The Solitary House (224 page)

“I was afraid it was a man in a long cloak.”

“It may be a man. In this dim light it is not possible to be certain.”

“Wait, Marian! I’m frightened—I don’t see the path. Suppose the figure should follow us?”

“Not at all likely, Laura. There is really nothing to be alarmed about. The shores of the lake are not far from the village, and they are free to any one to walk on, by day or night. It is only wonderful we have seen no living creature there before.”

We were now in the plantation. It was very dark—so dark, that we found some difficulty in keeping the path. I
gave Laura my arm, and we walked as fast as we could on our way back.

Before we were half way through, she stopped, and forced me to stop with her. She was listening.

“Hush!” she whispered. “I hear something behind us.”

“Dead leaves,” I said, to cheer her, “or a twig blown off the trees.”

“It is summer time, Marian; and there is not a breath of wind. Listen!”

I heard the sound, too—a sound like a light footstep following us.

“No matter who it is, or what it is,” I said; “let us walk on. In another minute, if there is anything to alarm us, we shall be near enough to the house to be heard.”

We went on quickly—so quickly, that Laura was breathless by the time we were nearly through the plantation, and within sight of the lighted windows.

I waited a moment, to give her breathing-time. Just as we were about to proceed, she stopped me again, and signed to me with her hand to listen once more. We both heard distinctly a long, heavy sigh, behind us, in the black depths of the trees.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

There was no answer.

“Who’s there?” I repeated.

An instant of silence followed; and then we heard the light fall of the footsteps again, fainter and fainter—sinking away into the darkness—sinking, sinking, sinking—till they were lost in the silence.

We hurried out from the trees to the open lawn beyond; crossed it rapidly; and without another word passing between us, reached the house.

In the light of the hall-lamp, Laura looked at me, with white cheeks and startled eyes.

“I am half dead with fear,” she said. “Who could it have been?”

“We will try to guess to-morrow,” I replied. “In the mean time, say nothing to any one of what we have heard and seen.”

“Why not?”

“Because silence is safe—and we have need of safety in this house.”

I sent Laura up-stairs immediately—waited a minute to take off my hat, and put my hair smooth—and then went at once to make my first investigations in the library, on pretence of searching for a book.

There sat the Count, filling out the largest easy-chair in the house; smoking and reading calmly, with his feet on an ottoman, his cravat across his knees, and his shirt collar wide open. And there sat Madame Fosco, like a quiet child, on a stool by his side, making cigarettes. Neither husband nor wife could, by any possibility, have been out late that evening, and have just got back to the house in a hurry. I felt that my object in visiting the library was answered the moment I set eyes on them.

Count Fosco rose in polite confusion, and tied his cravat on, when I entered the room.

“Pray don’t let me disturb you,” I said. “I have only come here to get a book.”

“All unfortunate men of my size suffer from the heat,” said the Count, refreshing himself gravely with a large green fan. “I wish I could change places with my excellent wife. She is as cool, at this moment, as a fish in the pond outside.”

The Countess allowed herself to thaw under the influence of her husband’s quaint comparison. “I am never warm, Miss Halcombe,” she remarked, with the modest air of a woman who was confessing to one of her own merits.

“Have you and Lady Glyde been out this evening?” asked the Count, while I was taking a book from the shelves, to preserve appearances.

“Yes; we went out to get a little air.”

“May I ask in what direction?”

“In the direction of the lake—as far as the boat-house.”

“Aha? As far as the boat-house?”

Under other circumstances, I might have resented his curiosity. But, to-night I hailed it as another proof that neither he nor his wife were connected with the mysterious appearance at the lake.

“No more adventures, I suppose, this evening?” he went on.

“No more discoveries, like your discovery of the wounded dog?”

He fixed his unfathomable grey eyes on me, with that cold, clear, irresistible glitter in them, which always forces me to look at him, and always makes me uneasy, while I do look. An unutterable suspicion that his mind is prying into mine, overcomes me at these times; and it overcame me now.

“No,” I said, shortly; “no adventures—no discoveries.”

I tried to look away from him, and leave the room. Strange as it seems, I hardly think I should have succeeded in the attempt, if Madame Fosco had not helped me by causing him to move and look away first.

“Count, you are keeping Miss Halcombe standing,” she said.

The moment he turned round to get me a chair, I seized my opportunity—thanked him—made my excuses—and slipped out.

An hour later, when Laura’s maid happened to be in her mistress’s room, I took occasion to refer to the closeness of
the night, with a view to ascertaining next how the servants had been passing their time.

“Have you been suffering much from the heat, down stairs?” I asked.

“No, miss,” said the girl; “we have not felt it to speak of.”

“You have been out in the woods, then, I suppose?”

“Some of us thought of going, miss. But cook said she should take her chair into the cool court-yard, outside the kitchen door; and, on second thoughts, all the rest of us took our chairs out there, too.”

The housekeeper was now the only person who remained to be accounted for.

“Is Mrs. Michelson gone to bed yet?” I inquired.

“I should think not, miss,” said the girl, smiling. “Mrs. Michelson is more likely to be getting up, just now, than going to bed.”

“Why? What do you mean? Has Mrs. Michelson been taking to her bed in the day-time?”

“No, miss; not exactly, but the next thing to it. She’s been asleep all the evening, on the sofa in her own room.”

Putting together what I observed for myself in the library and what I have just heard from Laura’s maid, one conclusion seems inevitable. The figure we saw at the lake, was not the figure of Madame Fosco, of her husband, or of any of the servants. The footsteps we heard behind us, were not the footsteps of any one belonging to the house.

Who could it have been?

It seems useless to inquire. I cannot even decide whether the figure was a man’s or a woman’s. I can only say that I think it was a woman’s.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

June 18th. The misery of self-reproach which I suffered, yesterday evening, on hearing what Laura told me in the boat-house, returned in the loneliness of the night, and kept me waking and wretched for hours.

I lighted the candle at last, and searched through my old journals to see what my share in the fatal error of her marriage had really been, and what I might have once done to save her from it. The result soothed me a little—for it showed that, however blindly and ignorantly I acted, I acted for the best. Crying generally does me harm; but it was not so last night—I think it relieved me. I rose this morning with a settled resolution and a quiet mind. Nothing Sir Percival can say or do shall ever irritate me again, or make me forget, for one moment, that I am staying here, in defiance of mortifications, insults, and threats, for Laura’s service and for Laura’s sake.

The speculations in which we might have indulged, this morning, on the subject of the figure at the lake and the footsteps in the plantation, have been all suspended by a trifling accident which has caused Laura great regret. She has lost the little brooch I gave her for a keepsake, on the day before her marriage. As she wore it when we went out yesterday evening, we can only suppose that it must have dropped from her dress, either in the boat-house, or on our
way back. The servants have been sent to search, and have returned unsuccessful. And now Laura herself has just gone to look for it. Whether she finds it, or not, the loss will help to excuse her absence from the house, if Sir Percival returns before the letter from Mr. Gilmore’s partner is placed in my hands.

One o’clock has just struck. I am considering whether I had better wait here for the arrival of the messenger from London, or slip away quietly, and watch for him outside the lodge gate.

My suspicion of everybody and everything in this house inclines me to think that the second plan may be the best. The Count is safe in the breakfast-room. I heard him, through the door, as I ran up-stairs, ten minutes since, exercising his canary-birds at their tricks:—“Come out on my little finger, my pret-pret-pretties! Come out, and hop upstairs! One, two, three—and up! Three, two, one—and down! One, two, three—twit-twit-twit-tweet!” The birds burst into their usual ecstasy of singing, and the Count chirruped and whistled at them in return, as if he was a bird himself. My room door is open, and I can hear the shrill singing and whistling at this moment. If I am really to slip out, without being observed—now is my time.

Four o’clock
. I come back to this journal, with sensations filling my mind which it would be useless for any woman to attempt to describe. The three hours that have passed since I made my last entry, have turned the whole march of events at Blackwater Park in a new direction. Whether for good or for evil, I cannot and dare not decide.

Let me get back first to the place at which I left off—or I shall lose myself in the confusion of my own thoughts.

I went out, as I had proposed, to meet the messenger with my letter from London, at the lodge gate. On the stairs
I saw no one. In the hall I heard the Count still exercising his birds. But on crossing the quadrangle outside, I passed Madame Fosco, walking by herself in her favourite circle, round and round the great fish-pond. I at once slackened my pace, so as to avoid all appearance of being in a hurry; and even went the length, for caution’s sake, of inquiring if she thought of going out before lunch. She smiled at me in the friendliest manner—said she preferred remaining near the house—nodded pleasantly—and reentered the hall. I looked back, and saw that she had closed the door before I had opened the wicket by the side of the carriage gates.

In less than a quarter of an hour, I reached the lodge.

The lane outside took a sudden turn to the left, ran on straight for a hundred yards or so, and then took another sharp turn to the right to join the high-road. Between these two turns, hidden from the lodge on one side and from the way to the station on the other, I waited, walking backwards and forwards. High hedges were on either side of me; and, for twenty minutes by my watch, I neither saw nor heard anything. At the end of that time, the sound of a carriage caught my ear; and I was met, as I advanced towards the second turning, by a fly from the railway. I made a sign to the driver to stop. As he obeyed me, a respectable-looking man put his head out of the window to see what was the matter.

“I beg your pardon,” I said; “but am I right in supposing that you are going to Blackwater Park?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“With a letter for any one?”

“With a letter for Miss Halcombe, ma’am.”

“You may give me the letter. I am Miss Halcombe.”

The man touched his hat, got out of the fly immediately, and gave me the letter.

I opened it at once; and read these lines. I copy them
here (without the address to me, or the writer’s signature); thinking it best to destroy the original for caution’s sake.

“Dear Madam. Your letter, received this morning, has caused me very great anxiety. I will reply to it as briefly and plainly as possible
.

“My careful consideration of the statement made by yourself, and my knowledge of Lady Glyde’s position, as defined in the settlement, lead me, I regret to say, to the conclusion that a loan of the trust money to Sir Percival (or, in other words, a loan of some portion of the twenty thousand pounds of Lady Glyde’s fortune), is in contemplation, and that she is made a party to the deed, in order to secure her approval of a flagrant breach of trust, and to have her signature produced against her, if she should complain hereafter. It is impossible, on any other supposition, to account, situated as she is, for her execution to a deed of any kind being wanted at all
.

“In the event of Lady Glyde’s signing such a document as I am compelled to suppose the deed in question to be, her trustees would be at liberty to advance money to Sir Percival out of her twenty thousand pounds. If the amount so lent should not be paid back, and if Lady Glyde should have children, their fortune would then be diminished by the sum, large or small, so advanced. In plainer terms still, the transaction, for anything Lady Glyde knows to the contrary, may be a fraud upon her unborn children
.

“Under these serious circumstances, I would recommend Lady Glyde to assign as a reason for withholding her signature, that she wishes the deed
to be first submitted to myself, as her family solicitor (in the absence of my partner, Mr. Gilmore). No reasonable objection can be made to taking this course—for, if the transaction is an honourable one, there will necessarily be no difficulty in my giving my approval
.

“Sincerely assuring you of my readiness to afford any additional help or advice that may be wanted, I beg to remain, Madam, your faithful servant
,

“——”

I read this kind and sensible letter very thankfully. It supplied Laura with a reason for objecting to the signature which was unanswerable, and which we could both of us understand. The messenger waited near me while I was reading, to receive his directions when I had done.