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

The morning was windy and cloudy, and the rapid alternations of shadow and sunlight over the waste of the lake made the view look doubly wild, weird, and gloomy.

“Some people call that picturesque,” said Sir Percival, pointing over the wide prospect with his half-finished walking-stick. “I call it a blot on a gentleman’s property. In my great-grandfather’s time the lake flowed to this place. Look at it now! It is not four feet deep anywhere, and it is all puddles and pools. I wish I could afford to drain it, and plant it all over. My bailiff (a superstitious idiot) says he is quite sure the lake has a curse on it, like the Dead Sea. What do you think, Fosco? It looks just the place for a murder, doesn’t it?”

“My good Percival,” remonstrated the Count. “What is your solid English sense thinking of? The water is too shallow to hide the body, and there is sand everywhere to print off the murderer’s footsteps. It is, upon the whole, the very worst place for a murder that I ever set my eyes on.”

“Humbug!” said Sir Percival, cutting away fiercely at his stick. “You know what I mean. The dreary scenery, the lonely situation. If you choose to understand me, you can⁠—if you don’t choose, I am not going to trouble myself to explain my meaning.”

“And why not,” asked the Count, “when your meaning can be explained by anybody in two words? If a fool was going to commit a murder, your lake is the first place he would choose for it. If a wise man was going to commit a murder, your lake is the last place he would choose for it. Is that your meaning? If it is, there is your explanation for you ready made. Take it, Percival, with your good Fosco’s blessing.”

Laura looked at the Count with her dislike for him appearing a little too plainly in her face. He was so busy with his mice that he did not notice her.

“I am sorry to hear the lake-view connected with anything so horrible as the idea of murder,” she said. “And if Count Fosco must divide murderers into classes, I think he has been very unfortunate in his choice of expressions. To describe them as fools only seems like treating them with an indulgence to which they have no claim. And to describe them as wise men sounds to me like a downright contradiction in terms. I have always heard that truly wise men are truly good men, and have a horror of crime.”

“My dear lady,” said the Count, “those are admirable sentiments, and I have seen them stated at the tops of copybooks.” He lifted one of the white mice in the palm of his hand, and spoke to it in his whimsical way. “My pretty little smooth white rascal,” he said, “here is a moral lesson for you. A truly wise mouse is a truly good mouse. Mention that, if you please, to your companions, and never gnaw at the bars of your cage again as long as you live.”

“It is easy to turn everything into ridicule,” said Laura resolutely; “but you will not find it quite so easy, Count Fosco, to give me an instance of a wise man who has been a great criminal.”

The Count shrugged his huge shoulders, and smiled on Laura in the friendliest manner.

“Most true!” he said. “The fool’s crime is the crime that is found out, and the wise man’s crime is the crime that is not found out. If I could give you an instance, it would not be the instance of a wise man. Dear Lady Glyde, your sound English common sense has been too much for me. It is checkmate for me this time, Miss Halcombe⁠—ha?”

“Stand to your guns, Laura,” sneered Sir Percival, who had been listening in his place at the door. “Tell him next, that crimes cause their own detection. There’s another bit of copybook morality for you, Fosco. Crimes cause their own detection. What infernal humbug!”

“I believe it to be true,” said Laura quietly.

Sir Percival burst out laughing, so violently, so outrageously, that he quite startled us all⁠—the Count more than any of us.

“I believe it too,” I said, coming to Laura’s rescue.

Sir Percival, who had been unaccountably amused at his wife’s remark, was just as unaccountably irritated by mine. He struck the new stick savagely on the sand, and walked away from us.

“Poor dear Percival!” cried Count Fosco, looking after him gaily, “he is the victim of English spleen. But, my dear Miss Halcombe, my dear Lady Glyde, do you really believe that crimes cause their own detection? And you, my angel,” he continued, turning to his wife, who had not uttered a word yet, “do you think so too?”

“I wait to be instructed,” replied the Countess, in tones of freezing reproof, intended for Laura and me, “before I venture on giving my opinion in the presence of well-informed men.”

“Do you, indeed?” I said. “I remember the time, Countess, when you advocated the rights of women, and freedom of female opinion was one of them.”

“What is your view of the subject, Count?” asked Madame Fosco, calmly proceeding with her cigarettes, and not taking the least notice of me.

The Count stroked one of his white mice reflectively with his chubby little finger before he answered.

“It is truly wonderful,” he said, “how easily Society can console itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of claptrap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is miserably ineffective⁠—and yet only invent a moral epigram, saying that it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from that moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And murder will out (another moral epigram), will it? Ask coroners who sit at inquests in large towns if that is true, Lady Glyde. Ask secretaries of life-assurance companies if that is true,