第87章 Chapter 13 (7)

How much I seem to have written about Count Fosco! And what does it all amount to? -- as poor, dear Mr Gilmore would ask, in his impenetrable business-like way. I can only repeat that I do assuredly feel, even on this short acquaintance, a strange, half-willing, half-unwilling liking for the Count. He seems to have established over me the same sort of ascendency which he has evidently gained over Sir Percival. Free, and even rude, as he may occasionally be in his manner towards his fat friend, Sir Percival is nevertheless afraid, as I can plainly see, of giving any serious offence to the Count. I wonder whether I am afraid too? I certainly never saw a man, in all my experience, whom l should be so sorry to have for an enemy.

Is this because I like him, or because I am afraid of him? Chi sa ?

-- as Count Fosco might say in his own language. Who knows?

June 16th. -- Something to chronicle today besides my own ideas and impressions. A visitor has arrived -- quite unknown to Laura and to me, and apparently quite unexpected by Sir Percival.

We were all at lunch, in the room with the new French windows that open into the verandah, and the Count (who devours pastry as I have never yet seen it devoured by any human beings but girls at boarding-schools) had just amused us by asking gravely for his fourth tart -- when the servant entered to announce the visitor.

‘Mr Merriman has just come, Sir Percival, and wishes to see you immediately.'

Sir Percival started, and looked at the man with an expression of angry alarm.

‘Mr Merriman!' he repeated, as if he thought his own ears must have deceived him.

‘Yes, Sir Percival -- Mr Merriman, from London.'

‘Where is he?'

‘In the library, Sir Percival.'

He left the table the instant the last answer was given, and hurried out of the room without saying a word to any of us.

‘Who is Mr Merriman?' asked Laura, appealing to me.

‘I have not the least idea,' was all I could say in reply.

The Count had finished his fourth tart, and had gone to a side-table to look after his vicious cockatoo. He turned round to us with the bird perched on his shoulder.

‘Mr Merriman is Sir Percival's solicitor,' he said quietly.

Sir Percival's solicitor. It was a perfectly straightforward answer to Laura's question, and vet, under the circumstances, it was not satisfactory.

If Mr Merriman had been specially sent fur by his client, there would have been nothing very wonderful in his leaving town to obey the summons. But when a lawyer travels from London to Hampshire without being sent for, and when his arrival at a gentleman's house seriously startles the gentleman himself, it may be safely taken for granted that the legal visitor is the bearer of some very important and very unexpected news -- news which may be either very good or very bad, but which cannot, in either case, be of the common everyday kind.

Laura and I sat silent at the table for a quarter of an hour or more, wondering uneasily what had happened, and waiting for the chance of Sir Percival's speedy return. There were no signs of his return, and we rose to leave the room.

The Count, attentive as usual, advanced from the corner in which he had been feeding his cockatoo, with the bird still perched on his shoulder, and opened the door for us. Laura and Madame Fosco went out first. Just as I was on the point of following them he made a sign with his hand, and spoke to me, before I passed him, in the oddest manner.

‘Yes,' he said, quietly answering the unexpressed idea at that moment in my mind, as if I had plainly confided it to him in so many words --

‘yes, Miss Halcombe, something has happened.'

I was on the point of answering, ‘I never said so,' but the vicious cockatoo ruffled his clipped wings and gave a screech that set all my nerves on edge in an instant, and made me only too glad to get out of the room.

I joined Laura at the foot of the stairs. The thought in her mind was the same as the thought in mine, which Count Fosco had surprised, and when she spoke her words were almost the echo of his. She, too, said to me secretly that she was afraid something had happened.