The Woman in White (29 page)

"You found, of course, that they had heard nothing?" I said.

"Nothing whatever," he replied. "I begin to be seriously afraid
that we have lost her. Do you happen to know," he continued,
looking me in the face very attentively "if the artist—Mr.
Hartright—is in a position to give us any further information?"

"He has neither heard of her, nor seen her, since he left
Cumberland," I answered.

"Very sad," said Sir Percival, speaking like a man who was
disappointed, and yet, oddly enough, looking at the same time like
a man who was relieved. "It is impossible to say what misfortunes
may not have happened to the miserable creature. I am
inexpressibly annoyed at the failure of all my efforts to restore
her to the care and protection which she so urgently needs."

This time he really looked annoyed. I said a few sympathising
words, and we then talked of other subjects on our way back to the
house. Surely my chance meeting with him on the moor has
disclosed another favourable trait in his character? Surely it was
singularly considerate and unselfish of him to think of Anne
Catherick on the eve of his marriage, and to go all the way to
Todd's Corner to make inquiries about her, when he might have
passed the time so much more agreeably in Laura's society?
Considering that he can only have acted from motives of pure
charity, his conduct, under the circumstances, shows unusual good
feeling and deserves extraordinary praise. Well! I give him
extraordinary praise—and there's an end of it.

19th.—More discoveries in the inexhaustible mine of Sir
Percival's virtues.

To-day I approached the subject of my proposed sojourn under his
wife's roof when he brings her back to England. I had hardly
dropped my first hint in this direction before he caught me warmly
by the hand, and said I had made the very offer to him which he
had been, on his side, most anxious to make to me. I was the
companion of all others whom he most sincerely longed to secure
for his wife, and he begged me to believe that I had conferred a
lasting favour on him by making the proposal to live with Laura
after her marriage, exactly as I had always lived with her before
it.

When I had thanked him in her name and mine for his considerate
kindness to both of us, we passed next to the subject of his
wedding tour, and began to talk of the English society in Rome to
which Laura was to be introduced. He ran over the names of
several friends whom he expected to meet abroad this winter. They
were all English, as well as I can remember, with one exception.
The one exception was Count Fosco.

The mention of the Count's name, and the discovery that he and his
wife are likely to meet the bride and bridegroom on the continent,
puts Laura's marriage, for the first time, in a distinctly
favourable light. It is likely to be the means of healing a
family feud. Hitherto Madame Fosco has chosen to forget her
obligations as Laura's aunt out of sheer spite against the late
Mr. Fairlie for his conduct in the affair of the legacy. Now
however, she can persist in this course of conduct no longer. Sir
Percival and Count Fosco are old and fast friends, and their wives
will have no choice but to meet on civil terms. Madame Fosco in
her maiden days was one of the most impertinent women I ever met
with—capricious, exacting, and vain to the last degree of
absurdity. If her husband has succeeded in bringing her to her
senses, he deserves the gratitude of every member of the family,
and he may have mine to begin with.

I am becoming anxious to know the Count. He is the most intimate
friend of Laura's husband, and in that capacity he excites my
strongest interest. Neither Laura nor I have ever seen him. All
I know of him is that his accidental presence, years ago, on the
steps of the Trinita del Monte at Rome, assisted Sir Percival's
escape from robbery and assassination at the critical moment when
he was wounded in the hand, and might the next instant have been
wounded in the heart. I remember also that, at the time of the
late Mr. Fairlie's absurd objections to his sister's marriage, the
Count wrote him a very temperate and sensible letter on the
subject, which, I am ashamed to say, remained unanswered. This is
all I know of Sir Percival's friend. I wonder if he will ever
come to England? I wonder if I shall like him?

My pen is running away into mere speculation. Let me return to
sober matter of fact. It is certain that Sir Percival's reception
of my venturesome proposal to live with his wife was more than
kind, it was almost affectionate. I am sure Laura's husband will
have no reason to complain of me if I can only go on as I have
begun. I have already declared him to be handsome, agreeable,
full of good feeling towards the unfortunate and full of
affectionate kindness towards me. Really, I hardly; know myself
again in my new character of Sir Percival's warmest friend.

20th.—I hate Sir Percival! I flatly deny his good looks. I
consider him to be eminently ill-tempered and disagreeable, and
totally wanting in kindness and good feeling. Last night the
cards for the married couple were sent home. Laura opened the
packet and saw her future name in print for the first time. Sir
Percival looked over her shoulder familiarly at the new card which
had already transformed Miss Fairlie into Lady Glyde—smiled with
the most odious self-complacency, and whispered something in her
ear. I don't know what it was—Laura has refused to tell me—but
I saw her face turn to such a deadly whiteness that I thought she
would have fainted. He took no notice of the change—he seemed to
be barbarously unconscious that he had said anything to pain her.
All my old feelings of hostility towards him revived on the
instant, and all the hours that have passed since have done
nothing to dissipate them. I am more unreasonable and more unjust
than ever. In three words—how glibly my pen writes them!—in
three words, I hate him.

21st.—Have the anxieties of this anxious time shaken me a little,
at last? I have been writing, for the last few days, in a tone of
levity which, Heaven knows, is far enough from my heart, and which
it has rather shocked me to discover on looking back at the
entries in my journal.

Perhaps I may have caught the feverish excitement of Laura's
spirits for the last week. If so, the fit has already passed away
from me, and has left me in a very strange state of mind. A
persistent idea has been forcing itself on my attention, ever
since last night, that something will yet happen to prevent the
marriage. What has produced this singular fancy? Is it the
indirect result of my apprehensions for Laura's future? Or has it
been unconsciously suggested to me by the increasing restlessness
and irritability which I have certainly observed in Sir Percival's
manner as the wedding-day draws nearer and nearer? Impossible to
say. I know that I have the idea—surely the wildest idea, under
the circumstances, that ever entered a woman's head?—but try as I
may, I cannot trace it back to its source.

This last day has been all confusion and wretchedness. How can I
write about it?—and yet, I must write. Anything is better than
brooding over my own gloomy thoughts.

Kind Mrs. Vesey, whom we have all too much overlooked and
forgotten of late, innocently caused us a sad morning to begin
with. She has been, for months past, secretly making a warm
Shetland shawl for her dear pupil—a most beautiful and surprising
piece of work to be done by a woman at her age and with her
habits. The gift was presented this morning, and poor warm-
hearted Laura completely broke down when the shawl was put proudly
on her shoulders by the loving old friend and guardian of her
motherless childhood. I was hardly allowed time to quiet them
both, or even to dry my own eyes, when I was sent for by Mr.
Fairlie, to be favoured with a long recital of his arrangements
for the preservation of his own tranquillity on the wedding-day.

"Dear Laura" was to receive his present—a shabby ring, with her
affectionate uncle's hair for an ornament, instead of a precious
stone, and with a heartless French inscription inside, about
congenial sentiments and eternal friendship—"dear Laura" was to
receive this tender tribute from my hands immediately, so that she
might have plenty of time to recover from the agitation produced
by the gift before she appeared in Mr. Fairlie's presence. "Dear
Laura" was to pay him a little visit that evening, and to be kind
enough not to make a scene. "Dear Laura" was to pay him another
little visit in her wedding-dress the next morning, and to be kind
enough, again, not to make a scene. "Dear Laura" was to look in
once more, for the third time, before going away, but without
harrowing his feelings by saying WHEN she was going away, and
without tears—"in the name of pity, in the name of everything,
dear Marian, that is most affectionate and most domestic, and most
delightfully and charmingly self-composed, WITHOUT TEARS!" I was
so exasperated by this miserable selfish trifling, at such a time,
that I should certainly have shocked Mr. Fairlie by some of the
hardest and rudest truths he has ever heard in his life, if the
arrival of Mr. Arnold from Polesdean had not called me away to new
duties downstairs.

The rest of the day is indescribable. I believe no one in the
house really knew how it passed. The confusion of small events,
all huddled together one on the other, bewildered everybody.
There were dresses sent home that had been forgotten—there were
trunks to be packed and unpacked and packed again—there were
presents from friends far and near, friends high and low. We were
all needlessly hurried, all nervously expectant of the morrow.
Sir Percival, especially, was too restless now to remain five
minutes together in the same place. That short, sharp cough of
his troubled him more than ever. He was in and out of doors all
day long, and he seemed to grow so inquisitive on a sudden, that
he questioned the very strangers who came on small errands to the
house. Add to all this, the one perpetual thought in Laura's mind
and mine, that we were to part the next day, and the haunting
dread, unexpressed by either of us, and yet ever present to both,
that this deplorable marriage might prove to be the one fatal
error of her life and the one hopeless sorrow of mine. For the
first time in all the years of our close and happy intercourse we
almost avoided looking each other in the face, and we refrained,
by common consent, from speaking together in private through the
whole evening. I can dwell on it no longer. Whatever future
sorrows may be in store for me, I shall always look back on this
twenty-first of December as the most comfortless and most
miserable day of my life.

I am writing these lines in the solitude of my own room, long
after midnight, having just come back from a stolen look at Laura
in her pretty little white bed—the bed she has occupied since the
days of her girlhood.

There she lay, unconscious that I was looking at her—quiet, more
quiet than I had dared to hope, but not sleeping. The glimmer of
the night-light showed me that her eyes were only partially
closed—the traces of tears glistened between her eye-lids. My
little keepsake—only a brooch—lay on the table at her bedside,
with her prayer-book, and the miniature portrait of her father
which she takes with her wherever she goes. I waited a moment,
looking at her from behind her pillow, as she lay beneath me, with
one arm and hand resting on the white coverlid, so still, so
quietly breathing, that the frill on her night-dress never moved—
I waited, looking at her, as I have seen her thousands of times,
as I shall never see her again—and then stole back to my room.
My own love! with all your wealth, and all your beauty, how
friendless you are! The one man who would give his heart's life to
serve you is far away, tossing, this stormy night, on the awful
sea. Who else is left to you? No father, no brother—no living
creature but the helpless, useless woman who writes these sad
lines, and watches by you for the morning, in sorrow that she
cannot compose, in doubt that she cannot conquer. Oh, what a
trust is to be placed in that man's hands to-morrow! If ever he
forgets it—if ever he injures a hair of her head!—-

THE TWENTY-SECOND OF DECEMBER. Seven o'clock. A wild, unsettled
morning. She has just risen—better and calmer, now that the time
has come, than she was yesterday.

Ten o'clock. She is dressed. We have kissed each other—we have
promised each other not to lose courage. I am away for a moment
in my own room. In the whirl and confusion of my thoughts, I can
detect that strange fancy of some hindrance happening to stop the
marriage still hanging about my mind. Is it hanging about HIS
mind too? I see him from the window, moving hither and thither
uneasily among the carriages at the door.—How can I write such
folly! The marriage is a certainty. In less than half an hour we
start for the church.

Eleven o'clock. It is all over. They are married.

Three o'clock. They are gone! I am blind with crying—I can write
no more—-

(The First Epoch of the Story closes here.)

BLACKWATER PARK, HAMPSHIRE.

June 11th, 1850.—Six months to look back on—six long, lonely
months since Laura and I last saw each other!

How many days have I still to wait? Only one! To-morrow, the
twelfth, the travellers return to England. I can hardly realise
my own happiness—I can hardly believe that the next four-and-
twenty hours will complete the last day of separation between
Laura and me.

She and her husband have been in Italy all the winter, and
afterwards in the Tyrol. They come back, accompanied by Count
Fosco and his wife, who propose to settle somewhere in the
neighbourhood of London, and who have engaged to stay at
Blackwater Park for the summer months before deciding on a place
of residence. So long as Laura returns, no matter who returns
with her. Sir Percival may fill the house from floor to ceiling,
if he likes, on condition that his wife and I inhabit it together.