The circumstances were now exactly what they were required to be. Lady Glyde was confined to her room by nervous illness, and the lumpish housemaid (I forget her name) was shut up there at night in attendance on her mistress.
Marian, though fast recovering, still kept her bed, with Mrs Rubelle for nurse. No other living creatures but my wife, myself, and Percival were in the house. With all the chances thus in our favour I confronted the next emergency, and played the second move in the game.
The object of the second move was to induce Lady Glyde to leave Blackwater unaccompanied by her sister. Unless we could persuade her that Marian had gone on to Cumberland first, there was no chance of removing her, of her own free will, from the house. To produce this necessary operation in her mind, we concealed our interesting invalid in one of the uninhabited bedrooms at Blackwater. At the dead of night Madame Fosco, Madame Rubelle, and myself (Percival not being cool enough to be trusted) accomplished the concealment.
The scene was picturesque, mysterious, dramatic in the highest degree.
By my directions the bed had been made, in the morning, on a strong movable framework of wood. We had only to lift the framework gently at the head and foot, and to transport our patient where we pleased, without disturbing herself or her bed. No chemical assistance was needed or used in this case.
Our interesting Marian lay in the deep repose of convalescence. We placed the candles and opened the doors beforehand. I, in right of my great personal strength, took the head of the framework -- my wife and Madame Rubelle took the foot. I bore my share of that inestimably precious burden with a manly tenderness, with a fatherly care. Where is the modern Rembrandt who could depict our midnight procession? Alas for the Arts! alas for this most pictorial of subjects! The modern Rembrandt is nowhere to be found.
The next morning my wife and I started for London, leaving Marian secluded, in the uninhabited middle of the house, under care of Madame Rubelle, who kindly consented to imprison herself with her patient for two or three days. Before taking our departure I gave Percival Mr Fairlie's letter of invitation to his niece (instructing her to sleep on the journey to Cumberland at her aunt's house), with directions to show it to Lady Glyde on hearing from me. I also obtained from him the address of the Asylum in which Anne Catherick had been confined, and a letter to the proprietor, announcing to that gentleman the return of his runaway patient to medical care.
I had arranged, at my last visit to the metropolis, to have our modest domestic establishment ready to receive us when we arrived in London by the early train. In consequence of this wise precaution, we were enabled that same day to play the third move in the game -- the getting possession of Anne Catherick.
Dates are of importance here. I combine in myself the opposite characteristics of a Man of Sentiment and a Man of Business. I have all the dates at my fingers' ends.
On Wednesday, the 24th of July 1850, I sent my wife in a cab to clear Mrs Clements out of the way, in the first place. A supposed message from Lady Glyde in London was sufficient to obtain this result. Mrs Clements was taken away in the cab, and was left in the cab, while my wife (on pretence of purchasing something at a shop) gave her the slip, and returned to receive her expected visitor at our house in St John's Wood. It is hardly necessary to add that the visitor had been described to the servants as ‘Lady Glyde.'
In the meanwhile I had followed in another cab, with a note for Anne Catherick, merely mentioning that Lady Glyde intended to keep Mrs Clements to spend the day with her, and that she was to join them under care of the good gentleman waiting outside, who had already saved her from discovery in Hampshire by Sir Percival. The ‘good gentleman' sent in this note by a street boy, and paused for results a door or two farther on. At the moment when Anne appeared at the house door and closed it, this excellent man had the cab door open ready for her, absorbed her into the vehicle, and drove off.
(Pass me, here, one exclamation in parenthesis. How interesting this is!)
On the way to Forest Road my companion showed no fear. I can be paternal -- no man more so -- when I please, and I was intensely paternal on this occasion. What titles I had to her confidence! I had compounded the medicine which had done her good -- I had warned her of her danger from Sir Percival.
Perhaps l trusted too implicitly to these titles -- perhaps I underrated the keenness of the lower instincts in persons of weak intellect -- it is certain that I neglected to prepare her sufficiently for a disappointment on entering my house. When I took her into the drawing-room -- when she saw no one present but Madame Fosco, who was a stranger to her -- she exhibited the most violent agitation; if she had scented danger in the air, as a dog scents the presence of some creature unseen, her alarm could not have displayed itself more suddenly and more causelessly. I interposed in vain.
The fear from which she was suffering I might have soothed, but the serious heart-disease, under which she laboured, was beyond the reach of all moral palliatives. To my unspeakable horror she was seized with convulsions -- a shock to the system, in her condition, which might have laid her dead at any moment at our feet.
The nearest doctor was sent for, and was told that ‘Lady Glyde' required his immediate services. To my infinite relief, he was a capable man. I represented my visitor to him as a person of weak intellect, and subject to delusions, and I arranged that no nurse but my wife should watch in the sick-room. The unhappy woman was too ill, however, to cause any anxiety about what she might say. The one dread which now oppressed me was the dread that the false Lady Glyde might die before the true Lady Glyde arrived in London.
