The Woman in White (39 page)

The Countess came into the hall rather hastily, and asked if I had
leisure enough for five minutes' private conversation. Feeling a
little surprised by such an appeal from such a person, I put my
letter into the bag, and replied that I was quite at her disposal.
She took my arm with unaccustomed friendliness and familiarity,
and instead of leading me into an empty room, drew me out with her
to the belt of turf which surrounded the large fish-pond.

As we passed the Count on the steps he bowed and smiled, and then
went at once into the house, pushing the hall door to after him,
but not actually closing it.

The Countess walked me gently round the fish-pond. I expected to
be made the depositary of some extraordinary confidence, and I was
astonished to find that Madame Fosco's communication for my
private ear was nothing more than a polite assurance of her
sympathy for me, after what had happened in the library. Her
husband had told her of all that had passed, and of the insolent
manner in which Sir Percival had spoken to me. This information
had so shocked and distressed her, on my account and on Laura's,
that she had made up her mind, if anything of the sort happened
again, to mark her sense of Sir Percival's outrageous conduct by
leaving the house. The Count had approved of her idea, and she
now hoped that I approved of it too.

I thought this a very strange proceeding on the part of such a
remarkably reserved woman as Madame Fosco, especially after the
interchange of sharp speeches which had passed between us during
the conversation in the boat-house on that very morning. However,
it was my plain duty to meet a polite and friendly advance on the
part of one of my elders with a polite and friendly reply. I
answered the Countess accordingly in her own tone, and then,
thinking we had said all that was necessary on either side, made
an attempt to get back to the house.

But Madame Fosco seemed resolved not to part with me, and to my
unspeakable amazement, resolved also to talk. Hitherto the most
silent of women, she now persecuted me with fluent
conventionalities on the subject of married life, on the subject
of Sir Percival and Laura, on the subject of her own happiness, on
the subject of the late Mr. Fairlie's conduct to her in the matter
of her legacy, and on half a dozen other subjects besides, until
she had detained me walking round and round the fish-pond for more
than half an hour, and had quite wearied me out. Whether she
discovered this or not, I cannot say, but she stopped as abruptly
as she had begun—looked towards the house door, resumed her icy
manner in a moment, and dropped my arm of her own accord before I
could think of an excuse for accomplishing my own release from
her.

As I pushed open the door and entered the hall, I found myself
suddenly face to face with the Count again. He was just putting a
letter into the post-bag.

After he had dropped it in and had closed the bag, he asked me
where I had left Madame Fosco. I told him, and he went out at the
hall door immediately to join his wife. His manner when he spoke
to me was so unusually quiet and subdued that I turned and looked
after him, wondering if he were ill or out of spirits.

Why my next proceeding was to go straight up to the post-bag and
take out my own letter and look at it again, with a vague distrust
on me, and why the looking at it for the second time instantly
suggested the idea to my mind of sealing the envelope for its
greater security—are mysteries which are either too deep or too
shallow for me to fathom. Women, as everybody knows, constantly
act on impulses which they cannot explain even to themselves, and
I can only suppose that one of those impulses was the hidden cause
of my unaccountable conduct on this occasion.

Whatever influence animated me, I found cause to congratulate
myself on having obeyed it as soon as I prepared to seal the
letter in my own room. I had originally closed the envelope in
the usual way by moistening the adhesive point and pressing it on
the paper beneath, and when I now tried it with my finger, after a
lapse of full three-quarters of an hour, the envelope opened on
the instant, without sticking or tearing. Perhaps I had fastened
it insufficiently? Perhaps there might have been some defect in
the adhesive gum?

Or, perhaps—-No! it is quite revolting enough to feel that third
conjecture stirring in my mind. I would rather not see it
confronting me in plain black and white.

I almost dread to-morrow—so much depends on my discretion and
self-control. There are two precautions, at all events, which I
am sure not to forget. I must be careful to keep up friendly
appearances with the Count, and I must be well on my guard when
the messenger from the office comes here with the answer to my
letter.

June 17th.—When the dinner hour brought us together again, Count
Fosco was in his usual excellent spirits. He exerted himself to
interest and amuse us, as if he was determined to efface from our
memories all recollection of what had passed in the library that
afternoon. Lively descriptions of his adventures in travelling,
amusing anecdotes of remarkable people whom he had met with
abroad, quaint comparisons between the social customs of various
nations, illustrated by examples drawn from men and women
indiscriminately all over Europe, humorous confessions of the
innocent follies of his own early life, when he ruled the fashions
of a second-rate Italian town, and wrote preposterous romances on
the French model for a second-rate Italian newspaper—all flowed
in succession so easily and so gaily from his lips, and all
addressed our various curiosities and various interests so
directly and so delicately, that Laura and I listened to him with
as much attention and, inconsistent as it may seem, with as much
admiration also, as Madame Fosco herself. Women can resist a
man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's
money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to
talk to them.

After dinner, while the favourable impression which he had
produced on us was still vivid in our minds, the Count modestly
withdrew to read in the library.

Laura proposed a stroll in the grounds to enjoy the close of the
long evening. It was necessary in common politeness to ask Madame
Fosco to join us, but this time she had apparently received her
orders beforehand, and she begged we would kindly excuse her.
"The Count will probably want a fresh supply of cigarettes," she
remarked by way of apology, "and nobody can make them to his
satisfaction but myself." Her cold blue eyes almost warmed as she
spoke the words—she looked actually proud of being the
officiating medium through which her lord and master composed
himself with tobacco-smoke!

Laura and I went out together alone.

It was a misty, heavy evening. There was a sense of blight in the
air; the flowers were drooping in the garden, and the ground was
parched and dewless. The western heaven, as we saw it over the
quiet trees, was of a pale yellow hue, and the sun was setting
faintly in a haze. Coming rain seemed near—it would fall
probably with the fall of night.

"Which way shall we go?" I asked

"Towards the lake, Marian, if you like," she answered.

"You seem unaccountably fond, Laura, of that dismal lake."

"No, not of the lake but of the scenery about it. The sand and
heath and the fir-trees are the only objects I can discover, in
all this large place, to remind me of Limmeridge. But we will
walk in some other direction if you prefer it."

"I have no favourite walks at Blackwater Park, my love. One is
the same as another to me. Let us go to the lake—we may find it
cooler in the open space than we find it here."

We walked through the shadowy plantation in silence. The
heaviness in the evening air oppressed us both, and when we
reached the boat-house we were glad to sit down and rest inside.

A white fog hung low over the lake. The dense brown line of the
trees on the opposite bank appeared above it, like a dwarf forest
floating in the sky. The sandy ground, shelving downward from
where we sat, was lost mysteriously in the outward layers of the
fog. The silence was horrible. No rustling of the leaves—no
bird's note in the wood—no cry of water-fowl from the pools of
the hidden lake. Even the croaking of the frogs had ceased to-
night.

"It is very desolate and gloomy," said Laura. "But we can be more
alone here than anywhere else."

She spoke quietly and looked at the wilderness of sand and mist
with steady, thoughtful eyes. I could see that her mind was too
much occupied to feel the dreary impressions from without which
had fastened themselves already on mine.

"I promised, Marian, to tell you the truth about my married life,
instead of leaving you any longer to guess it for yourself," she
began. "That secret is the first I have ever had from you, love,
and I am determined it shall be the last. I was silent, as you
know, for your sake—and perhaps a little for my own sake as well.
It is very hard for a woman to confess that the man to whom she
has given her whole life is the man of all others who cares least
for the gift. If you were married yourself, Marian—and
especially if you were happily married—you would feel for me as
no single woman CAN feel, however kind and true she may be."

What answer could I make? I could only take her hand and look at
her with my whole heart as well as my eyes would let me.

"How often," she went on, "I have heard you laughing over what you
used to call your 'poverty!' how often you have made me mock-
speeches of congratulation on my wealth! Oh, Marian, never laugh
again. Thank God for your poverty—it has made you your own
mistress, and has saved you from the lot that has fallen on ME."

A sad beginning on the lips of a young wife!—sad in its quiet
plain-spoken truth. The few days we had all passed together at
Blackwater Park had been many enough to show me—to show any one—
what her husband had married her for.

"You shall not be distressed," she said, "by hearing how soon my
disappointments and my trials began—or even by knowing what they
were. It is bad enough to have them on my memory. If I tell you
how he received the first and last attempt at remonstrance that I
ever made, you will know how he has always treated me, as well as
if I had described it in so many words. It was one day at Rome
when we had ridden out together to the tomb of Cecilia Metella.
The sky was calm and lovely, and the grand old ruin looked
beautiful, and the remembrance that a husband's love had raised it
in the old time to a wife's memory, made me feel more tenderly and
more anxiously towards my husband than I had ever felt yet.
'Would you build such a tomb for ME, Percival?' I asked him. 'You
said you loved me dearly before we were married, and yet, since
that time—-' I could get no farther. Marian! he was not even
looking at me! I pulled down my veil, thinking it best not to let
him see that the tears were in my eyes. I fancied he had not paid
any attention to me, but he had. He said, 'Come away,' and
laughed to himself as he helped me on to my horse. He mounted his
own horse and laughed again as we rode away. 'If I do build you a
tomb,' he said, 'it will be done with your own money. I wonder
whether Cecilia Metella had a fortune and paid for hers.' I made
no reply—how could I, when I was crying behind my veil?' Ah, you
light-complexioned women are all sulky,' he said. 'What do you
want? compliments and soft speeches? Well! I'm in a good humour
this morning. Consider the compliments paid and the speeches
said.' Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we
remember them, and how much harm they do us. It would have been
better for me if I had gone on crying, but his contempt dried up
my tears and hardened my heart. From that time, Marian, I never
checked myself again in thinking of Walter Hartright. I let the
memory of those happy days, when we were so fond of each other in
secret, come back and comfort me. What else had I to look to for
consolation? If we had been together you would have helped me to
better things. I know it was wrong, darling, but tell me if I was
wrong without any excuse."

I was obliged to turn my face from her. "Don't ask me!" I said.
"Have I suffered as you have suffered? What right have I to
decide?"

"I used to think of him," she pursued, dropping her voice and
moving closer to me, "I used to think of him when Percival left me
alone at night to go among the Opera people. I used to fancy what
I might have been if it had pleased God to bless me with poverty,
and if I had been his wife. I used to see myself in my neat cheap
gown, sitting at home and waiting for him while he was earning our
bread—sitting at home and working for him and loving him all the
better because I had to work for him—seeing him come in tired and
taking off his hat and coat for him, and, Marian, pleasing him
with little dishes at dinner that I had learnt to make for his
sake. Oh! I hope he is never lonely enough and sad enough to
think of me and see me as I have thought of HIM and see HIM!"

As she said those melancholy words, all the lost tenderness
returned to her voice, and all the lost beauty trembled back into
her face. Her eyes rested as lovingly on the blighted, solitary,
ill-omened view before us, as if they saw the friendly hills of
Cumberland in the dim and threatening sky.

"Don't speak of Walter any more," I said, as soon as I could
control myself. "Oh, Laura, spare us both the wretchedness of
talking of him now!"

She roused herself, and looked at me tenderly.

"I would rather be silent about him for ever," she answered, "than
cause you a moment's pain."

"It is in your interests," I pleaded; "it is for your sake that I
speak. If your husband heard you—-"