The Woman in White (66 page)

They retraced their steps to the burial-ground, and by that act
sealed the future of our three lives.

This was the story of the past—the story so far as we knew it
then.

Two obvious conclusions presented themselves to my mind after
hearing it. In the first place, I saw darkly what the nature of
the conspiracy had been, how chances had been watched, and how
circumstances had been handled to ensure impunity to a daring and
an intricate crime. While all details were still a mystery to me,
the vile manner in which the personal resemblance between the
woman in white and Lady Glyde had been turned to account was clear
beyond a doubt. It was plain that Anne Catherick had been
introduced into Count Fosco's house as Lady Glyde—it was plain
that Lady Glyde had taken the dead woman's place in the Asylum—
the substitution having been so managed as to make innocent people
(the doctor and the two servants certainly, and the owner of the
mad-house in all probability) accomplices in the crime

The second conclusion came as the necessary consequence of the
first. We three had no mercy to expect from Count Fosco and Sir
Percival Glyde. The success of the conspiracy had brought with it
a clear gain to those two men of thirty thousand pounds—twenty
thousand to one, ten thousand to the other through his wife. They
had that interest, as well as other interests, in ensuring their
impunity from exposure, and they would leave no stone unturned, no
sacrifice unattempted, no treachery untried, to discover the place
in which their victim was concealed, and to part her from the only
friends she had in the world—Marian Halcombe and myself.

The sense of this serious peril—a peril which every day and every
hour might bring nearer and nearer to us—was the one influence
that guided me in fixing the place of our retreat. I chose it in
the far east of London, where there were fewest idle people to
lounge and look about them in the streets. I chose it in a poor
and a populous neighbourhood—because the harder the struggle for
existence among the men and women about us, the less the risk of
their having the time or taking the pains to notice chance
strangers who came among them. These were the great advantages I
looked to, but our locality was a gain to us also in another and a
hardly less important respect. We could live cheaply by the daily
work of my hands, and could save every farthing we possessed to
forward the purpose, the righteous purpose, of redressing an
infamous wrong—which, from first to last, I now kept steadily in
view.

In a week's time Marian Halcombe and I had settled how the course
of our new lives should be directed.

There were no other lodgers in the house, and we had the means of
going in and out without passing through the shop. I arranged,
for the present at least, that neither Marian nor Laura should
stir outside the door without my being with them, and that in my
absence from home they should let no one into their rooms on any
pretence whatever. This rule established, I went to a friend whom
I had known in former days—a wood engraver in large practice—to
seek for employment, telling him, at the same time, that I had
reasons for wishing to remain unknown.

He at once concluded that I was in debt, expressed his regret in
the usual forms, and then promised to do what he could to assist
me. I left his false impression undisturbed, and accepted the
work he had to give. He knew that he could trust my experience
and my industry. I had what he wanted, steadiness and facility,
and though my earnings were but small, they sufficed for our
necessities. As soon as we could feel certain of this, Marian
Halcombe and I put together what we possessed. She had between
two and three hundred pounds left of her own property, and I had
nearly as much remaining from the purchase-money obtained by the
sale of my drawing-master's practice before I left England.
Together we made up between us more than four hundred pounds. I
deposited this little fortune in a bank, to be kept for the
expense of those secret inquiries and investigations which I was
determined to set on foot, and to carry on by myself if I could
find no one to help me. We calculated our weekly expenditure to
the last farthing, and we never touched our little fund except in
Laura's interests and for Laura's sake.

The house-work, which, if we had dared trust a stranger near us,
would have been done by a servant, was taken on the first day,
taken as her own right, by Marian Halcombe. "What a woman's hands
ARE fit for," she said, "early and late, these hands of mine shall
do." They trembled as she held them out. The wasted arms told
their sad story of the past, as she turned up the sleeves of the
poor plain dress that she wore for safety's sake; but the
unquenchable spirit of the woman burnt bright in her even yet. I
saw the big tears rise thick in her eyes, and fall slowly over her
cheeks as she looked at me. She dashed them away with a touch of
her old energy, and smiled with a faint reflection of her old good
spirits. "Don't doubt my courage, Walter," she pleaded, "it's my
weakness that cries, not ME. The house-work shall conquer it if I
can't." And she kept her word—the victory was won when we met in
the evening, and she sat down to rest. Her large steady black
eyes looked at me with a flash of their bright firmness of bygone
days. "I am not quite broken down yet," she said. "I am worth
trusting with my share of the work." Before I could answer, she
added in a whisper, "And worth trusting with my share in the risk
and the danger too. Remember that, if the time comes!"

I did remember it when the time came.

As early as the end of October the daily course of our lives had
assumed its settled direction, and we three were as completely
isolated in our place of concealment as if the house we lived in
had been a desert island, and the great network of streets and the
thousands of our fellow-creatures all round us the waters of an
illimitable sea. I could now reckon on some leisure time for
considering what my future plan of action should be, and how I
might arm myself most securely at the outset for the coming
struggle with Sir Percival and the Count.

I gave up all hope of appealing to my recognition of Laura, or to
Marian's recognition of her, in proof of her identity. If we had
loved her less dearly, if the instinct implanted in us by that
love had not been far more certain than any exercise of reasoning,
far keener than any process of observation, even we might have
hesitated on first seeing her.

The outward changes wrought by the suffering and the terror of the
past had fearfully, almost hopelessly, strengthened the fatal
resemblance between Anne Catherick and herself. In my narrative
of events at the time of my residence in Limmeridge House, I have
recorded, from my own observation of the two, how the likeness,
striking as it was when viewed generally, failed in many important
points of similarity when tested in detail. In those former days,
if they had both been seen together side by side, no person could
for a moment have mistaken them one for the other—as has happened
often in the instances of twins. I could not say this now. The
sorrow and suffering which I had once blamed myself for
associating even by a passing thought with the future of Laura
Fairlie, HAD set their profaning marks on the youth and beauty of
her face; and the fatal resemblance which I had once seen and
shuddered at seeing, in idea only, was now a real and living
resemblance which asserted itself before my own eyes. Strangers,
acquaintances, friends even who could not look at her as we
looked, if she had been shown to them in the first days of her
rescue from the Asylum, might have doubted if she were the Laura
Fairlie they had once seen, and doubted without blame.

The one remaining chance, which I had at first thought might be
trusted to serve us—the chance of appealing to her recollection
of persons and events with which no impostor could be familiar,
was proved, by the sad test of our later experience, to be
hopeless. Every little caution that Marian and I practised
towards her—every little remedy we tried, to strengthen and
steady slowly the weakened, shaken faculties, was a fresh protest
in itself against the risk of turning her mind back on the
troubled and the terrible past.

The only events of former days which we ventured on encouraging
her to recall were the little trivial domestic events of that
happy time at Limmeridge, when I first went there and taught her
to draw. The day when I roused those remembrances by showing her
the sketch of the summer-house which she had given me on the
morning of our farewell, and which had never been separated from
me since, was the birthday of our first hope. Tenderly and
gradually, the memory of the old walks and drives dawned upon her,
and the poor weary pining eyes looked at Marian and at me with a
new interest, with a faltering thoughtfulness in them, which from
that moment we cherished and kept alive. I bought her a little
box of colours, and a sketch-book like the old sketch-book which I
had seen in her hands on the morning that we first met. Once
again—oh me, once again!—at spare hours saved from my work, in
the dull London light, in the poor London room, I sat by her side
to guide the faltering touch, to help the feeble hand. Day by day
I raised and raised the new interest till its place in the blank
of her existence was at last assured—till she could think of her
drawing and talk of it, and patiently practise it by herself, with
some faint reflection of the innocent pleasure in my
encouragement, the growing enjoyment in her own progress, which
belonged to the lost life and the lost happiness of past days.

We helped her mind slowly by this simple means, we took her out
between us to walk on fine days, in a quiet old City square near
at hand, where there was nothing to confuse or alarm her—we
spared a few pounds from the fund at the banker's to get her wine,
and the delicate strengthening food that she required—we amused
her in the evenings with children's games at cards, with scrap-
books full of prints which I borrowed from the engraver who
employed me—by these, and other trifling attentions like them, we
composed her and steadied her, and hoped all things, as cheerfully
as we could from time and care, and love that never neglected and
never despaired of her. But to take her mercilessly from
seclusion and repose—to confront her with strangers, or with
acquaintances who were little better than strangers—to rouse the
painful impressions of her past life which we had so carefully
hushed to rest—this, even in her own interests, we dared not do.
Whatever sacrifices it cost, whatever long, weary, heart-breaking
delays it involved, the wrong that had been inflicted on her, if
mortal means could grapple it, must be redressed without her
knowledge and without her help.

This resolution settled, it was next necessary to decide how the
first risk should be ventured, and what the first proceedings
should be.

After consulting with Marian, I resolved to begin by gathering
together as many facts as could be collected—then to ask the
advice of Mr. Kyrle (whom we knew we could trust), and to
ascertain from him, in the first instance, if the legal remedy lay
fairly within our reach. I owed it to Laura's interests not to
stake her whole future on my own unaided exertions, so long as
there was the faintest prospect of strengthening our position by
obtaining reliable assistance of any kind.

The first source of information to which I applied was the journal
kept at Blackwater Park by Marian Halcombe. There were passages
in this diary relating to myself which she thought it best that I
should not see. Accordingly, she read to me from the manuscript,
and I took the notes I wanted as she went on. We could only find
time to pursue this occupation by sitting up late at night. Three
nights were devoted to the purpose, and were enough to put me in
possession of all that Marian could tell.

My next proceeding was to gain as much additional evidence as I
could procure from other people without exciting suspicion. I
went myself to Mrs. Vesey to ascertain if Laura's impression of
having slept there was correct or not. In this case, from
consideration for Mrs. Vesey's age and infirmity, and in all
subsequent cases of the same kind from considerations of caution,
I kept our real position a secret, and was always careful to speak
of Laura as "the late Lady Glyde."

Mrs. Vesey's answer to my inquiries only confirmed the
apprehensions which I had previously felt. Laura had certainly
written to say she would pass the night under the roof of her old
friend—but she had never been near the house.

Her mind in this instance, and, as I feared, in other instances
besides, confusedly presented to her something which she had only
intended to do in the false light of something which she had
really done. The unconscious contradiction of herself was easy to
account for in this way—but it was likely to lead to serious
results. It was a stumble on the threshold at starting—it was a
flaw in the evidence which told fatally against us.

When I next asked for the letter which Laura had written to Mrs.
Vesey from Blackwater Park, it was given to me without the
envelope, which had been thrown into the wastepaper basket, and
long since destroyed. In the letter itself no date was mentioned—
not even the day of the week. It only contained these lines:—
"Dearest Mrs. Vesey, I am in sad distress and anxiety, and I may
come to your house to-morrow night, and ask for a bed. I can't
tell you what is the matter in this letter—I write it in such
fear of being found out that I can fix my mind on nothing. Pray
be at home to see me. I will give you a thousand kisses, and tell
you everything. Your affectionate Laura." What help was there in
those lines? None.