‘I should wish to leave at your earliest convenience, Sir Percival-'
‘My convenience has nothing to do with it. I shall be out of the house for good and all tomorrow morning, and I can settle your account tonight.
If you want to study anybody's convenience, it had better be Miss Halcombe's.
Mrs Rubelle's time is up today, and she has reasons for wishing to be in London tonight. If you go at once, Miss Halcombe won't have a soul left here to look after her.'
I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I was quite incapable of deserting Miss Halcombe in such an emergency as had now befallen Lady Glyde and herself. After first distinctly ascertaining from Sir Percival that Mrs Rubelle was certain to leave at once if I took her place, and after also obtaining permission to arrange for Mr Dawson's resuming his attendance on his patient, I willingly consented to remain at Blackwater Park until Miss Halcombe no longer required my services. It was settled that I should give Sir Percival's solicitor a week's notice before I left, and that he was to undertake the necessary arrangements for appointing my successor.
The matter was discussed in very few words. At its conclusion Sir Percival abruptly turned on his heel, and left me free to join Mrs Rubelle. That singular foreign person had been sitting composedly on the doorstep all this time, waiting till I could follow her to Miss Halcombe's room.
I had hardly walked half-way towards the house when Sir Percival, who had withdrawn in the opposite direction, suddenly stopped and called me back.
‘Why are you leaving my service?' he asked.
The question was so extraordinary, after what had just passed between us, that I hardly knew what to say in answer to it.
‘Mind! I don't know why you are going,' he went on. ‘You must give a reason for leaving me, I suppose, when you get another situation.
What reason? The breaking up of the family? Is that it?'
‘There can be no positive objection, Sir Percival, to that reason --'
‘Very well! That's all I want to know. If people apply for your character, that's your reason, stated by yourself. You go in consequence of the breaking up of the family.'
He turned away again before I could say another word, and walked out rapidly into the grounds. His manner was as strange as his language. I acknowledge he alarmed me.
Even the patience of Mrs Rubelle was getting exhausted, when I joined her at the house door.
‘At last!' she said, with a shrug of her lean foreign shoulders. She led the way into the inhabited side of the house, ascended the stairs, and opened with her key the door at the end of the passage, which communicated with the old Elizabethan rooms -- a door never previously used, in my time, at Blackwater Park. The rooms themselves I knew well, having entered them myself on various occasions from the other side of the house. Mrs Rubelle stopped at the third door along the old gallery, handed me the key of it, with the key of the door of communication, and told me I should find Miss Halcombe in that room. Before I went in I thought it desirable to make her understand that her attendance had ceased. Accordingly, I told her in plain words that the charge of the sick lady henceforth devolved entirely on myself.
‘I am glad to hear it, ma'am,' said Mrs Rubelle. ‘I want to go very much.'
‘Do you leave today?' I asked, to make sure of her.
‘Now that you have taken charge, ma'am, I leave in half an hour's time.
Sir Percival has kindly placed at my disposition the gardener, and the chaise, whenever I want them. I shall want them in half an hour's time to go to the station. I am packed up in anticipation already. I wish you good-day ma'am.'
She dropped a brisk curtsey, and walked hack along the gallery, humming a little tune, and keeping time to it cheerfully with the nosegay in her hand. I am sincerely thankful to say that was the last I saw of Mrs Rubelle.
When I went into the room Miss Halcombe was asleep. I looked at her anxiously. as she lay in the dismal, high, old-fashioned bed. She was certainly not in any respect altered for the worse since I had seen her last. She had not been neglected, I am bound to admit, in any way that I could perceive.
The room was dreary, and dusty, and dark, but the window (looking on a solitary court-yard at the back of the house) was opened to let in the fresh air, and all that could be done to make the place comfortable had been done. The whole cruelty of Sir Percival's deception had fallen on poor Lady Glyde. The only ill-usage which either he or Mrs Rubelle had inflicted on Miss Halcombe consisted, as far as I could see, in the first offence of hiding her away.
I stole back, leaving the sick lady still peacefully asleep. to give the gardener instructions about bringing the doctor. I begged the man, after he had taken Mrs Rubelle to the station, to drive round by Mr Dawson's, and leave a message in my name, asking him to call and see me. I knew he would come on my account. and I knew he would remain when he found Count Fosco had left the house.
In due course of time the gardener returned, and said that he had driven round by Mr Dawson's residence, after leaving Mrs Rubelle at the station.
The doctor sent me word that he was poorly in health himself, but that he would call, if possible, the next morning.
Having delivered his message the gardener was about to withdraw, but I stopped him to request that he would come back before dark, and sit up that night, in one of the empty bedrooms, so as to be within call in case I wanted him. He understood readily enough my unwillingness to be left alone all night in the most desolate part of that desolate house, and we arranged that he should come in between eight and nine.
He came punctually, and I found cause to be thankful that I had adopted the precaution of calling him in. Before midnight Sir Percival's strange temper broke out in the most violent and most alarming manner, and if the gardener had not been on the spot to pacify him on the instant, I am afraid to think what might have happened.