‘He will not be more than your match,' she replied decidedly, ‘because he will not be helped in resisting you by the impenetrable wickedness of the Count.'
‘What has led you to that conclusion?' I asked, in some surprise.
‘My own knowledge of Sir Percival's obstinacy and impatience of the Count's control,' she answered. ‘I believe he will insist on meeting you single-handed -- just as he insisted at first on acting for himself at Blackwater Park. The time for suspecting the Count's interference will be the time when you have Sir Percival at your mercy. His own interests will then be directly threatened, and he will act, Walter, to terrible purpose in his own defence.'
‘We may deprive him of his weapons beforehand,' I said. ‘Some of the particulars I have heard from Mrs Clements may yet be turned to account against him, and other means of strengthening the case may be at our disposal.
There are passages in Mrs Michelson's narrative which show that the Count found it necessary to place himself in communication with Mr Fairlie, and there may be circumstances which compromise him in that proceeding. While I am away, Marian, write to Mr Fairlie and say that you want an answer describing exactly what passed between the Count and himself, and informing you also of any particulars that may have come to his knowledge at the same time in connection with his niece. Tell him that the statement you request will, sooner or later, be insisted on, if he shows any reluctance to furnish you with it of his own accord.'
‘The letter shall be written, Walter. But are you really determined to go to Welmingham?'
‘Absolutely determined. I will devote the next two days to earning what we want for the week to come, and on the third day I go to Hampshire.'
When the third day came I was ready for my journey.
As it was possible that I might be absent for some little time, I arranged with Marian that we were to correspond every day -- of course addressing each other by assumed names, for caution's sake. As long as I heard from her regularly, I should assume that nothing was wrong. But if the morning came and brought me no letter, my return to London would take place, as a matter of course, by the first train. I contrived to reconcile Laura to my departure by telling her that I was going to the country to find new purchasers for her drawings and for mine, and I left her occupied and happy. Marian followed me downstairs to the street door.
‘Remember what anxious hearts you leave here,' she whispered, as we stood together in the passage. ‘Remember all the hopes that hang on your safe return. If strange things happen to you on this journey -- if you and Sir Percival meet --'
‘What makes you think we shall meet?' I asked.
‘I don't know -- I have fears and fancies that I cannot account for.
Laugh at them, Walter, if you like -- but, for God's sake, keep your temper if you come in contact with that man!'
‘Never fear, Marian! I answer for my self-control.'
With those words we parted.
I walked briskly to the station. There was a glow of hope in me. There was a growing conviction in my mind that my journey this time would not be taken in vain. It was a fine, clear, cold morning. My nerves were firmly strung, and I felt all the strength of my resolution stirring in me vigorously from head to foot.
As I crossed the railway platform, and looked right and left among the people congregated on it, to search for any faces among them that I knew, the doubt occurred to me whether it might not have been to my advantage if I had adopted a disguise before setting out for Hampshire. But there was something so repellent to me in the idea -- something so meanly like the common herd of spies and informers in the mere act of adopting a disguise -- that I dismissed the question from consideration almost as soon as it had risen in my mind. Even as a mere matter of expediency the proceeding was doubtful in the extreme. If I tried the experiment at home the landlord of the house would sooner or later discover me, and would have his suspicions aroused immediately. If I tried it away from home the same persons might see me, by the commonest accident, with the disguise and without it, and I should in that way be inviting the notice and distrust which it was my most pressing interest to avoid. In my own character I had acted thus far -- and in my own character I was resolved to continue to the end.
The train left me at Welmingham early in the afternoon.
Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine, which can rival the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity? I asked myself that question as I passed through the clean desolation, the neat ugliness, the prim torPor of the streets of Welmingham. And the tradesmen who stared after me from their lonely shops -- the trees that drooped helpless in their arid exile of unfinished crescents and squares -- the dead house-carcasses that waited in vain for the vivifying human element to animate them with the breath of life -- every creature that I saw, every object that I passed, seemed to answer with one accord : The deserts of Arabia are innocent of our civilised desolation -- the ruins of Palestine are incapable of our modern gloom!
I inquired my way to the quarter of the town in which Mrs Catherick lived, and on reaching it found myself in a square of small houses, one story high. There was a bare little plot of grass in the middle, protected by a cheap wire fence. An elderly nursemaid and two children were standing in a corner of the enclosure, looking at a lean goat tethered to the grass.