The Woman in White (34 page)

His tact and cleverness in small things are quite as noticeable as
the singular inconsistencies in his character, and the childish
triviality of his ordinary tastes and pursuits.

I can see already that he means to live on excellent terms with
all of us during the period of his sojourn in this place. He has
evidently discovered that Laura secretly dislikes him (she
confessed as much to me when I pressed her on the subject)—but he
has also found out that she is extravagantly fond of flowers.
Whenever she wants a nosegay he has got one to give her, gathered
and arranged by himself, and greatly to my amusement, he is always
cunningly provided with a duplicate, composed of exactly the same
flowers, grouped in exactly the same way, to appease his icily
jealous wife before she can so much as think herself aggrieved.
His management of the Countess (in public) is a sight to see. He
bows to her, he habitually addresses her as "my angel," he carries
his canaries to pay her little visits on his fingers and to sing
to her, he kisses her hand when she gives him his cigarettes; he
presents her with sugar-plums in return, which he puts into her
mouth playfully, from a box in his pocket. The rod of iron with
which he rules her never appears in company—it is a private rod,
and is always kept upstairs.

His method of recommending himself to me is entirely different.
He flatters my vanity by talking to me as seriously and sensibly
as if I was a man. Yes! I can find him out when I am away from
him—I know he flatters my vanity, when I think of him up here in
my own room—and yet, when I go downstairs, and get into his
company again, he will blind me again, and I shall be flattered
again, just as if I had never found him out at all! He can manage
me as he manages his wife and Laura, as he managed the bloodhound
in the stable-yard, as he manages Sir Percival himself, every hour
in the day. "My good Percival! how I like your rough English
humour!"—"My good Percival! how I enjoy your solid English
sense!" He puts the rudest remarks Sir Percival can make on his
effeminate tastes and amusements quietly away from him in that
manner—always calling the baronet by his Christian name, smiling
at him with the calmest superiority, patting him on the shoulder,
and bearing with him benignantly, as a good-humoured father bears
with a wayward son.

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 ascendency 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.

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 daresay 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. My
groom will get you to the station in no time. Benjamin, drive
like mad! Jump in. 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 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 qua! Figaro la! Figaro su! Figaro giu!" 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."