The Woman in White (89 page)

I began to understand him—I saw the end towards which his
extraordinary disclosure was now tending. He waited a moment,
watching me earnestly—watching till he had evidently guessed what
was passing in my mind before he resumed.

"You have drawn your own conclusion already," he said. "I see it
in your face. Tell me nothing—keep me out of the secret of your
thoughts. Let me make my one last sacrifice of myself, for your
sake, and then have done with this subject, never to return to it
again."

He signed to me not to answer him—rose—removed his coat—and
rolled up the shirt-sleeve on his left arm.

"I promised you that this confidence should be complete," he
whispered, speaking close at my ear, with his eyes looking
watchfully at the door. "Whatever comes of it you shall not
reproach me with having hidden anything from you which it was
necessary to your interests to know. I have said that the
Brotherhood identifies its members by a mark that lasts for life.
See the place, and the mark on it for yourself."

He raised his bare arm, and showed me, high on the upper part of
it and in the inner side, a brand deeply burnt in the flesh and
stained of a bright blood-red colour. I abstain from describing
the device which the brand represented. It will be sufficient to
say that it was circular in form, and so small that it would have
been completely covered by a shilling coin.

"A man who has this mark, branded in this place," he said,
covering his arm again, "is a member of the Brotherhood. A man
who has been false to the Brotherhood is discovered sooner or
later by the chiefs who know him—presidents or secretaries, as
the case may be. And a man discovered by the chiefs is dead. NO
HUMAN LAWS CAN PROTECT HIM. Remember what you have seen and
heard—draw what conclusions YOU like—act as you please. But, in
the name of God, whatever you discover, whatever you do, tell me
nothing! Let me remain free from a responsibility which it
horrifies me to think of—which I know, in my conscience, is not
my responsibility now. For the last time I say it—on my honour
as a gentleman, on my oath as a Christian, if the man you pointed
out at the Opera knows ME, he is so altered, or so disguised, that
I do not know him. I am ignorant of his proceedings or his
purposes in England. I never saw him, I never heard the name he
goes by, to my knowledge, before to-night. I say no more. Leave
me a little, Walter. I am overpowered by what has happened—I am
shaken by what I have said. Let me try to be like myself again
when we meet next.

He dropped into a chair, and turning away from me, hid his face in
his hands. I gently opened the door so as not to disturb him, and
spoke my few parting words in low tones, which he might hear or
not, as he pleased.

"I will keep the memory of to-night in my heart of hearts," I
said. "You shall never repent the trust you have reposed in me.
May I come to you to-morrow? May I come as early as nine o'clock?"

"Yes, Walter," he replied, looking up at me kindly, and speaking
in English once more, as if his one anxiety now was to get back to
our former relations towards each other. "Come to my little bit
of breakfast before I go my ways among the pupils that I teach."

"Good-night, Pesca."

"Good-night, my friend."

MY first conviction as soon as I found myself outside the house,
was that no alternative was left me but to act at once on the
information I had received—to make sure of the Count that night,
or to risk the loss, if I only delayed till the morning, of
Laura's last chance. I looked at my watch—it was ten o'clock.

Not the shadow of a doubt crossed my mind of the purpose for which
the Count had left the theatre. His escape from us, that evening,
was beyond all question the preliminary only to his escape from
London. The mark of the Brotherhood was on his arm—I felt as
certain of it as if he had shown me the brand; and the betrayal of
the Brotherhood was on his conscience—I had seen it in his
recognition of Pesca.

It was easy to understand why that recognition had not been
mutual. A man of the Count's character would never risk the
terrible consequences of turning spy without looking to his
personal security quite as carefully as he looked to his golden
reward. The shaven face, which I had pointed out at the Opera,
might have been covered by a beard in Pesca's time—his dark brown
hair might be a wig—his name was evidently a false one. The
accident of time might have helped him as well—his immense
corpulence might have come with his later years. There was every
reason why Pesca should not have known him again—every reason
also why he should have known Pesca, whose singular personal
appearance made a marked man of him, go where he might.

I have said that I felt certain of the purpose in the Count's mind
when he escaped us at the theatre. How could I doubt it, when I
saw, with my own eyes, that he believed himself, in spite of the
change in his appearance, to have been recognised by Pesca, and to
be therefore in danger of his life? If I could get speech of him
that night, if I could show him that I, too knew of the mortal
peril in which he stood, what result would follow? Plainly this.
One of us must be master of the situation—one of us must
inevitably be at the mercy of the other.

I owed it to myself to consider the chances against me before I
confronted them. I owed it to my wife to do all that lay in my
power to lessen the risk.

The chances against me wanted no reckoning up—they were all
merged in one. If the Count discovered, by my own avowal, that
the direct way to his safety lay through my life, he was probably
the last man in existence who would shrink from throwing me off my
guard and taking that way, when he had me alone within his reach.
The only means of defence against him on which I could at all rely
to lessen the risk, presented themselves, after a little careful
thinking, clearly enough. Before I made any personal
acknowledgment of my discovery in his presence, I must place the
discovery itself where it would be ready for instant use against
him, and safe from any attempt at suppression on his part. If I
laid the mine under his feet before I approached him, and if I
left instructions with a third person to fire it on the expiration
of a certain time, unless directions to the contrary were
previously received under my own hand, or from my own lips—in
that event the Count's security was absolutely dependent upon
mine, and I might hold the vantage ground over him securely, even
in his own house.

This idea occurred to me when I was close to the new lodgings
which we had taken on returning from the sea-side. I went in
without disturbing any one, by the help of my key. A light was in
the hall, and I stole up with it to my workroom to make my
preparations, and absolutely to commit myself to an interview with
the Count, before either Laura or Marian could have the slightest
suspicion of what I intended to do.

A letter addressed to Pesca represented the surest measure of
precaution which it was now possible for me to take. I wrote as
follows—

"The man whom I pointed out to you at the Opera is a member of the
Brotherhood, and has been false to his trust. Put both these
assertions to the test instantly. You know the name he goes by in
England. His address is No. 5 Forest Road, St. John's Wood. On
the love you once bore me, use the power entrusted to you without
mercy and without delay against that man. I have risked all and
lost all—and the forfeit of my failure has been paid with my
life."

I signed and dated these lines, enclosed them in an envelope, and
sealed it up. On the outside I wrote this direction: "Keep the
enclosure unopened until nine o'clock to-morrow morning. If you
do not hear from me, or see me, before that time, break the seal
when the clock strikes, and read the contents." I added my
initials, and protected the whole by enclosing it in a second
sealed envelope, addressed to Pesca at his lodgings.

Nothing remained to be done after this but to find the means of
sending my letter to its destination immediately. I should then
have accomplished all that lay in my power. If anything happened
to me in the Count's house, I had now provided for his answering
it with his life.

That the means of preventing his escape, under any circumstances
whatever, were at Pesca's disposal, if he chose to exert them, I
did not for an instant doubt. The extraordinary anxiety which he
had expressed to remain unenlightened as to the Count's identity—
or, in other words, to be left uncertain enough about facts to
justify him to his own conscience in remaining passive—betrayed
plainly that the means of exercising the terrible justice of the
Brotherhood were ready to his hand, although, as a naturally
humane man, he had shrunk from plainly saying as much in my
presence. The deadly certainty with which the vengeance of
foreign political societies can hunt down a traitor to the cause,
hide himself where he may, had been too often exemplified, even in
my superficial experience, to allow of any doubt. Considering the
subject only as a reader of newspapers, cases recurred to my
memory, both in London and in Paris, of foreigners found stabbed
in the streets, whose assassins could never be traced—of bodies
and parts of bodies thrown into the Thames and the Seine, by hands
that could never be discovered—of deaths by secret violence which
could only be accounted for in one way. I have disguised nothing
relating to myself in these pages, and I do not disguise here that
I believed I had written Count Fosco's death-warrant, if the fatal
emergency happened which authorised Pesca to open my enclosure.

I left my room to go down to the ground floor of the house, and
speak to the landlord about finding me a messenger. He happened
to be ascending the stairs at the time, and we met on the landing.
His son, a quick lad, was the messenger he proposed to me on
hearing what I wanted. We had the boy upstairs, and I gave him
his directions. He was to take the letter in a cab, to put it
into Professor Pesca's own hands, and to bring me back a line of
acknowledgment from that gentleman—returning in the cab, and
keeping it at the door for my use. It was then nearly half-past
ten. I calculated that the boy might be back in twenty minutes,
and that I might drive to St. John's Wood, on his return, in
twenty minutes more.

When the lad had departed on his errand I returned to my own room
for a little while, to put certain papers in order, so that they
might be easily found in case of the worst. The key of the old-
fashioned bureau in which the papers were kept I sealed up, and
left it on my table, with Marian's name written on the outside of
the little packet. This done, I went down-stairs to the sitting-
room, in which I expected to find Laura and Marian awaiting my
return from the Opera. I felt my hand trembling for the first
time when I laid it on the lock of the door.

No one was in the room but Marian. She was reading, and she
looked at her watch, in surprise, when I came in.

"How early you are back!" she said. "You must have come away
before the Opera was over."

"Yes," I replied, "neither Pesca nor I waited for the end. Where
is Laura?"

"She had one of her bad headaches this evening, and I advised her
to go to bed when we had done tea."

I left the room again on the pretext of wishing to see whether
Laura was asleep. Marian's quick eyes were beginning to look
inquiringly at my face—Marian's quick instinct was beginning to
discover that I had something weighing on my mind.

When I entered the bedchamber, and softly approached the bedside
by the dim flicker of the night-lamp, my wife was asleep.

We had not been married quite a month yet. If my heart was heavy,
if my resolution for a moment faltered again, when I looked at her
face turned faithfully to my pillow in her sleep—when I saw her
hand resting open on the coverlid, as if it was waiting
unconsciously for mine—surely there was some excuse for me? I
only allowed myself a few minutes to kneel down at the bedside,
and to look close at her—so close that her breath, as it came and
went, fluttered on my face. I only touched her hand and her cheek
with my lips at parting. She stirred in her sleep and murmured my
name, but without waking. I lingered for an instant at the door
to look at her again. "God bless and keep you, my darling!" I
whispered, and left her.

Marian was at the stairhead waiting for me. She had a folded slip
of paper in her hand.

"The landlord's son has brought this for you," she said. "He has
got a cab at the door—he says you ordered him to keep it at your
disposal."

"Quite right, Marian. I want the cab—I am going out again."

I descended the stairs as I spoke, and looked into the sitting-
room to read the slip of paper by the light on the table. It
contained these two sentences in Pesca's handwriting—

"Your letter is received. If I don't see you before the time you
mention, I will break the seal when the clock strikes."

I placed the paper in my pocket-book, and made for the door.
Marian met me on the threshold, and pushed me back into the room,
where the candle-light fell full on my face. She held me by both
hands, and her eyes fastened searchingly on mine.

"I see!" she said, in a low eager whisper. "You are trying the
last chance to-night."

"Yes, the last chance and the best," I whispered back.

"Not alone! Oh, Walter, for God's sake, not alone! Let me go with
you. Don't refuse me because I'm only a woman. I must go! I will
go! I'll wait outside in the cab!"

It was my turn now to hold HER. She tried to break away from me
and get down first to the door.

"If you want to help me," I said, "stop here and sleep in my
wife's room to-night. Only let me go away with my mind easy about
Laura, and I answer for everything else. Come, Marian, give me a
kiss, and show that you have the courage to wait till I come
back."