The Woman in White (69 page)

All the woman flushed up in Marian's face as I spoke.

"Begin with the Count," she whispered eagerly. "For my sake,
begin with the Count."

"We must begin, for Laura's sake, where there is the best chance
of success," I replied.

The colour faded from her face again, and she shook her head
sadly.

"Yes," she said, "you are right—it was mean and miserable of me
to say that. I try to be patient, Walter, and succeed better now
than I did in happier times. But I have a little of my old temper
still left, and it will get the better of me when I think of the
Count!"

"His turn will come," I said. "But, remember, there is no weak
place in his life that we know of yet." I waited a little to let
her recover her self-possession, and then spoke the decisive
words—

"Marian! There is a weak place we both know of in Sir Percival's
life—-"

"You mean the Secret!"

"Yes: the Secret. It is our only sure hold on him. I can force
him from his position of security, I can drag him and his villainy
into the face of day, by no other means. Whatever the Count may
have done, Sir Percival has consented to the conspiracy against
Laura from another motive besides the motive of gain. You heard
him tell the Count that he believed his wife knew enough to ruin
him? You heard him say that he was a lost man if the secret of
Anne Catherick was known?"

"Yes! yes! I did."

"Well, Marian, when our other resources have failed us, I mean to
know the Secret. My old superstition clings to me, even yet. I
say again the woman in white is a living influence in our three
lives. The End is appointed—the End is drawing us on—and Anne
Catherick, dead in her grave, points the way to it still!"

The story of my first inquiries in Hampshire is soon told.

My early departure from London enabled me to reach Mr. Dawson's
house in the forenoon. Our interview, so far as the object of my
visit was concerned, led to no satisfactory result.

Mr. Dawson's books certainly showed when he had resumed his
attendance on Miss Halcombe at Blackwater Park, but it was not
possible to calculate back from this date with any exactness,
without such help from Mrs. Michelson as I knew she was unable to
afford. She could not say from memory (who, in similar cases,
ever can?) how many days had elapsed between the renewal of the
doctor's attendance on his patient and the previous departure of
Lady Glyde. She was almost certain of having mentioned the
circumstance of the departure to Miss Halcombe, on the day after
it happened—but then she was no more able to fix the date of the
day on which this disclosure took place, than to fix the date of
the day before, when Lady Glyde had left for London. Neither
could she calculate, with any nearer approach to exactness, the
time that had passed from the departure of her mistress, to the
period when the undated letter from Madame Fosco arrived. Lastly,
as if to complete the series of difficulties, the doctor himself,
having been ill at the time, had omitted to make his usual entry
of the day of the week and month when the gardener from Blackwater
Park had called on him to deliver Mrs. Michelson's message.

Hopeless of obtaining assistance from Mr. Dawson, I resolved to
try next if I could establish the date of Sir Percival's arrival
at Knowlesbury.

It seemed like a fatality! When I reached Knowlesbury the inn was
shut up, and bills were posted on the walls. The speculation had
been a bad one, as I was informed, ever since the time of the
railway. The new hotel at the station had gradually absorbed the
business, and the old inn (which we knew to be the inn at which
Sir Percival had put up), had been closed about two months since.
The proprietor had left the town with all his goods and chattels,
and where he had gone I could not positively ascertain from any
one. The four people of whom I inquired gave me four different
accounts of his plans and projects when he left Knowlesbury.

There were still some hours to spare before the last train left
for London, and I drove back again in a fly from the Knowlesbury
station to Blackwater Park, with the purpose of questioning the
gardener and the person who kept the lodge. If they, too, proved
unable to assist me, my resources for the present were at an end,
and I might return to town.

I dismissed the fly a mile distant from the park, and getting my
directions from the driver, proceeded by myself to the house.

As I turned into the lane from the high-road, I saw a man, with a
carpet-bag, walking before me rapidly on the way to the lodge. He
was a little man, dressed in shabby black, and wearing a
remarkably large hat. I set him down (as well as it was possible
to judge) for a lawyer's clerk, and stopped at once to widen the
distance between us. He had not heard me, and he walked on out of
sight, without looking back. When I passed through the gates
myself, a little while afterwards, he was not visible—he had
evidently gone on to the house.

There were two women in the lodge. One of them was old, the other
I knew at once, by Marian's description of her, to be Margaret
Porcher.

I asked first if Sir Percival was at the Park, and receiving a
reply in the negative, inquired next when he had left it. Neither
of the women could tell me more than that he had gone away in the
summer. I could extract nothing from Margaret Porcher but vacant
smiles and shakings of the head. The old woman was a little more
intelligent, and I managed to lead her into speaking of the manner
of Sir Percival's departure, and of the alarm that it caused her.
She remembered her master calling her out of bed, and remembered
his frightening her by swearing—but the date at which the
occurrence happened was, as she honestly acknowledged, "quite
beyond her."

On leaving the lodge I saw the gardener at work not far off. When
I first addressed him, he looked at me rather distrustfully, but
on my using Mrs. Michelson's name, with a civil reference to
himself, he entered into conversation readily enough. There is no
need to describe what passed between us—it ended, as all my other
attempts to discover the date had ended. The gardener knew that
his master had driven away, at night, "some time in July, the last
fortnight or the last ten days in the month"—and knew no more.

While we were speaking together I saw the man in black, with the
large hat, come out from the house, and stand at some little
distance observing us.

Certain suspicions of his errand at Blackwater Park had already
crossed my mind. They were now increased by the gardener's
inability (or unwillingness) to tell me who the man was, and I
determined to clear the way before me, if possible, by speaking to
him. The plainest question I could put as a stranger would be to
inquire if the house was allowed to be shown to visitors. I
walked up to the man at once, and accosted him in those words.

His look and manner unmistakably betrayed that he knew who I was,
and that he wanted to irritate me into quarrelling with him. His
reply was insolent enough to have answered the purpose, if I had
been less determined to control myself. As it was, I met him with
the most resolute politeness, apologised for my involuntary
intrusion (which he called a "trespass,") and left the grounds.
It was exactly as I suspected. The recognition of me when I left
Mr. Kyrle's office had been evidently communicated to Sir Percival
Glyde, and the man in black had been sent to the Park in
anticipation of my making inquiries at the house or in the
neighbourhood. If I had given him the least chance of lodging any
sort of legal complaint against me, the interference of the local
magistrate would no doubt have been turned to account as a clog on
my proceedings, and a means of separating me from Marian and Laura
for some days at least.

I was prepared to be watched on the way from Blackwater Park to
the station, exactly as I had been watched in London the day
before. But I could not discover at the time, whether I was
really followed on this occasion or not. The man in black might
have had means of tracking me at his disposal of which I was not
aware, but I certainly saw nothing of him, in his own person,
either on the way to the station, or afterwards on my arrival at
the London terminus in the evening. I reached home on foot,
taking the precaution, before I approached our own door, of
walking round by the loneliest street in the neighbourhood, and
there stopping and looking back more than once over the open space
behind me. I had first learnt to use this stratagem against
suspected treachery in the wilds of Central America—and now I was
practising it again, with the same purpose and with even greater
caution, in the heart of civilised London!

Nothing had happened to alarm Marian during my absence. She asked
eagerly what success I had met with. When I told her she could
not conceal her surprise at the indifference with which I spoke of
the failure of my investigations thus far.

The truth was, that the ill-success of my inquiries had in no
sense daunted me. I had pursued them as a matter of duty, and I
had expected nothing from them. In the state of my mind at that
time, it was almost a relief to me to know that the struggle was
now narrowed to a trial of strength between myself and Sir
Percival Glyde. The vindictive motive had mingled itself all
along with my other and better motives, and I confess it was a
satisfaction to me to feel that the surest way, the only way left,
of serving Laura's cause, was to fasten my hold firmly on the
villain who had married her.

While I acknowledge that I was not strong enough to keep my
motives above the reach of this instinct of revenge, I can
honestly say something in my own favour on the other side. No
base speculation on the future relations of Laura and myself, and
on the private and personal concessions which I might force from
Sir Percival if I once had him at my mercy, ever entered my mind.
I never said to myself, "If I do succeed, it shall be one result
of my success that I put it out of her husband's power to take her
from me again." I could not look at her and think of the future
with such thoughts as those. The sad sight of the change in her
from her former self, made the one interest of my love an interest
of tenderness and compassion which her father or her brother might
have felt, and which I felt, God knows, in my inmost heart. All
my hopes looked no farther on now than to the day of her recovery.
There, till she was strong again and happy again—there, till she
could look at me as she had once looked, and speak to me as she
had once spoken—the future of my happiest thoughts and my dearest
wishes ended.

These words are written under no prompting of idle self-
contemplation. Passages in this narrative are soon to come which
will set the minds of others in judgment on my conduct. It is
right that the best and the worst of me should be fairly balanced
before that time.

On the morning after my return from Hampshire I took Marian
upstairs into my working-room, and there laid before her the plan
that I had matured thus far, for mastering the one assailable
point in the life of Sir Percival Glyde.

The way to the Secret lay through the mystery, hitherto
impenetrable to all of us, of the woman in white. The approach to
that in its turn might be gained by obtaining the assistance of
Anne Catherick's mother, and the only ascertainable means of
prevailing on Mrs. Catherick to act or to speak in the matter
depended on the chance of my discovering local particulars and
family particulars first of all from Mrs. Clements. After
thinking the subject over carefully, I felt certain that I could
only begin the new inquiries by placing myself in communication
with the faithful friend and protectress of Anne Catherick.

The first difficulty then was to find Mrs. Clements.

I was indebted to Marian's quick perception for meeting this
necessity at once by the best and simplest means. She proposed to
write to the farm near Limmeridge (Todd's Corner), to inquire
whether Mrs. Clements had communicated with Mrs. Todd during the
past few months. How Mrs. Clements had been separated from Anne
it was impossible for us to say, but that separation once
effected, it would certainly occur to Mrs. Clements to inquire
after the missing woman in the neighbourhood of all others to
which she was known to be most attached—the neighbourhood of
Limmeridge. I saw directly that Marian's proposal offered us a
prospect of success, and she wrote to Mrs. Todd accordingly by
that day's post.

While we were waiting for the reply, I made myself master of all
the information Marian could afford on the subject of Sir
Percival's family, and of his early life. She could only speak on
these topics from hearsay, but she was reasonably certain of the
truth of what little she had to tell.

Sir Percival was an only child. His father, Sir Felix Glyde, had
suffered from his birth under a painful and incurable deformity,
and had shunned all society from his earliest years. His sole
happiness was in the enjoyment of music, and he had married a lady
with tastes similar to his own, who was said to be a most
accomplished musician. He inherited the Blackwater property while
still a young man. Neither he nor his wife after taking
possession, made advances of any sort towards the society of the
neighbourhood, and no one endeavoured to tempt them into
abandoning their reserve, with the one disastrous exception of the
rector of the parish.

The rector was the worst of all innocent mischief-makers—an over-
zealous man. He had heard that Sir Felix had left College with
the character of being little better than a revolutionist in
politics and an infidel in religion, and he arrived
conscientiously at the conclusion that it was his bounden duty to
summon the lord of the manor to hear sound views enunciated in the
parish church. Sir Felix fiercely resented the clergyman's well-
meant but ill-directed interference, insulting him so grossly and
so publicly, that the families in the neighbourhood sent letters
of indignant remonstrance to the Park, and even the tenants of the
Blackwater property expressed their opinion as strongly as they
dared. The baronet, who had no country tastes of any kind, and no
attachment to the estate or to any one living on it, declared that
society at Blackwater should never have a second chance of
annoying him, and left the place from that moment.