The Woman in White (78 page)

Mr. Wansborough was in his office when I inquired for him.

He was a jovial, red-faced, easy-looking man—more like a country
squire than a lawyer—and he seemed to be both surprised and
amused by my application. He had heard of his father's copy of
the register, but had not even seen it himself. It had never been
inquired after, and it was no doubt in the strong room among other
papers that had not been disturbed since his father's death. It
was a pity (Mr. Wansborough said) that the old gentleman was not
alive to hear his precious copy asked for at last. He would have
ridden his favourite hobby harder than ever now. How had I come
to hear of the copy? was it through anybody in the town?

I parried the question as well as I could. It was impossible at
this stage of the investigation to be too cautious, and it was
just as well not to let Mr. Wansborough know prematurely that I
had already examined the original register. I described myself,
therefore, as pursuing a family inquiry, to the object of which
every possible saving of time was of great importance. I was
anxious to send certain particulars to London by that day's post,
and one look at the duplicate register (paying, of course, the
necessary fees) might supply what I required, and save me a
further journey to Old Welmingham. I added that, in the event of
my subsequently requiring a copy of the original register, I
should make application to Mr. Wansborough's office to furnish me
with the document.

After this explanation no objection was made to producing the
copy. A clerk was sent to the strong room, and after some delay
returned with the volume. It was of exactly the same size as the
volume in the vestry, the only difference being that the copy was
more smartly bound. I took it with me to an unoccupied desk. My
hands were trembling—my head was burning hot—I felt the
necessity of concealing my agitation as well as I could from the
persons about me in the room, before I ventured on opening the
book.

On the blank page at the beginning, to which I first turned, were
traced some lines in faded ink. They contained these words—

"Copy of the Marriage Register of Welmingham Parish Church.
Executed under my orders, and afterwards compared, entry by entry,
with the original, by myself. (Signed) Robert Wansborough,
vestry-clerk." Below this note there was a line added, in another
handwriting, as follows: "Extending from the first of January,
1800, to the thirtieth of June, 1815."

I turned to the month of September, eighteen hundred and three. I
found the marriage of the man whose Christian name was the same as
my own. I found the double register of the marriages of the two
brothers. And between these entries, at the bottom of the page?

Nothing! Not a vestige of the entry which recorded the marriage of
Sir Felix Glyde and Cecilia Jane Elster in the register of the
church!

My heart gave a great bound, and throbbed as if it would stifle
me. I looked again—I was afraid to believe the evidence of my
own eyes. No! not a doubt. The marriage was not there. The
entries on the copy occupied exactly the same places on the page
as the entries in the original. The last entry on one page
recorded the marriage of the man with my Christian name. Below it
there was a blank space—a space evidently left because it was too
narrow to contain the entry of the marriages of the two brothers,
which in the copy, as in the original, occupied the top of the
next page. That space told the whole story! There it must have
remained in the church register from eighteen hundred and three
(when the marriages had been solemnised and the copy had been
made) to eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, when Sir Percival
appeared at Old Welmingham. Here, at Knowlesbury, was the chance
of committing the forgery shown to me in the copy, and there, at
Old Welmingham, was the forgery committed in the register of the
church.

My head turned giddy—I held by the desk to keep myself from
falling. Of all the suspicions which had struck me in relation to
that desperate man, not one had been near the truth.

The idea that he was not Sir Percival Glyde at all, that he had no
more claim to the baronetcy and to Blackwater Park than the
poorest labourer who worked on the estate, had never once occurred
to my mind. At one time I had thought he might be Anne
Catherick's father—at another time I had thought he might have
been Anne Catherick's husband—the offence of which he was really
guilty had been, from first to last, beyond the widest reach of my
imagination.

The paltry means by which the fraud had been effected, the
magnitude and daring of the crime that it represented, the horror
of the consequences involved in its discovery, overwhelmed me.
Who could wonder now at the brute-restlessness of the wretch's
life—at his desperate alternations between abject duplicity and
reckless violence—at the madness of guilty distrust which had
made him imprison Anne Catherick in the Asylum, and had given him
over to the vile conspiracy against his wife, on the bare
suspicion that the one and the other knew his terrible secret? The
disclosure of that secret might, in past years, have hanged him—
might now transport him for life. The disclosure of that secret,
even if the sufferers by his deception spared him the penalties of
the law, would deprive him at one blow of the name, the rank, the
estate, the whole social existence that he had usurped. This was
the Secret, and it was mine! A word from me, and house, lands,
baronetcy, were gone from him for ever—a word from me, and he was
driven out into the world, a nameless, penniless, friendless
outcast! The man's whole future hung on my lips—and he knew it by
this time as certainly as I did!

That last thought steadied me. Interests far more precious than
my own depended on the caution which must now guide my slightest
actions. There was no possible treachery which Sir Percival might
not attempt against me. In the danger and desperation of his
position he would be staggered by no risks, he would recoil at no
crime—he would literally hesitate at nothing to save himself.

I considered for a minute. My first necessity was to secure
positive evidence in writing of the discovery that I had just
made, and in the event of any personal misadventure happening to
me, to place that evidence beyond Sir Percival's reach. The copy
of the register was sure to be safe in Mr. Wansborough's strong
room. But the position of the original in the vestry was, as I
had seen with my own eyes, anything but secure.

In this emergency I resolved to return to the church, to apply
again to the clerk, and to take the necessary extract from the
register before I slept that night. I was not then aware that a
legally-certified copy was necessary, and that no document merely
drawn out by myself could claim the proper importance as a proof.
I was not aware of this, and my determination to keep my present
proceedings a secret prevented me from asking any questions which
might have procured the necessary information. My one anxiety was
the anxiety to get back to Old Welmingham. I made the best
excuses I could for the discomposure in my face and manner which
Mr. Wansborough had already noticed, laid the necessary fee on his
table, arranged that I should write to him in a day or two, and
left the office, with my head in a whirl and my blood throbbing
through my veins at fever heat.

It was just getting dark. The idea occurred to me that I might be
followed again and attacked on the high-road.

My walking-stick was a light one, of little or no use for purposes
of defence. I stopped before leaving Knowlesbury and bought a
stout country cudgel, short, and heavy at the head. With this
homely weapon, if any one man tried to stop me I was a match for
him. If more than one attacked me I could trust to my heels. In
my school-days I had been a noted runner, and I had not wanted for
practice since in the later time of my experience in Central
America.

I started from the town at a brisk pace, and kept the middle of
the road.

A small misty rain was falling, and it was impossible for the
first half of the way to make sure whether I was followed or not.
But at the last half of my journey, when I supposed myself to be
about two miles from the church, I saw a man run by me in the
rain, and then heard the gate of a field by the roadside shut to
sharply. I kept straight on, with my cudgel ready in my hand, my
ears on the alert, and my eyes straining to see through the mist
and the darkness. Before I had advanced a hundred yards there was
a rustling in the hedge on my right, and three men sprang out into
the road.

I drew aside on the instant to the footpath. The two foremost men
were carried beyond me before they could check themselves. The
third was as quick as lightning. He stopped, half turned, and
struck at me with his stick. The blow was aimed at hazard, and
was not a severe one. It fell on my left shoulder. I returned it
heavily on his head. He staggered back and jostled his two
companions just as they were both rushing at me. This
circumstance gave me a moment's start. I slipped by them, and
took to the middle of the road again at the top of my speed.

The two unhurt men pursued me. They were both good runners—the
road was smooth and level, and for the first five minutes or more
I was conscious that I did not gain on them. It was perilous work
to run for long in the darkness. I could barely see the dim black
line of the hedges on either side, and any chance obstacle in the
road would have thrown me down to a certainty. Ere long I felt
the ground changing—it descended from the level at a turn, and
then rose again beyond. Downhill the men rather gained on me, but
uphill I began to distance them. The rapid, regular thump of
their feet grew fainter on my ear, and I calculated by the sound
that I was far enough in advance to take to the fields with a good
chance of their passing me in the darkness. Diverging to the
footpath, I made for the first break that I could guess at, rather
than see, in the hedge. It proved to be a closed gate. I vaulted
over, and finding myself in a field, kept across it steadily with
my back to the road. I heard the men pass the gate, still
running, then in a minute more heard one of them call to the other
to come back. It was no matter what they did now, I was out of
their sight and out of their hearing. I kept straight across the
field, and when I had reached the farther extremity of it, waited
there for a minute to recover my breath.

It was impossible to venture back to the road, but I was
determined nevertheless to get to Old Welmingham that evening.

Neither moon nor stars appeared to guide me. I only knew that I
had kept the wind and rain at my back on leaving Knowlesbury, and
if I now kept them at my back still, I might at least be certain
of not advancing altogether in the wrong direction.

Proceeding on this plan, I crossed the country—meeting with no
worse obstacles than hedges, ditches, and thickets, which every
now and then obliged me to alter my course for a little while—
until I found myself on a hillside, with the ground sloping away
steeply before me. I descended to the bottom of the hollow,
squeezed my way through a hedge, and got out into a lane. Having
turned to the right on leaving the road, I now turned to the left,
on the chance of regaining the line from which I had wandered.
After following the muddy windings of the lane for ten minutes or
more, I saw a cottage with a light in one of the windows. The
garden gate was open to the lane, and I went in at once to inquire
my way.

Before I could knock at the door it was suddenly opened, and a man
came running out with a lighted lantern in his hand. He stopped
and held it up at the sight of me. We both started as we saw each
other. My wanderings had led me round the outskirts of the
village, and had brought me out at the lower end of it. I was
back at Old Welmingham, and the man with the lantern was no other
than my acquaintance of the morning, the parish clerk.

His manner appeared to have altered strangely in the interval
since I had last seen him. He looked suspicious and confused—his
ruddy cheeks were deeply flushed—and his first words, when he
spoke, were quite unintelligible to me.

"Where are the keys?" he asked. "Have you taken them?"

"What keys?" I repeated. "I have this moment come from
Knowlesbury. What keys do you mean?"

"The keys of the vestry. Lord save us and help us! what shall I
do? The keys are gone! Do you hear?" cried the old man, shaking
the lantern at me in his agitation, "the keys are gone!"

"How? When? Who can have taken them?"

"I don't know," said the clerk, staring about him wildly in the
darkness. "I've only just got back. I told you I had a long
day's work this morning—I locked the door and shut the window
down—it's open now, the window's open. Look! somebody has got in
there and taken the keys."

He turned to the casement window to show me that it was wide open.
The door of the lantern came loose from its fastening as he swayed
it round, and the wind blew the candle out instantly.

"Get another light," I said, "and let us both go to the vestry
together. Quick! quick!"

I hurried him into the house. The treachery that I had every
reason to expect, the treachery that might deprive me of every
advantage I had gained, was at that moment, perhaps, in process of
accomplishment. My impatience to reach the church was so great
that I could not remain inactive in the cottage while the clerk
lit the lantern again. I walked out, down the garden path, into
the lane.

Before I had advanced ten paces a man approached me from the
direction leading to the church. He spoke respectfully as we met.
I could not see his face, but judging by his voice only, he was a
perfect stranger to me.