The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins [top ten ebook reader txt] 📗

in good⁠—why should the worst men be consistent in evil? At the same time, I suspect him of merely attempting to frighten you, by threatening what he cannot really do. I doubt his power of annoying us, by means of the owner of the asylum, now that Sir Percival is dead, and Mrs. Catherick is free from all control. But let me hear more. What did the Count say of me?”

“He spoke last of you. His eyes brightened and hardened, and his manner changed to what I remember it in past times⁠—to that mixture of pitiless resolution and mountebank mockery which makes it so impossible to fathom him. ‘Warn Mr. Hartright!’ he said in his loftiest manner. ‘He has a man of brains to deal with, a man who snaps his big fingers at the laws and conventions of society, when he measures himself with me. If my lamented friend had taken my advice, the business of the inquest would have been with the body of Mr. Hartright. But my lamented friend was obstinate. See! I mourn his loss⁠—inwardly in my soul, outwardly on my hat. This trivial crape expresses sensibilities which I summon Mr. Hartright to respect. They may be transformed to immeasurable enmities if he ventures to disturb them. Let him be content with what he has got⁠—with what I leave unmolested, for your sake, to him and to you. Say to him (with my compliments), if he stirs me, he has Fosco to deal with. In the English of the Popular Tongue, I inform him⁠—Fosco sticks at nothing. Dear lady, good morning.’ His cold grey eyes settled on my face⁠—he took off his hat solemnly⁠—bowed, bareheaded⁠—and left me.”

“Without returning? without saying more last words?”

“He turned at the corner of the street, and waved his hand, and then struck it theatrically on his breast. I lost sight of him after that. He disappeared in the opposite direction to our house, and I ran back to Laura. Before I was indoors again, I had made up my mind that we must go. The house (especially in your absence) was a place of danger instead of a place of safety, now that the Count had discovered it. If I could have felt certain of your return, I should have risked waiting till you came back. But I was certain of nothing, and I acted at once on my own impulse. You had spoken, before leaving us, of moving into a quieter neighbourhood and purer air, for the sake of Laura’s health. I had only to remind her of that, and to suggest surprising you and saving you trouble by managing the move in your absence, to make her quite as anxious for the change as I was. She helped me to pack up your things, and she has arranged them all for you in your new working-room here.”

“What made you think of coming to this place?”

“My ignorance of other localities in the neighbourhood of London. I felt the necessity of getting as far away as possible from our old lodgings, and I knew something of Fulham, because I had once been at school there. I despatched a messenger with a note, on the chance that the school might still be in existence. It was in existence⁠—the daughters of my old mistress were carrying it on for her, and they engaged this place from the instructions I had sent. It was just post-time when the messenger returned to me with the address of the house. We moved after dark⁠—we came here quite unobserved. Have I done right, Walter? Have I justified your trust in me?”

I answered her warmly and gratefully, as I really felt. But the anxious look still remained on her face while I was speaking, and the first question she asked, when I had done, related to Count Fosco.

I saw that she was thinking of him now with a changed mind. No fresh outbreak of anger against him, no new appeal to me to hasten the day of reckoning escaped her. Her conviction that the man’s hateful admiration of herself was really sincere, seemed to have increased a hundredfold her distrust of his unfathomable cunning, her inborn dread of the wicked energy and vigilance of all his faculties. Her voice fell low, her manner was hesitating, her eyes searched into mine with an eager fear when she asked me what I thought of his message, and what I meant to do next after hearing it.

“Not many weeks have passed, Marian,” I answered, “since my interview with Mr. Kyrle. When he and I parted, the last words I said to him about Laura were these: ‘Her uncle’s house shall open to receive her, in the presence of every soul who followed the false funeral to the grave; the lie that records her death shall be publicly erased from the tombstone by the authority of the head of the family, and the two men who have wronged her shall answer for their crime to me, though the justice that sits in tribunals is powerless to pursue them.’ One of those men is beyond mortal reach. The other remains, and my resolution remains.”

Her eyes lit up⁠—her colour rose. She said nothing, but I saw all her sympathies gathering to mine in her face.

“I don’t disguise from myself, or from you,” I went on, “that the prospect before us is more than doubtful. The risks we have run already are, it may be, trifles compared with the risks that threaten us in the future, but the venture shall be tried, Marian, for all that. I am not rash enough to measure myself against such a man as the Count before I am well prepared for him. I have learnt patience⁠—I can wait my time. Let him believe that his message has produced its effect⁠—let him know nothing of us, and hear nothing of us⁠—let us give him full time to feel secure⁠—his own boastful nature, unless I seriously mistake him, will hasten that result. This is one reason