The Woman in White Wilkie Collins (bts books to read txt) 📖

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 enclosed 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 someone 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 anteroom?” 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 I was then 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 postbag in the hall.

Laura saw me thinking. “More difficulties!” she said wearily; “more difficulties and more dangers!”

“No dangers,” I replied. “Some little difficulty, perhaps. I am thinking of the safest way of putting my two letters into Fanny’s hands.”

“You have really written them, then? Oh, Marian, run no risks⁠—pray, pray run no risks!”

“No, no⁠—no fear. Let me see⁠—what o’clock is it now?”

It was a quarter to six. There would be time for me to get to the village inn, and to come back again before dinner. If I waited till the evening I might find no second opportunity of safely leaving the house.

“Keep the key turned in the lock. Laura,” I said, “and don’t be afraid about me. If you hear any inquiries made, call through the door, and say that I am gone out for a walk.”

“When shall you be back?”

“Before dinner, without fail. Courage, my love. By this time tomorrow you will have a clearheaded, trustworthy man acting for your good. Mr. Gilmore’s partner is our next best friend to Mr. Gilmore himself.”

A moment’s reflection, as soon as I was alone, convinced me that I had better not