The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up. Quiet resolution is the one quality the animals, the children, and the women all fail in. If they can once shake this superior quality in their master, they get the better of him. If they can never succeed in disturbing it, he gets the better of them. I said to you, Remember that plain truth when you want your wife to help you to the money. I said, Remember it doubly and trebly in the presence of your wife’s sister, Miss Halcombe. Have you remembered it? Not once in all the implications that have twisted themselves about us in this house. Every provocation that your wife and her sister could offer to you, you instantly accepted from them. Your mad temper lost the signature to the deed, lost the ready money, set Miss Halcombe writing to the lawyer for the first time.”

“First time! Has she written again?”

“Yes, she has written again today.”

A chair fell on the pavement of the verandah⁠—fell with a crash, as if it had been kicked down.

It was well for me that the Count’s revelation roused Sir Percival’s anger as it did. On hearing that I had been once more discovered I started so that the railing against which I leaned cracked again. Had he followed me to the inn? Did he infer that I must have given my letters to Fanny when I told him I had none for the postbag? Even if it was so, how could he have examined the letters when they had gone straight from my hand to the bosom of the girl’s dress?

“Thank your lucky star,” I heard the Count say next, “that you have me in the house to undo the harm as fast as you do it. Thank your lucky star that I said No when you were mad enough to talk of turning the key today on Miss Halcombe, as you turned it in your mischievous folly on your wife. Where are your eyes? Can you look at Miss Halcombe and not see that she has the foresight and the resolution of a man? With that woman for my friend I would snap these fingers of mine at the world. With that woman for my enemy, I, with all my brains and experience⁠—I, Fosco, cunning as the devil himself, as you have told me a hundred times⁠—I walk, in your English phrase, upon eggshells! And this grand creature⁠—I drink her health in my sugar-and-water⁠—this grand creature, who stands in the strength of her love and her courage, firm as a rock, between us two and that poor, flimsy, pretty blonde wife of yours⁠—this magnificent woman, whom I admire with all my soul, though I oppose her in your interests and in mine, you drive to extremities as if she was no sharper and no bolder than the rest of her sex. Percival! Percival! you deserve to fail, and you have failed.”

There was a pause. I write the villain’s words about myself because I mean to remember them⁠—because I hope yet for the day when I may speak out once for all in his presence, and cast them back one by one in his teeth.

Sir Percival was the first to break the silence again.

“Yes, yes, bully and bluster as much as you like,” he said sulkily; “the difficulty about the money is not the only difficulty. You would be for taking strong measures with the women yourself⁠—if you knew as much as I do.”

“We will come to that second difficulty all in good time,” rejoined the Count. “You may confuse yourself, Percival, as much as you please, but you shall not confuse me. Let the question of the money be settled first. Have I convinced your obstinacy? have I shown you that your temper will not let you help yourself?⁠—Or must I go back, and (as you put it in your dear straightforward English) bully and bluster a little more?”

“Pooh! It’s easy enough to grumble at me. Say what is to be done⁠—that’s a little harder.”

“Is it? Bah! This is what is to be done: You give up all direction in the business from tonight⁠—you leave it for the future in my hands only. I am talking to a Practical British man⁠—ha? Well, Practical, will that do for you?”

“What do you propose if I leave it all to you?”

“Answer me first. Is it to be in my hands or not?”

“Say it is in your hands⁠—what then?”

“A few questions, Percival, to begin with. I must wait a little yet, to let circumstances guide me, and I must know, in every possible way, what those circumstances are likely to be. There is no time to lose. I have told you already that Miss Halcombe has written to the lawyer today for the second time.”

“How did you find it out? What did she say?”

“If I told you, Percival, we should only come back at the end to where we are now. Enough that I have found it out⁠—and the finding has caused that trouble and anxiety which made me so inaccessible to you all through today. Now, to refresh my memory about your affairs⁠—it is some time since I talked them over with you. The money has been raised, in the absence of your wife’s signature, by means of bills at three months⁠—raised at a cost that makes my poverty-stricken foreign hair stand on end to think of it! When the bills are due, is there really and truly no earthly way of paying them but by the help of your wife?”

“None.”

“What! You have no money at the bankers?”

“A few hundreds, when I want as many thousands.”

“Have you no other security to borrow upon?”

“Not a shred.”

“What have you actually got with your wife at the present moment?”

“Nothing but the interest of her twenty thousand pounds⁠—barely enough to pay our daily expenses.”

“What do you expect from your wife?”

“Three thousand a year when her uncle dies.”

“A fine fortune, Percival. What sort of a