The Woman in White (25 page)

"Do you mean courage enough to claim your release?" I asked.

"No," she said simply. "Courage, dear, to tell the truth."

She put her arms round my neck, and rested her head quietly on my
bosom. On the opposite wall hung the miniature portrait of her
father. I bent over her, and saw that she was looking at it while
her head lay on my breast.

"I can never claim my release from my engagement," she went on.
"Whatever way it ends it must end wretchedly for me. All I can
do, Marian, is not to add the remembrance that I have broken my
promise and forgotten my father's dying words, to make that
wretchedness worse."

"What is it you propose, then?" I asked.

"To tell Sir Percival Glyde the truth with my own lips," she
answered, "and to let him release me, if he will, not because I
ask him, but because he knows all."

"What do you mean, Laura, by 'all'? Sir Percival will know enough
(he has told me so himself) if he knows that the engagement is
opposed to your own wishes."

"Can I tell him that, when the engagement was made for me by my
father, with my own consent? I should have kept my promise, not
happily, I am afraid, but still contentedly—" she stopped, turned
her face to me, and laid her cheek close against mine—"I should
have kept my engagement, Marian, if another love had not grown up
in my heart, which was not there when I first promised to be Sir
Percival's wife."

"Laura! you will never lower yourself by making a confession to
him?"

"I shall lower myself, indeed, if I gain my release by hiding from
him what he has a right to know."

"He has not the shadow of a right to know it!"

"Wrong, Marian, wrong! I ought to deceive no one—least of all the
man to whom my father gave me, and to whom I gave myself." She put
her lips to mine, and kissed me. "My own love," she said softly,
"you are so much too fond of me, and so much too proud of me, that
you forget, in my case, what you would remember in your own.
Better that Sir Percival should doubt my motives, and misjudge my
conduct if he will, than that I should be first false to him in
thought, and then mean enough to serve my own interests by hiding
the falsehood."

I held her away from me in astonishment. For the first time in
our lives we had changed places—the resolution was all on her
side, the hesitation all on mine. I looked into the pale, quiet,
resigned young face—I saw the pure, innocent heart, in the loving
eyes that looked back at me—and the poor worldly cautions and
objections that rose to my lips dwindled and died away in their
own emptiness. I hung my head in silence. In her place the
despicably small pride which makes so many women deceitful would
have been my pride, and would have made me deceitful too.

"Don't be angry with me, Marian," she said, mistaking my silence.

I only answered by drawing her close to me again. I was afraid of
crying if I spoke. My tears do not flow so easily as they ought—
they come almost like men's tears, with sobs that seem to tear me
in pieces, and that frighten every one about me.

"I have thought of this, love, for many days," she went on,
twining and twisting my hair with that childish restlessness in
her fingers, which poor Mrs. Vesey still tries so patiently and so
vainly to cure her of—"I have thought of it very seriously, and I
can be sure of my courage when my own conscience tells me I am
right. Let me speak to him to-morrow—in your presence, Marian.
I will say nothing that is wrong, nothing that you or I need be
ashamed of—but, oh, it will ease my heart so to end this
miserable concealment! Only let me know and feel that I have no
deception to answer for on my side, and then, when he has heard
what I have to say, let him act towards me as he will."

She sighed, and put her head back in its old position on my bosom.
Sad misgivings about what the end would be weighed upon my mind,
but still distrusting myself, I told her that I would do as she
wished. She thanked me, and we passed gradually into talking of
other things.

At dinner she joined us again, and was more easy and more herself
with Sir Percival than I have seen her yet. In the evening she
went to the piano, choosing new music of the dexterous, tuneless,
florid kind. The lovely old melodies of Mozart, which poor
Hartright was so fond of, she has never played since he left. The
book is no longer in the music-stand. She took the volume away
herself, so that nobody might find it out and ask her to play from
it.

I had no opportunity of discovering whether her purpose of the
morning had changed or not, until she wished Sir Percival good-
night—and then her own words informed me that it was unaltered.
She said, very quietly, that she wished to speak to him after
breakfast, and that he would find her in her sitting-room with me.
He changed colour at those words, and I felt his hand trembling a
little when it came to my turn to take it. The event of the next
morning would decide his future life, and he evidently knew it.

I went in, as usual, through the door between our two bed-rooms,
to bid Laura good-night before she went to sleep. In stooping
over her to kiss her I saw the little book of Hartright's drawings
half hidden under her pillow, just in the place where she used to
hide her favourite toys when she was a child. I could not find it
in my heart to say anything, but I pointed to the book and shook
my head. She reached both hands up to my cheeks, and drew my face
down to hers till our lips met.

"Leave it there to-night," she whispered; "to-morrow may be cruel,
and may make me say good-bye to it for ever."

9th.—The first event of the morning was not of a kind to raise my
spirits—a letter arrived for me from poor Walter Hartright. It
is the answer to mine describing the manner in which Sir Percival
cleared himself of the suspicions raised by Anne Catherick's
letter. He writes shortly and bitterly about Sir Percival's
explanations, only saying that he has no right to offer an opinion
on the conduct of those who are above him. This is sad, but his
occasional references to himself grieve me still more. He says
that the effort to return to his old habits and pursuits grows
harder instead of easier to him every day and he implores me, if I
have any interest, to exert it to get him employment that will
necessitate his absence from England, and take him among new
scenes and new people. I have been made all the readier to comply
with this request by a passage at the end of his letter, which has
almost alarmed me.

After mentioning that he has neither seen nor heard anything of
Anne Catherick, he suddenly breaks off, and hints in the most
abrupt, mysterious manner, that he has been perpetually watched
and followed by strange men ever since he returned to London. He
acknowledges that he cannot prove this extraordinary suspicion by
fixing on any particular persons, but he declares that the
suspicion itself is present to him night and day. This has
frightened me, because it looks as if his one fixed idea about
Laura was becoming too much for his mind. I will write
immediately to some of my mother's influential old friends in
London, and press his claims on their notice. Change of scene and
change of occupation may really be the salvation of him at this
crisis in his life.

Greatly to my relief, Sir Percival sent an apology for not joining
us at breakfast. He had taken an early cup of coffee in his own
room, and he was still engaged there in writing letters. At
eleven o'clock, if that hour was convenient, he would do himself
the honour of waiting on Miss Fairlie and Miss Halcombe.

My eyes were on Laura's face while the message was being
delivered. I had found her unaccountably quiet and composed on
going into her room in the morning, and so she remained all
through breakfast. Even when we were sitting together on the sofa
in her room, waiting for Sir Percival, she still preserved her
self-control.

"Don't be afraid of me, Marian," was all she said; "I may forget
myself with an old friend like Mr. Gilmore, or with a dear sister
like you, but I will not forget myself with Sir Percival Glyde."

I looked at her, and listened to her in silent surprise. Through
all the years of our close intimacy this passive force in her
character had been hidden from me—hidden even from herself, till
love found it, and suffering called it forth.

As the clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven Sir Percival knocked
at the door and came in. There was suppressed anxiety and
agitation in every line of his face. The dry, sharp cough, which
teases him at most times, seemed to be troubling him more
incessantly than ever. He sat down opposite to us at the table,
and Laura remained by me. I looked attentively at them both, and
he was the palest of the two.

He said a few unimportant words, with a visible effort to preserve
his customary ease of manner. But his voice was not to be
steadied, and the restless uneasiness in his eyes was not to be
concealed. He must have felt this himself, for he stopped in the
middle of a sentence, and gave up even the attempt to hide his
embarrassment any longer.

There was just one moment of dead silence before Laura addressed
him.

"I wish to speak to you, Sir Percival," she said, "on a subject
that is very important to us both. My sister is here, because her
presence helps me and gives me confidence. She has not suggested
one word of what I am going to say—I speak from my own thoughts,
not from hers. I am sure you will be kind enough to understand
that before I go any farther?"

Sir Percival bowed. She had proceeded thus far, with perfect
outward tranquillity and perfect propriety of manner. She looked
at him, and he looked at her. They seemed, at the outset, at
least, resolved to understand one another plainly.

"I have heard from Marian," she went on, "that I have only to
claim my release from our engagement to obtain that release from
you. It was forbearing and generous on your part, Sir Percival,
to send me such a message. It is only doing you justice to say
that I am grateful for the offer, and I hope and believe that it
is only doing myself justice to tell you that I decline to accept
it."

His attentive face relaxed a little. But I saw one of his feet,
softly, quietly, incessantly beating on the carpet under the
table, and I felt that he was secretly as anxious as ever.

"I have not forgotten," she said, "that you asked my father's
permission before you honoured me with a proposal of marriage.
Perhaps you have not forgotten either what I said when I consented
to our engagement? I ventured to tell you that my father's
influence and advice had mainly decided me to give you my promise.
I was guided by my father, because I had always found him the
truest of all advisers, the best and fondest of all protectors and
friends. I have lost him now—I have only his memory to love, but
my faith in that dear dead friend has never been shaken. I
believe at this moment, as truly as I ever believed, that he knew
what was best, and that his hopes and wishes ought to be my hopes
and wishes too."

Her voice trembled for the first time. Her restless fingers stole
their way into my lap, and held fast by one of my hands. There
was another moment of silence, and then Sir Percival spoke.

"May I ask," he said, "if I have ever proved myself unworthy of
the trust which it has been hitherto my greatest honour and
greatest happiness to possess?"

"I have found nothing in your conduct to blame," she answered.
"You have always treated me with the same delicacy and the same
forbearance. You have deserved my trust, and, what is of far more
importance in my estimation, you have deserved my father's trust,
out of which mine grew. You have given me no excuse, even if I
had wanted to find one, for asking to be released from my pledge.
What I have said so far has been spoken with the wish to
acknowledge my whole obligation to you. My regard for that
obligation, my regard for my father's memory, and my regard for my
own promise, all forbid me to set the example, on my side, of
withdrawing from our present position. The breaking of our
engagement must be entirely your wish and your act, Sir Percival—
not mine."

The uneasy beating of his foot suddenly stopped, and he leaned
forward eagerly across the table.

"My act?" he said. "What reason can there be on my side for
withdrawing?"

I heard her breath quickening—I felt her hand growing cold. In
spite of what she had said to me when we were alone, I began to be
afraid of her. I was wrong.

"A reason that it is very hard to tell you," she answered. "There
is a change in me, Sir Percival—a change which is serious enough
to justify you, to yourself and to me, in breaking off our
engagement."

His face turned so pale again that even his lips lost their
colour. He raised the arm which lay on the table, turned a little
away in his chair, and supported his head on his hand, so that his
profile only was presented to us.

"What change?" he asked. The tone in which he put the question
jarred on me—there was something painfully suppressed in it.

She sighed heavily, and leaned towards me a little, so as to rest
her shoulder against mine. I felt her trembling, and tried to
spare her by speaking myself. She stopped me by a warning
pressure of her hand, and then addressed Sir Percival one more,
but this time without looking at him.

"I have heard," she said, "and I believe it, that the fondest and
truest of all affections is the affection which a woman ought to
bear to her husband. When our engagement began that affection was
mine to give, if I could, and yours to win, if you could. Will
you pardon me, and spare me, Sir Percival, if I acknowledge that
it is not so any longer?"

A few tears gathered in her eyes, and dropped over her cheeks
slowly as she paused and waited for his answer. He did not utter
a word. At the beginning of her reply he had moved the hand on
which his head rested, so that it hid his face. I saw nothing but
the upper part of his figure at the table. Not a muscle of him
moved. The fingers of the hand which supported his head were
dented deep in his hair. They might have expressed hidden anger
or hidden grief—it was hard to say which—there was no
significant trembling in them. There was nothing, absolutely
nothing, to tell the secret of his thoughts at that moment—the
moment which was the crisis of his life and the crisis of hers.