Meanwhile, Sir Percival and the Count began talking together below, now and then dropping their voices a little lower than usual, but never sinking them to a whisper. The strangeness and peril of my situation, the dread, which I could not master, of Madame Fosco's lighted window, made it difficult, almost impossible, for me, at first, to keep my presence of mind, and to fix my attention solely on the conversation beneath. For some minutes I could only succeed in gathering the general substance of it. I understood the Count to say that the one window alight was his wife's, that the ground floor of the house was quite clear, and that they might now speak to each other without fear of accidents. Sir percival merely answered by upbraiding his friend with having unjustifiably- slighted his wishes and neglected his interests all through the day. The Count thereupon defended himself by declaring that he had been beset by certain troubles and anxieties which had absorbed all his attention, and that the only safe time to come to an explanation was a time when they could feel certain of being neither interrupted nor overheard. ‘We are at a serious crisis in our affairs, Percival,' he said, ‘and if we are to decide on the future at all, we must decide secretly tonight' That sentence of the Count's was the first which my attention was ready enough to master exactly as it was spoken. From this point, with certain breaks and interruptions, my whole interest fixed breathlessly on the conversation, and I followed it word for word.
‘Crisis?' repeated Sir Percival. ‘It's a worse crisis than you think for, I can tell you.'
‘So I should suppose, from your behaviour for the last day or two,' returned the other coolly. ‘But wait a little. Before we advance to what I do not know, let us be quite certain of what I do know. Let us first see if I am right about the time that is past, before I make any proposal to you for the time that is to come.'
‘Stop till I get the brandy and water. Have some yourself.'
‘Thank you, Percival. The cold water with pleasure, a spoon, and the basin of sugar. Eau sucrée, my friend -- nothing more.'
‘Sugar-and-water for a man of your age! -- There! mix your sickly mess.
You foreigners are all alike.'
‘Now listen, Percival. I will put our position plainly before you, as I understand it, and you shall say if I am right or wrong. You and I both came back to this house from the Continent with our affairs very seriously embarrassed --'
‘Cut it short! I wanted some thousands and you some hundreds, and without the money we were both in a fair way to go to the dogs together. There's the situation. Make what you can of it. Go on.'
‘Well, Percival, in your own solid English words, you wanted some thousands and I wanted some hundreds, and the only way of getting them was for you to raise the money for your own necessity (with a small margin beyond for my poor little hundreds) by the help of your wife. What did I tell you about your wife on our way to England? -- and what did I tell you again when we had come here, and when I had seen for myself the sort of woman Miss Halcombe was?'
‘How should I know? You talked nineteen to the dozen, I suppose, just as usual.'
‘I said this: Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is to knock her down -- a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them. The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but in the end not less certain) is never to accept a provocation at a woman's hands. It holds with animals, it holds with children, and 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 complications 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 post-bag. 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?