The Woman in White (83 page)

So far, I have written in the friendliest possible spirit. But I
cannot close this letter without adding a word here of serious
remonstrance and reproof, addressed to yourself.

In the course of your personal interview with me, you audaciously
referred to my late daughter's parentage on the father's side, as
if that parentage was a matter of doubt. This was highly improper
and very ungentlemanlike on your part! If we see each other again,
remember, if you please, that I will allow no liberties to be
taken with my reputation, and that the moral atmosphere of
Welmingham (to use a favourite expression of my friend the
rector's) must not be tainted by loose conversation of any kind.
If you allow yourself to doubt that my husband was Anne's father,
you personally insult me in the grossest manner. If you have
felt, and if you still continue to feel, an unhallowed curiosity
on this subject, I recommend you, in your own interests, to check
it at once, and for ever. On this side of the grave, Mr.
Hartright, whatever may happen on the other, THAT curiosity will
never be gratified.

Perhaps, after what I have just said, you will see the necessity
of writing me an apology. Do so, and I will willingly receive it.
I will, afterwards, if your wishes point to a second interview
with me, go a step farther, and receive you. My circumstances
only enable me to invite you to tea—not that they are at all
altered for the worse by what has happened. I have always lived,
as I think I told you, well within my income, and I have saved
enough, in the last twenty years, to make me quite comfortable for
the rest of my life. It is not my intention to leave Welmingham.
There are one or two little advantages which I have still to gain
in the town. The clergyman bows to me—as you saw. He is
married, and his wife is not quite so civil. I propose to join
the Dorcas Society, and I mean to make the clergyman's wife bow to
me next.

If you favour me with your company, pray understand that the
conversation must be entirely on general subjects. Any attempted
reference to this letter will be quite useless—I am determined
not to acknowledge having written it. The evidence has been
destroyed in the fire, I know, but I think it desirable to err on
the side of caution, nevertheless.

On this account no names are mentioned here, nor is any signature
attached to these lines: the handwriting is disguised throughout,
and I mean to deliver the letter myself, under circumstances which
will prevent all fear of its being traced to my house. You can
have no possible cause to complain of these precautions, seeing
that they do not affect the information I here communicate, in
consideration of the special indulgence which you have deserved at
my hands. My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered
toast waits for nobody.

My first impulse, after reading Mrs. Catherick's extraordinary
narrative, was to destroy it. The hardened shameless depravity of
the whole composition, from beginning to end—the atrocious
perversity of mind which persistently associated me with a
calamity for which I was in no sense answerable, and with a death
which I had risked my life in trying to avert—so disgusted me,
that I was on the point of tearing the letter, when a
consideration suggested itself which warned me to wait a little
before I destroyed it.

This consideration was entirely unconnected with Sir Percival.
The information communicated to me, so far as it concerned him,
did little more than confirm the conclusions at which I had
already arrived.

He had committed his offence, as I had supposed him to have
committed it, and the absence of all reference, on Mrs.
Catherick's part, to the duplicate register at Knowlesbury,
strengthened my previous conviction that the existence of the
book, and the risk of detection which it implied, must have been
necessarily unknown to Sir Percival. My interest in the question
of the forgery was now at an end, and my only object in keeping
the letter was to make it of some future service in clearing up
the last mystery that still remained to baffle me—the parentage
of Anne Catherick on the father's side. There were one or two
sentences dropped in her mother's narrative, which it might be
useful to refer to again, when matters of more immediate
importance allowed me leisure to search for the missing evidence.
I did not despair of still finding that evidence, and I had lost
none of my anxiety to discover it, for I had lost none of my
interest in tracing the father of the poor creature who now lay at
rest in Mrs. Fairlie's grave.

Accordingly, I sealed up the letter and put it away carefully in
my pocket-book, to be referred to again when the time came.

The next day was my last in Hampshire. When I had appeared again
before the magistrate at Knowlesbury, and when I had attended at
the adjourned inquest, I should be free to return to London by the
afternoon or the evening train.

My first errand in the morning was, as usual, to the post-office.
The letter from Marian was there, but I thought when it was handed
to me that it felt unusually light. I anxiously opened the
envelope. There was nothing inside but a small strip of paper
folded in two. The few blotted hurriedly-written lines which were
traced on it contained these words:

"Come back as soon as you can. I have been obliged to move. Come
to Gower's Walk, Fulham (number five). I will be on the look-out
for you. Don't be alarmed about us, we are both safe and well.
But come back.—Marian."

The news which those lines contained—news which I instantly
associated with some attempted treachery on the part of Count
Fosco—fairly overwhelmed me. I stood breathless with the paper
crumpled up in my hand. What had happened? What subtle wickedness
had the Count planned and executed in my absence? A night had
passed since Marian's note was written—hours must elapse still
before I could get back to them—some new disaster might have
happened already of which I was ignorant. And here, miles and
miles away from them, here I must remain—held, doubly held, at
the disposal of the law!

I hardly know to what forgetfulness of my obligations anxiety and
alarm might not have tempted me, but for the quieting influence of
my faith in Marian. My absolute reliance on her was the one
earthly consideration which helped me to restrain myself, and gave
me courage to wait. The inquest was the first of the impediments
in the way of my freedom of action. I attended it at the
appointed time, the legal formalities requiring my presence in the
room, but as it turned out, not calling on me to repeat my
evidence. This useless delay was a hard trial, although I did my
best to quiet my impatience by following the course of the
proceedings as closely as I could.

The London solicitor of the deceased (Mr. Merriman) was among the
persons present. But he was quite unable to assist the objects of
the inquiry. He could only say that he was inexpressibly shocked
and astonished, and that he could throw no light whatever on the
mysterious circumstances of the case. At intervals during the
adjourned investigation, he suggested questions which the Coroner
put, but which led to no results. After a patient inquiry, which
lasted nearly three hours, and which exhausted every available
source of information, the jury pronounced the customary verdict
in cases of sudden death by accident. They added to the formal
decision a statement, that there had been no evidence to show how
the keys had been abstracted, how the fire had been caused, or
what the purpose was for which the deceased had entered the
vestry. This act closed the proceedings. The legal
representative of the dead man was left to provide for the
necessities of the interment, and the witnesses were free to
retire.

Resolved not to lose a minute in getting to Knowlesbury, I paid my
bill at the hotel, and hired a fly to take me to the town. A
gentleman who heard me give the order, and who saw that I was
going alone, informed me that he lived in the neighbourhood of
Knowlesbury, and asked if I would have any objection to his
getting home by sharing the fly with me. I accepted his proposal
as a matter of course.

Our conversation during the drive was naturally occupied by the
one absorbing subject of local interest.

My new acquaintance had some knowledge of the late Sir Percival's
solicitor, and he and Mr. Merriman had been discussing the state
of the deceased gentleman's affairs and the succession to the
property. Sir Percival's embarrassments were so well known all
over the county that his solicitor could only make a virtue of
necessity and plainly acknowledge them. He had died without
leaving a will, and he had no personal property to bequeath, even
if he had made one, the whole fortune which he had derived from
his wife having been swallowed up by his creditors. The heir to
the estate (Sir Percival having left no issue) was a son of Sir
Felix Glyde's first cousin, an officer in command of an East
Indiaman. He would find his unexpected inheritance sadly
encumbered, but the property would recover with time, and, if "the
captain" was careful, he might be a rich man yet before he died.

Absorbed as I was in the one idea of getting to London, this
information (which events proved to be perfectly correct) had an
interest of its own to attract my attention. I thought it
justified me in keeping secret my discovery of Sir Percival's
fraud. The heir, whose rights he had usurped, was the heir who
would now have the estate. The income from it, for the last
three-and-twenty years, which should properly have been his, and
which the dead man had squandered to the last farthing, was gone
beyond recall. If I spoke, my speaking would confer advantage on
no one. If I kept the secret, my silence concealed the character
of the man who had cheated Laura into marrying him. For her sake,
I wished to conceal it—for her sake, still, I tell this story
under feigned names.

I parted with my chance companion at Knowlesbury, and went at once
to the town-hall. As I had anticipated, no one was present to
prosecute the case against me—the necessary formalities were
observed, and I was discharged. On leaving the court a letter
from Mr. Dawson was put into my hand. It informed me that he was
absent on professional duty, and it reiterated the offer I had
already received from him of any assistance which I might require
at his hands. I wrote back, warmly acknowledging my obligations
to his kindness, and apologising for not expressing my thanks
personally, in consequence of my immediate recall on pressing
business to town.

Half an hour later I was speeding back to London by the express
train.

It was between nine and ten o'clock before I reached Fulham, and
found my way to Gower's Walk.

Both Laura and Marian came to the door to let me in. I think we
had hardly known how close the tie was which bound us three
together, until the evening came which united us again. We met as
if we had been parted for months instead of for a few days only.
Marian's face was sadly worn and anxious. I saw who had known all
the danger and borne all the trouble in my absence the moment I
looked at her. Laura's brighter looks and better spirits told me
how carefully she had been spared all knowledge of the dreadful
death at Welmingham, and of the true reason of our change of
abode.

The stir of the removal seemed to have cheered and interested her.
She only spoke of it as a happy thought of Marian's to surprise me
on my return with a change from the close, noisy street to the
pleasant neighbourhood of trees and fields and the river. She was
full of projects for the future—of the drawings she was to
finish—of the purchasers I had found in the country who were to
buy them—of the shillings and sixpences she had saved, till her
purse was so heavy that she proudly asked me to weigh it in my own
hand. The change for the better which had been wrought in her
during the few days of my absence was a surprise to me for which I
was quite unprepared—and for all the unspeakable happiness of
seeing it, I was indebted to Marian's courage and to Marian's
love.

When Laura had left us, and when we could speak to one another
without restraint, I tried to give some expression to the
gratitude and the admiration which filled my heart. But the
generous creature would not wait to hear me. That sublime self-
forgetfulness of women, which yields so much and asks so little,
turned all her thoughts from herself to me.

"I had only a moment left before post-time," she said, "or I
should have written less abruptly. You look worn and weary,
Walter. I am afraid my letter must have seriously alarmed you?"

"Only at first," I replied. "My mind was quieted, Marian, by my
trust in you. Was I right in attributing this sudden change of
place to some threatened annoyance on the part of Count Fosco?"

"Perfectly right," she said. "I saw him yesterday, and worse than
that, Walter—I spoke to him."

"Spoke to him? Did he know where we lived? Did he come to the
house?"

"He did. To the house—but not upstairs. Laura never saw him—
Laura suspects nothing. I will tell you how it happened: the
danger, I believe and hope, is over now. Yesterday, I was in the
sitting-room, at our old lodgings. Laura was drawing at the
table, and I was walking about and setting things to rights. I
passed the window, and as I passed it, looked out into the street.
There, on the opposite side of the way, I saw the Count, with a
man talking to him—-"

"Did he notice you at the window?"

"No—at least, I thought not. I was too violently startled to be
quite sure."

"Who was the other man? A stranger?"

"Not a stranger, Walter. As soon as I could draw my breath again,
I recognised him. He was the owner of the Lunatic Asylum."