The Solitary House (243 page)

On turning the corner of the house, and gaining a view of the garden, I was startled by seeing a stranger walking in it. The stranger was a woman—she was lounging along the path, with her back to me, and was gathering the flowers.

As I approached, she heard me, and turned round.

My blood curdled in my veins. The strange woman in the garden was Mrs. Rubelle.

I could neither move, nor speak. She came up to me, as composedly as ever, with her flowers in her hand.

“What is the matter, ma’am?” she said, quietly.

“
You
here!” I gasped out. “Not gone to London! Not gone to Cumberland!”

Mrs. Rubelle smelt at her flowers with a smile of malicious pity.

“Certainly not,” she said. “I have never left Blackwater Park.”

I summoned breath enough and courage enough for another question.

“Where is Miss Halcombe?”

Mrs. Rubelle fairly laughed at me, this time; and answered in these words:

“Miss Halcombe, ma’am, has not left Blackwater Park, either.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE HOUSEKEEPER’S NARRATIVE CONCLUDED

M
iss Halcombe had never left Blackwater Park!

When I heard those words, all my thoughts were startled back on the instant to my parting with Lady Glyde. I can hardly say I reproached myself—but, at that moment, I think I would have given many a year’s hard savings to have known four hours earlier what I knew now.

Mrs. Rubelle waited, quietly arranging her nosegay, as if she expected me to say something.

I could say nothing. I thought of Lady Glyde’s worn-out energies and weakly health; and I trembled for the time when the shock of the discovery that I had made would fall on her. For a minute, or more, my fears for the poor lady silenced me. At the end of that time, Mrs. Rubelle looked up sideways from her flowers, and said, “Here is Sir Percival, ma’am, returned from his ride.”

I saw him as soon as she did. He came towards us, slashing viciously at the flowers with his riding-whip. When he was near enough to see my face, he stopped, struck at his boot with the whip, and burst out laughing, so harshly and so violently, that the birds flew away, startled, from the tree by which he stood.

“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 known 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, tomorrow 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 door-step, 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 the 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.