The Greatest Mysteries of Wilkie Collins (Illustrated Edition). Уилки Коллинз
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o’clock on the afternoon of yesterday. I accordingly arranged that Laura should just show herself at the luncheon-table to-day, and should then slip out at the first opportunity, leaving me behind to preserve appearances, and to follow her as soon as I could safely do so. This mode of proceeding, if no obstacles occurred to thwart us, would enable her to be at the boathouse before half-past two, and (when I left the table, in my turn) would take me to a safe position in the plantation before three.
The change in the weather, which last night’s wind warned us to expect, came with the morning. It was raining heavily when I got up, and it continued to rain until twelve o’clock — when the clouds dispersed, the blue sky appeared, and the sun shone again with the bright promise of a fine afternoon.
My anxiety to know how Sir Percival and the Count would occupy the early part of the day was by no means set at rest, so far as Sir Percival was concerned, by his leaving us immediately after breakfast, and going out by himself, in spite of the rain. He neither told us where he was going nor when we might expect him back. We saw him pass the breakfast-room window hastily, with his high boots and his waterproof coat on — and that was all.
The Count passed the morning quietly indoors, some part of it in the library, some part in the drawing-room, playing odds and ends of music on the piano, and humming to himself. Judging by appearances, the sentimental side of his character was persistently inclined to betray itself still. He was silent and sensitive, and ready to sigh and languish ponderously (as only fat men CAN sigh and languish) on the smallest provocation.
Luncheon-time came and Sir Percival did not return. The Count took his friend’s place at the table, plaintively devoured the greater part of a fruit tart, submerged under a whole jugful of cream, and explained the full merit of the achievement to us as soon as he had done. “A taste for sweets,” he said in his softest tones and his tenderest manner, “is the innocent taste of women and children. I love to share it with them — it is another bond, dear ladies, between you and me.”
Laura left the table in ten minutes’ time. I was sorely tempted to accompany her. But if we had both gone out together we must have excited suspicion, and worse still, if we allowed Anne Catherick to see Laura, accompanied by a second person who was a stranger to her, we should in all probability forfeit her confidence from that moment, never to regain it again.
I waited, therefore, as patiently as I could, until the servant came in to clear the table. When I quitted the room, there were no signs, in the house or out of it, of Sir Percival’s return. I left the Count with a piece of sugar between his lips, and the vicious cockatoo scrambling up his waistcoat to get at it, while Madame Fosco, sitting opposite to her husband, watched the proceedings of his bird and himself as attentively as if she had never seen anything of the sort before in her life. On my way to the plantation I kept carefully beyond the range of view from the luncheon-room window. Nobody saw me and nobody followed me. It was then a quarter to three o’clock by my watch.
Once among the trees I walked rapidly, until I had advanced more than halfway through the plantation. At that point I slackened my pace and proceeded cautiously, but I saw no one, and heard no voices. By little and little I came within view of the back of the boathouse — stopped and listened — then went on, till I was close behind it, and must have heard any persons who were talking inside. Still the silence was unbroken — still far and near no sign of a living creature appeared anywhere.
After skirting round by the back of the building, first on one side and then on the other, and making no discoveries, I ventured in front of it, and fairly looked in. The place was empty.
I called, “Laura!” — at first softly, then louder and louder. No one answered and no one appeared. For all that I could see and hear, the only human creature in the neighbourhood of the lake and the plantation was myself.
My heart began to beat violently, but I kept my resolution, and searched, first the boathouse and then the ground in front of it, for any signs which might show me whether Laura had really reached the place or not. No mark of her presence appeared inside the building, but I found traces of her outside it, in footsteps on the sand.
I detected the footsteps of two persons — large footsteps like a man’s, and small footsteps, which, by putting my own feet into them and testing their size in that manner, I felt certain were Laura’s. The ground was confusedly marked in this way just before the boathouse. Close against one side of it, under shelter of the projecting roof, I discovered a little hole in the sand — a hole artificially made, beyond a doubt. I just noticed it, and then turned away immediately to trace the footsteps as far as I could, and to follow the direction in which they might lead me.
They led me, starting from the left-hand side of the boathouse, along the edge of the trees, a distance, I should think, of between two and three hundred yards, and then the sandy ground showed no further trace of them. Feeling that the persons whose course I was tracking must necessarily have entered the plantation at this point, I entered it too. At first I could find no path, but I discovered one afterwards, just faintly traced among the trees, and followed it. It took me, for some distance, in the direction of the village, until I stopped at a point where another foot-track crossed it. The brambles grew thickly on either side of this second path. I stood looking down it, uncertain which way to take next, and while I looked I saw on one thorny branch some fragments of fringe from a woman’s shawl. A closer examination of the fringe satisfied me that it had been torn from a shawl of Laura’s, and I instantly followed the second path. It brought me out at last, to my great relief, at the back of the house. I say to my great relief, because I inferred that Laura must, for some unknown reason, have returned before me by this roundabout way. I went in by the courtyard and the offices. The first person whom I met in crossing the servants’ hall was Mrs. Michelson, the housekeeper.
“Do you know,” I asked, “whether Lady Glyde has come in from her walk or not?”
“My lady came in a little while ago with Sir Percival,” answered the housekeeper. “I am afraid, Miss Halcombe, something very distressing has happened.”
My heart sank within me. “You don’t mean an accident?” I said faintly.
“No, no — thank God, no accident. But my lady ran upstairs to her own room in tears, and Sir Percival has ordered me to give Fanny warning to leave in an hour’s time.”
Fanny was Laura’s maid — a good affectionate girl who had been with her for years — the only person in the house whose fidelity and devotion we could both depend upon.
“Where is Fanny?” I inquired.
“In my room, Miss Halcombe. The young woman is quite overcome, and I told her to sit down and try to recover herself.”
I went to Mrs. Michelson’s room, and found Fanny in a corner, with her box by her side, crying bitterly.
She could give me no explanation whatever of her sudden dismissal. Sir Percival had ordered that she should have a month’s wages, in place of a month’s warning, and go. No reason had been assigned — no objection had been made to her conduct. She had been forbidden to appeal to her mistress, forbidden even to see her for a moment to say goodbye. She was to go without explanations or farewells, and to go at once.
After soothing the poor girl by a few friendly words, I asked where she proposed to sleep that night. She replied that she thought of going to the little inn in the village, the landlady of which was a respectable woman, known to the servants at Blackwater Park. The next morning, by leaving early, she might get back to her friends in Cumberland without stopping in London, where she was a total stranger.
I felt directly that Fanny’s departure offered us a safe means of communication with London and with Limmeridge House, of which it might be very important to avail ourselves. Accordingly, I told her that she might expect to hear from her mistress or from me in the course of the evening, and that she might depend on our both doing all that lay in our power to help her, under the trial of leaving us for the present. Those words said, I shook hands with her and went upstairs.
The door which led to Laura’s room was the door of an antechamber opening on to the passage. When I tried it, it was bolted on the inside.