The Woman in White (60 page)

"Well, Mrs. Michelson," he said, "you have found it out at last,
have you?"

I made no reply. He turned to Mrs. Rubelle.

"When did you show yourself in the garden?"

"I showed myself about half an hour ago, sir. You said I might
take my liberty again as soon as Lady Glyde had gone away to
London."

"Quite right. I don't blame you—I only asked the question." He
waited a moment, and then addressed himself once more to me. "You
can't believe it, can you?" he said mockingly. "Here! come along
and see for yourself."

He led the way round to the front of the house. I followed him,
and Mrs. Rubelle followed me. After passing through the iron
gates he stopped, and pointed with his whip to the disused middle
wing of the building.

"There!" he said. "Look up at the first floor. You know the old
Elizabethan bedrooms? Miss Halcombe is snug and safe in one of the
best of them at this moment. Take her in, Mrs. Rubelle (you have
got your key?); take Mrs. Michelson in, and let her own eyes
satisfy her that there is no deception this time."

The tone in which he spoke to me, and the minute or two that had
passed since we left the garden, helped me to recover my spirits a
little. What I might have done at this critical moment, if all my
life had been passed in service, I cannot say. As it was,
possessing the feelings, the principles, and the bringing up of a
lady, I could not hesitate about the right course to pursue. My
duty to myself, and my duty to Lady Glyde, alike forbade me to
remain in the employment of a man who had shamefully deceived us
both by a series of atrocious falsehoods.

"I must beg permission, Sir Percival, to speak a few words to you
in private," I said. "Having done so, I shall be ready to proceed
with this person to Miss Halcombe's room."

Mrs. Rubelle, whom I had indicated by a slight turn of my head,
insolently sniffed at her nosegay and walked away, with great
deliberation, towards the house door.

"Well," said Sir Percival sharply, "what is it now?"

"I wish to mention, sir, that I am desirous of resigning the
situation I now hold at Blackwater Park." That was literally how
I put it. I was resolved that the first words spoken in his
presence should be words which expressed my intention to leave his
service.

He eyed me with one of his blackest looks, and thrust his hands
savagely into the pockets of his riding-coat.

"Why?" he said, "why, I should like to know?"

"It is not for me, Sir Percival, to express an opinion on what has
taken place in this house. I desire to give no offence. I merely
wish to say that I do not feel it consistent with my duty to Lady
Glyde and to myself to remain any longer in your service."

"Is it consistent with your duty to me to stand there, casting
suspicion on me to my face?" he broke out in his most violent
manner. "I see what you're driving at. You have taken your own
mean, underhand view of an innocent deception practised on Lady
Glyde for her own good. It was essential to her health that she
should have a change of air immediately, and you know as well as I
do she would never have gone away if she had been told Miss
Halcombe was still left here. She has been deceived in her own
interests—and I don't care who knows it. Go, if you like—there
are plenty of housekeepers as good as you to be had for the
asking. Go when you please—but take care how you spread scandals
about me and my affairs when you're out of my service. Tell the
truth, and nothing but the truth, or it will be the worse for you!
See Miss Halcombe for yourself—see if she hasn't been as well
taken care of in one part of the house as in the other. Remember
the doctor's own orders that Lady Glyde was to have a change of
air at the earliest possible opportunity. Bear all that well in
mind, and then say anything against me and my proceedings if you
dare!"

He poured out these words fiercely, all in a breath, walking
backwards and forwards, and striking about him in the air with his
whip.

Nothing that he said or did shook my opinion of the disgraceful
series of falsehoods that he had told in my presence the day
before, or of the cruel deception by which he had separated Lady
Glyde from her sister, and had sent her uselessly to London, when
she was half distracted with anxiety on Miss Halcombe's account.
I naturally kept these thoughts to myself, and said nothing more
to irritate him; but I was not the less resolved to persist in my
purpose. A soft answer turneth away wrath, and I suppressed my
own feelings accordingly when it was my turn to reply.

"While I am in your service, Sir Percival," I said, "I hope I know
my duty well enough not to inquire into your motives. When I am
out of your service, I hope I know my own place well enough not to
speak of matters which don't concern me—"

"When do you want to go?" he asked, interrupting me without
ceremony. "Don't suppose I am anxious to keep you—don't suppose
I care about your leaving the house. I am perfectly fair and open
in this matter, from first to last. When do you want to go?"

"I should wish to leave at your earliest convenience, Sir
Percival."

"My convenience has nothing to do with it. I shall be out of the
house for good and all to-morrow morning, and I can settle your
accounts to-night. If you want to study anybody's convenience, it
had better be Miss Halcombe's. Mrs. Rubelle's time is up to-day,
and she has reasons for wishing to be in London to-night. If you
go at once, Miss Halcombe won't have a soul left here to look
after her."

I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I was quite incapable
of deserting Miss Halcombe in such an emergency as had now
befallen Lady Glyde and herself. After first distinctly
ascertaining from Sir Percival that Mrs. Rubelle was certain to
leave at once if I took her place, and after also obtaining
permission to arrange for Mr. Dawson's resuming his attendance on
his patient, I willingly consented to remain at Blackwater Park
until Miss Halcombe no longer required my services. It was
settled that I should give Sir Percival's solicitor a week's
notice before I left, and that he was to undertake the necessary
arrangements for appointing my successor. The matter was
discussed in very few words. At its conclusion Sir Percival
abruptly turned on his heel, and left me free to join Mrs.
Rubelle. That singular foreign person had been sitting composedly
on the doorstep all this time, waiting till I could follow her to
Miss Halcombe's room.

I had hardly walked half-way towards the house when Sir Percival,
who had withdrawn in the opposite direction, suddenly stopped and
called me back.

"Why are you leaving my service?" he asked.

The question was so extraordinary, after what had just passed
between us, that I hardly knew what to say in answer to it.

"Mind! I don't know why you are going," he went on. "You must
give a reason for leaving me, I suppose, when you get another
situation. What reason? The breaking up of the family? Is that
it?"

"There can be no positive objection, Sir Percival, to that reason—-"

"Very well! That's all I want to know. If people apply for your
character, that's your reason, stated by yourself. You go in
consequence of the breaking up of the family."

He turned away again before I could say another word, and walked
out rapidly into the grounds. His manner was as strange as his
language. I acknowledge he alarmed me.

Even the patience of Mrs. Rubelle was getting exhausted, when I
joined her at the house door.

"At last!" she said, with a shrug of her lean foreign shoulders.
She led the way into the inhabited side of the house, ascended the
stairs, and opened with her key the door at the end of the
passage, which communicated with the old Elizabethan rooms—a door
never previously used, in my time, at Blackwater Park. The rooms
themselves I knew well, having entered them myself on various
occasions from the other side of the house. Mrs. Rubelle stopped
at the third door along the old gallery, handed me the key of it,
with the key of the door of communication, and told me I should
find Miss Halcombe in that room. Before I went in I thought it
desirable to make her understand that her attendance had ceased.
Accordingly, I told her in plain words that the charge of the sick
lady henceforth devolved entirely on myself.

"I am glad to hear it, ma'am," said Mrs. Rubelle. "I want to go
very much."

"Do you leave to-day?" I asked, to make sure of her.

"Now that you have taken charge, ma'am, I leave in half an hour's
time. Sir Percival has kindly placed at my disposition the
gardener, and the chaise, whenever I want them. I shall want them
in half an hour's time to go to the station. I am packed up in
anticipation already. I wish you good-day, ma'am."

She dropped a brisk curtsey, and walked back along the gallery,
humming a little tune, and keeping time to it cheerfully with the
nosegay in her hand. I am sincerely thankful to say that was the
last I saw of Mrs. Rubelle.

When I went into the room Miss Halcombe was asleep. I looked at
her anxiously, as she lay in the dismal, high, old-fashioned bed.
She was certainly not in any respect altered for the worse since I
had seen her last. She had not been neglected, I am bound to
admit, in any way that I could perceive. The room was dreary, and
dusty, and dark, but the window (looking on a solitary court-yard
at the back of the house) was opened to let in the fresh air, and
all that could be done to make the place comfortable had been
done. The whole cruelty of Sir Percival's deception had fallen on
poor Lady Glyde. The only ill-usage which either he or Mrs.
Rubelle had inflicted on Miss Halcombe consisted, so far as I
could see, in the first offence of hiding her away.

I stole back, leaving the sick lady still peacefully asleep, to
give the gardener instructions about bringing the doctor. I
begged the man, after he had taken Mrs. Rubelle to the station, to
drive round by Mr. Dawson's, and leave a message in my name,
asking him to call and see me. I knew he would come on my
account, and I knew he would remain when he found Count Fosco had
left the house.

In due course of time the gardener returned, and said that he had
driven round by Mr. Dawson's residence, after leaving Mrs. Rubelle
at the station. The doctor sent me word that he was poorly in
health himself, but that he would call, if possible, the next
morning.

Having delivered his message the gardener was about to withdraw,
but I stopped him to request that he would come back before dark,
and sit up that night, in one of the empty bedrooms, so as to be
within call in case I wanted him. He understood readily enough my
unwillingness to be left alone all night in the most desolate part
of that desolate house, and we arranged that he should come in
between eight and nine.

He came punctually, and I found cause to be thankful that I had
adopted the precaution of calling him in. Before midnight Sir
Percival's strange temper broke out in the most violent and most
alarming manner, and if the gardener had not been on the spot to
pacify him on the instant, I am afraid to think what might have
happened.

Almost all the afternoon and evening he had been walking about the
house and grounds in an unsettled, excitable manner, having, in
all probability, as I thought, taken an excessive quantity of wine
at his solitary dinner. However that may be, I heard his voice
calling loudly and angrily in the new wing of the house, as I was
taking a turn backwards and forwards along the gallery the last
thing at night. The gardener immediately ran down to him, and I
closed the door of communication, to keep the alarm, if possible,
from reaching Miss Halcombe's ears. It was full half an hour
before the gardener came back. He declared that his master was
quite out of his senses—not through the excitement of drink, as I
had supposed, but through a kind of panic or frenzy of mind, for
which it was impossible to account. He had found Sir Percival
walking backwards and forwards by himself in the hall, swearing,
with every appearance of the most violent passion, that he would
not stop another minute alone in such a dungeon as his own house,
and that he would take the first stage of his journey immediately
in the middle of the night. The gardener, on approaching him, had
been hunted out, with oaths and threats, to get the horse and
chaise ready instantly. In a quarter of an hour Sir Percival had
joined him in the yard, had jumped into the chaise, and, lashing
the horse into a gallop, had driven himself away, with his face as
pale as ashes in the moonlight. The gardener had heard him
shouting and cursing at the lodge-keeper to get up and open the
gate—had heard the wheels roll furiously on again in the still
night, when the gate was unlocked—and knew no more.

The next day, or a day or two after, I forget which, the chaise
was brought back from Knowlesbury, our nearest town, by the ostler
at the old inn. Sir Percival had stopped there, and had
afterwards left by the train—for what destination the man could
not tell. I never received any further information, either from
himself or from any one else, of Sir Percival's proceedings, and I
am not even aware, at this moment, whether he is in England or out
of it. He and I have not met since he drove away like an escaped
criminal from his own house, and it is my fervent hope and prayer
that we may never meet again.

My own part of this sad family story is now drawing to an end.

I have been informed that the particulars of Miss Halcombe's
waking, and of what passed between us when she found me sitting by
her bedside, are not material to the purpose which is to be
answered by the present narrative. It will be sufficient for me
to say in this place, that she was not herself conscious of the
means adopted to remove her from the inhabited to the uninhabited
part of the house. She was in a deep sleep at the time, whether
naturally or artificially produced she could not say. In my
absence at Torquay, and in the absence of all the resident
servants except Margaret Porcher (who was perpetually eating,
drinking, or sleeping, when she was not at work), the secret
transfer of Miss Halcombe from one part of the house to the other
was no doubt easily performed. Mrs. Rubelle (as I discovered for
myself, in looking about the room) had provisions, and all other
necessaries, together with the means of heating water, broth, and
so on, without kindling a fire, placed at her disposal during the
few days of her imprisonment with the sick lady. She had declined
to answer the questions which Miss Halcombe naturally put, but had
not, in other respects, treated her with unkindness or neglect.
The disgrace of lending herself to a vile deception is the only
disgrace with which I can conscientiously charge Mrs. Rubelle.