hoped most fervently that I might escape this last emergency. My courage was only a woman's courage after all, and it was very near to failing me when I thought of trusting myself on the ground floor, at the dead of night, within reach of Sir Percival and the Count.
I went softly back to my bedroom to try the safer experiment of the verandah roof first.
A complete change in my dress was imperatively necessary for many reasons. I took off my silk gown to begin with, because the slightest noise from it on that still night might have betrayed me. I next removed the white and cumbersome parts of my under-clothing, and replaced them by a petticoat of dark flannel. Over this I put my black travelling cloak, and pulled the hood on to my head. In my ordinary evening costume I took up the room of three men at least. In my present dress, when it was held close about me, no man could have passed through the narrowest spaces more easily than I. The little breadth left on the roof of the verandah, between the flower-pots on one side and the wall and the windows of the house on the other, made this a serious consideration. If I knocked anything down, if I made the least noise, who could say what the consequences might be?
I only waited to put the matches near the candle before I extinguished it, and groped my way back into the sitting-room. I locked that door, as I had locked my bedroom door then quietly got out of the window, and cautiously set my feet on the leaden roof of the verandah.
My two rooms were at the inner extremity of the new wing of the house in which we all lived, and I had five windows to pass before I could reach the position it was necessary to take up immediately over the library. The first window belonged to a spare room which was empty. The second and third windows belonged to Laura's room. The fourth window belonged to Sir Percival's room. The fifth belonged to the Countess's room. The others, by which it was not necessary for me to pass, were the windows of the Count's dressing-room, of the bath-room, and of the second empty spare room.
No sound reached my ears the black blinding darkness of the night was all round me when I first stood on the verandah, except at that part of it which Madame Fosco's window overxglooked. There, at the very place above the library to which my course was directed there I saw a gleam of light! The Countess was not yet in bed.
It was too late to draw back it was no time to wait. I determined to go on at all hazards, and trust for security to my own caution and to the darkness of the night. 'For Laura's sake!' I thought to myself, as I took the first step forward on the roof, with one hand holding my cloak close round me, and the other groping against the wall of the house. It was better to brush close by the wall than to risk striking my feet against the flower-pots within a few inches of me, on the other side.
I passed the dark window of the spare room, trying the leaden roof at each step with my foot before I risked resting my weight on it. I passed the dark windows of Laura's room ('God bless her and keep her to-night!'). I passed the dark window of Sir Percival's room. Then I waited a moment, knelt down with my hands to support me, and so crept to my position, under the protection of the low wall between the bottom of the lighted window and the verandah roof.
When I ventured to look up at the window itself I found that the top of it only was open, and that the blind inside was drawn down. While I was looking I saw the shadow of Madame Fosco pass across the white field of the blind then pass slowly back again. Thus far she could not have heard me, or the shadow would surely have stopped at the blind, even if she had wanted courage enough to open the window and look out?
I placed myself sideways against the railing of the verandah first ascertaining, by touching them, the position of the flower-pots on either side of me. There was room enough for me to sit between them and no more. The sweet-scented leaves of the flower on my left hand just brushed my cheek as I lightly rested my head against the railing.
The first sounds that reached me from below were caused by the opening or closing (most probably the latter) of three doors in succession the doors, no doubt, leading into the hall and into the rooms on each side of the library, which the Count had pledged himself to examine. The first object that I saw was the red spark again travelling out into the night from under the verandah, moving away towards my window, waiting a moment, and then returning to the place from which it had set out.
'The devil take your restlessness! When do you mean to sit down?' growled Sir Percival's voice beneath me.
'Ouf! how hot it is!' said the Count, sighing and puffing wearily.
His exclamation was followed by the scraping of the garden chairs on the tiled payment under the verandah the welcome sound which told me they were going to sit close at the window as usual. So far the chance was mine. The clock in the turret struck the quarter to twelve as they settled themselves in their chairs. I heard Madame Fosco through the open window yawning, and saw her shadow pass once more across the white field of the blind.
Meanwhile, Sir Percival and the Count began talking together below, now and then dropping their voices a little lower than usual, but never sinking them to a whisper. The strangeness and peril of my situation, the dread, which I could not master, of Madame Fosco's lighted window, made it difficult, almost impossible, for me, at first, to keep my presence of mind, and to fix my attention solely on the conversation beneath. For some minutes I could only succeed in gathering the general substance of it. I understood the Count to say that the one window alight was his wife's, that the ground floor of the house was quite clear, and that they might now speak to each other without fear of accidents. Sir Percival merely answered by upbraiding his friend with having unjustifiably slighted his wishes and neglected his interests all through the day. The Count thereupon defended himself by declaring that he had been beset by certain troubles and anxieties which had absorbed all his attention, and that the only safe time to come to an explanation was a time when they could feel certain of being neither interrupted nor overheard. 'We are at a serious crisis in our affairs, Percival,' he said, 'and if we are to decide on the future at all, we must decide secretly to-night.'
That sentence of the Count's was the first which my attention was ready enough to master exactly as it was spoken. From this point, with certain breaks and interruptions, my whole interest fixed breathlessly on the conversation, and I followed it word for word.
'Crisis?' repeated Sir Percival. 'It's a worse crisis than you think for, I can tell you.'
'So I should suppose, from your behaviour for the last day or two,' returned the other coolly. 'But wait a little. Before we advance to what I do not know, let us be quite certain of what I do know. Let us first see if I am right about the time that is past, before I make any proposal to you for the time that is to come.'
'Stop till I get the brandy and water. Have some yourself.'
'Thank you, Percival. The cold water with pleasure, a spoon, and the basin of sugar. Eau sucree, my friend nothing more.'
'Sugar-and-water for a man of your age! There! mix your sickly mess. You foreigners are all alike.'
'Now listen, Percival. I will put our position plainly before you, as I understand it, and you shall say if I am right or wrong. You and I both came back to this house from the Continent with our affairs very seriously embarrassed -'
'Cut it short! I wanted some thousands and you some hundreds, and without the money we were both in a fair way to go to the dogs together. There's the situation. Make what you can of it. Go on.'
'Well, Percival, in your own solid English words, you wanted some thousands and I wanted some hundreds, and the only way of getting them was for you to raise the money for your own necessity (with a small margin beyond for my poor little hundreds) by the help of your wife. What did I tell you about your wife on our way to England? and what did I tell you again when we had come here, and when I had seen for myself the sort of woman Miss Halcombe was?'
'How should I know? You talked nineteen to the dozen, I suppose, just as usual.'
'I said this: Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is to knock her down a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them. The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but in the end not less certain) is never to accept a provocation at a woman's hands. It holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up. Quiet resolution is the one quality the animals, the children, and the women all fail in. If they can once shake this superior quality in their master, they get the better of him. If they can never succeed in disturbing it, he gets the better of them. I said to you, Remember that plain truth when you want your wife to help you to the money. I said, Remember it doubly and trebly in the presence of your wife's sister, Miss Halcombe. Have you remembered it? Not once in all the complications that have twisted themselves about us in this house. Every provocation that your wife and her sister could offer to you, you instantly accepted from them. Your mad temper lost the signature to the deed, lost the ready money, set Miss Halcombe writing to the lawyer for the first time -'
'First time! Has she written again?'
'Yes, she has written again to-day.'
A chair fell on the pavement of the verandah fell with a crash, as if it had been kicked down.
It was well for me that the Count's revelation roused Sir Percival's anger as it did. On hearing that I had been once more discovered I started so that the railing against which I leaned cracked again. Had he followed me to the inn? Did he infer that I must have given my letters to Fanny when I told him I had none for the post-bag? Even if it was so, how could he have examined the letters when they had gone straight from my hand to the bosom of the girl's dress?
'Thank your lucky star,' I heard the Count say next, 'that you have me in the house to undo the harm as fast as you do it. Thank your lucky star that I said No when you were mad enough to talk of turning the key to-day on Miss Halcombe, as you turned it in your mischievous folly on your wife. Where are your eyes? Can you look at Miss Halcombe and not see that she has the foresight and the resolution of a man? With that woman for my friend I would snap these fingers of mine at the world. With that woman for my enemy, I, with all my brains and experience I, Fosco, cunning as the devil himself, as you have told me a hundred times I walk, in your English phrase, upon egg-shells! And this grand creature I drink her health in my sugar-and-water this grand creature, who stands in the strength of her love and her courage, firm as a rock, between us two and that poor, flimsy, pretty blonde wife of yours this magnificent woman, whom I admire with all my soul, though I oppose her in your interests and in mine, you drive to extremities as if she was no sharper and no bolder than the rest of her sex. Percival! Percival! you deserve to fail, and you have failed.'
There was a pause. I write the villain's words about myself because I mean to remember them because I hope yet for the day when I may speak out once for all in his presence, and cast them back one by one in his teeth.
Sir Percival was the first to break the silence again.
'Yes, yes, bully and bluster as much as you like,' he said sulkily; 'the difficulty about the money is not the only difficulty. You would be for taking strong measures with the women yourself if you knew as much as I do.'