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

he pushed by the Count roughly, and placed himself face to face with me under the open daylight.

“How came the housekeeper to know it was Mrs. Catherick’s dog?” he asked, fixing his eyes on mine with a frowning interest and attention, which half angered, half startled me.

“She knew it,” I said quietly, “because Mrs. Catherick brought the dog with her.”

“Brought it with her? Where did she bring it with her?”

“To this house.”

“What the devil did Mrs. Catherick want at this house?”

The manner in which he put the question was even more offensive than the language in which he expressed it. I marked my sense of his want of common politeness by silently turning away from him.

Just as I moved the Count’s persuasive hand was laid on his shoulder, and the Count’s mellifluous voice interposed to quiet him.

“My dear Percival!⁠—gently⁠—gently!”

Sir Percival looked round in his angriest manner. The Count only smiled and repeated the soothing application.

“Gently, my good friend⁠—gently!”

Sir Percival hesitated, followed me a few steps, and, to my great surprise, offered me an apology.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe,” he said. “I have been out of order lately, and I am afraid I am a little irritable. But I should like to know what Mrs. Catherick could possibly want here. When did she come? Was the housekeeper the only person who saw her?”

“The only person,” I answered, “so far as I know.”

The Count interposed again.

“In that case why not question the housekeeper?” he said. “Why not go, Percival, to the fountainhead of information at once?”

“Quite right!” said Sir Percival. “Of course the housekeeper is the first person to question. Excessively stupid of me not to see it myself.” With those words he instantly left us to return to the house.

The motive of the Count’s interference, which had puzzled me at first, betrayed itself when Sir Percival’s back was turned. He had a host of questions to put to me about Mrs. Catherick, and the cause of her visit to Blackwater Park, which he could scarcely have asked in his friend’s presence. I made my answers as short as I civilly could, for I had already determined to check the least approach to any exchanging of confidences between Count Fosco and myself. Laura, however, unconsciously helped him to extract all my information, by making inquiries herself, which left me no alternative but to reply to her, or to appear in the very unenviable and very false character of a depositary of Sir Percival’s secrets. The end of it was, that, in about ten minutes’ time, the Count knew as much as I know of Mrs. Catherick, and of the events which have so strangely connected us with her daughter, Anne, from the time when Hartright met with her to this day.

The effect of my information on him was, in one respect, curious enough.

Intimately as he knows Sir Percival, and closely as he appears to be associated with Sir Percival’s private affairs in general, he is certainly as far as I am from knowing anything of the true story of Anne Catherick. The unsolved mystery in connection with this unhappy woman is now rendered doubly suspicious, in my eyes, by the absolute conviction which I feel, that the clue to it has been hidden by Sir Percival from the most intimate friend he has in the world. It was impossible to mistake the eager curiosity of the Count’s look and manner while he drank in greedily every word that fell from my lips. There are many kinds of curiosity, I know⁠—but there is no misinterpreting the curiosity of blank surprise: if I ever saw it in my life I saw it in the Count’s face.

While the questions and answers were going on, we had all been strolling quietly back through the plantation. As soon as we reached the house the first object that we saw in front of it was Sir Percival’s dogcart, with the horse put to and the groom waiting by it in his stable-jacket. If these unexpected appearances were to be trusted, the examination of the housekeeper had produced important results already.

“A fine horse, my friend,” said the Count, addressing the groom with the most engaging familiarity of manner, “You are going to drive out?”

“I am not going, sir,” replied the man, looking at his stable-jacket, and evidently wondering whether the foreign gentleman took it for his livery. “My master drives himself.”

“Aha!” said the Count, “does he indeed? I wonder he gives himself the trouble when he has got you to drive for him. Is he going to fatigue that nice, shining, pretty horse by taking him very far today?”

“I don’t know, sir,” answered the man. “The horse is a mare, if you please, sir. She’s the highest-couraged thing we’ve got in the stables. Her name’s Brown Molly, sir, and she’ll go till she drops. Sir Percival usually takes Isaac of York for the short distances.”

“And your shining courageous Brown Molly for the long?”

“Logical inference, Miss Halcombe,” continued the Count, wheeling round briskly, and addressing me. “Sir Percival is going a long distance today.”

I made no reply. I had my own inferences to draw, from what I knew through the housekeeper and from what I saw before me, and I did not choose to share them with Count Fosco.

When Sir Percival was in Cumberland (I thought to myself), he walked away a long distance, on Anne’s account, to question the family at Todd’s Corner. Now he is in Hampshire, is he going to drive away a long distance, on Anne’s account again, to question Mrs. Catherick at Welmingham?

We all entered the house. As we crossed the hall Sir Percival came out from the library to meet us. He looked hurried and pale and anxious⁠—but for all that, he was in his most polite mood when he spoke to us.

“I am sorry to say I am obliged to leave you,” he began⁠—“a long drive⁠—a matter that I can’t very well put off. I shall be back in good time tomorrow⁠—but before I go I should like that