The Woman in White (85 page)

By degrees we returned to our accustomed way of life. I resumed
the daily work, which had been suspended during my absence in
Hampshire. Our new lodgings cost us more than the smaller and
less convenient rooms which we had left, and the claim thus
implied on my increased exertions was strengthened by the
doubtfulness of our future prospects. Emergencies might yet
happen which would exhaust our little fund at the banker's, and
the work of my hands might be, ultimately, all we had to look to
for support. More permanent and more lucrative employment than
had yet been offered to me was a necessity of our position—a
necessity for which I now diligently set myself to provide.

It must not be supposed that the interval of rest and seclusion of
which I am now writing, entirely suspended, on my part, all
pursuit of the one absorbing purpose with which my thoughts and
actions are associated in these pages. That purpose was, for
months and months yet, never to relax its claims on me. The slow
ripening of it still left me a measure of precaution to take, an
obligation of gratitude to perform, and a doubtful question to
solve.

The measure of precaution related, necessarily, to the Count. It
was of the last importance to ascertain, if possible, whether his
plans committed him to remaining in England—or, in other words,
to remaining within my reach. I contrived to set this doubt at
rest by very simple means. His address in St. John's Wood being
known to me, I inquired in the neighbourhood, and having found out
the agent who had the disposal of the furnished house in which he
lived, I asked if number five, Forest Road, was likely to be let
within a reasonable time. The reply was in the negative. I was
informed that the foreign gentleman then residing in the house had
renewed his term of occupation for another six months, and would
remain in possession until the end of June in the following year.
We were then at the beginning of December only. I left the agent
with my mind relieved from all present fear of the Count's
escaping me.

The obligation I had to perform took me once more into the
presence of Mrs. Clements. I had promised to return, and to
confide to her those particulars relating to the death and burial
of Anne Catherick which I had been obliged to withhold at our
first interview. Changed as circumstances now were, there was no
hindrance to my trusting the good woman with as much of the story
of the conspiracy as it was necessary to tell. I had every reason
that sympathy and friendly feeling could suggest to urge on me the
speedy performance of my promise, and I did conscientiously and
carefully perform it. There is no need to burden these pages with
any statement of what passed at the interview. It will be more to
the purpose to say, that the interview itself necessarily brought
to my mind the one doubtful question still remaining to be solved—
the question of Anne Catherick's parentage on the father's side.

A multitude of small considerations in connection with this
subject—trifling enough in themselves, but strikingly important
when massed together—had latterly led my mind to a conclusion
which I resolved to verify. I obtained Marian's permission to
write to Major Donthorne, of Varneck Hall (where Mrs. Catherick
had lived in service for some years previous to her marriage), to
ask him certain questions. I made the inquiries in Marian's name,
and described them as relating to matters of personal history in
her family, which might explain and excuse my application. When I
wrote the letter I had no certain knowledge that Major Donthorne
was still alive—I despatched it on the chance that he might be
living, and able and willing to reply.

After a lapse of two days proof came, in the shape of a letter,
that the Major was living, and that he was ready to help us.

The idea in my mind when I wrote to him, and the nature of my
inquiries will be easily inferred from his reply. His letter
answered my questions by communicating these important facts—

In the first place, "the late Sir Percival Glyde, of Blackwater
Park," had never set foot in Varneck Hall. The deceased gentleman
was a total stranger to Major Donthorne, and to all his family.

In the second place, "the late Mr. Philip Fairlie, of Limmeridge
House," had been, in his younger days, the intimate friend and
constant guest of Major Donthorne. Having refreshed his memory by
looking back to old letters and other papers, the Major was in a
position to say positively that Mr. Philip Fairlie was staying at
Varneck Hall in the month of August, eighteen hundred and twenty-
six, and that he remained there for the shooting during the month
of September and part of October following. He then left, to the
best of the Major's belief, for Scotland, and did not return to
Varneck Hall till after a lapse of time, when he reappeared in the
character of a newly-married man.

Taken by itself, this statement was, perhaps, of little positive
value, but taken in connection with certain facts, every one of
which either Marian or I knew to be true, it suggested one plain
conclusion that was, to our minds, irresistible.

Knowing, now, that Mr. Philip Fairlie had been at Varneck Hall in
the autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that Mrs.
Catherick had been living there in service at the same time, we
knew also—first, that Anne had been born in June, eighteen
hundred and twenty-seven; secondly, that she had always presented
an extraordinary personal resemblance to Laura; and, thirdly, that
Laura herself was strikingly like her father. Mr. Philip Fairlie
had been one of the notoriously handsome men of his time. In
disposition entirely unlike his brother Frederick, he was the
spoilt darling of society, especially of the women—an easy,
light-hearted, impulsive, affectionate man—generous to a fault—
constitutionally lax in his principles, and notoriously
thoughtless of moral obligations where women were concerned. Such
were the facts we knew—such was the character of the man. Surely
the plain inference that follows needs no pointing out?

Read by the new light which had now broken upon me, even Mrs.
Catherick's letter, in despite of herself, rendered its mite of
assistance towards strengthening the conclusion at which I had
arrived. She had described Mrs. Fairlie (in writing to me) as
"plain-looking," and as having "entrapped the handsomest man in
England into marrying her." Both assertions were gratuitously
made, and both were false. Jealous dislike (which, in such a
woman as Mrs. Catherick, would express itself in petty malice
rather than not express itself at all) appeared to me to be the
only assignable cause for the peculiar insolence of her reference
to Mrs. Fairlie, under circumstances which did not necessitate any
reference at all.

The mention here of Mrs. Fairlie's name naturally suggests one
other question. Did she ever suspect whose child the little girl
brought to her at Limmeridge might be?

Marian's testimony was positive on this point. Mrs. Fairlie's
letter to her husband, which had been read to me in former days—
the letter describing Anne's resemblance to Laura, and
acknowledging her affectionate interest in the little stranger—
had been written, beyond all question, in perfect innocence of
heart. It even seemed doubtful, on consideration, whether Mr.
Philip Fairlie himself had been nearer than his wife to any
suspicion of the truth. The disgracefully deceitful circumstances
under which Mrs. Catherick had married, the purpose of concealment
which the marriage was intended to answer, might well keep her
silent for caution's sake, perhaps for her own pride's sake also,
even assuming that she had the means, in his absence, of
communicating with the father of her unborn child.

As this surmise floated through my mind, there rose on my memory
the remembrance of the Scripture denunciation which we have all
thought of in our time with wonder and with awe: "The sins of the
fathers shall be visited on the children." But for the fatal
resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the
conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and
Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With
what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of
circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the
father to the heartless injury inflicted on the child!

These thoughts came to me, and others with them, which drew my
mind away to the little Cumberland churchyard where Anne Catherick
now lay buried. I thought of the bygone days when I had met her
by Mrs. Fairlie's grave, and met her for the last time. I thought
of her poor helpless hands beating on the tombstone, and her
weary, yearning words, murmured to the dead remains of her
protectress and her friend: "Oh, if I could die, and be hidden and
at rest with YOU!" Little more than a year had passed since she
breathed that wish; and how inscrutably, how awfully, it had been
fulfilled! The words she had spoken to Laura by the shores of the
lake, the very words had now come true. "Oh, if I could only be
buried with your mother! If I could only wake at her side when the
angel's trumpet sounds and the graves give up their dead at the
resurrection!" Through what mortal crime and horror, through what
darkest windings of the way down to death—the lost creature had
wandered in God's leading to the last home that, living, she never
hoped to reach! In that sacred rest I leave her—in that dread
companionship let her remain undisturbed.

So the ghostly figure which has haunted these pages, as it haunted
my life, goes down into the impenetrable gloom. Like a shadow she
first came to me in the loneliness of the night. Like a shadow
she passes away in the loneliness of the dead.

Four months elapsed. April came—the month of spring—the month
of change.

The course of time had flowed through the interval since the
winter peacefully and happily in our new home. I had turned my
long leisure to good account, had largely increased my sources of
employment, and had placed our means of subsistence on surer
grounds. Freed from the suspense and the anxiety which had tried
her so sorely and hung over her so long, Marian's spirits rallied,
and her natural energy of character began to assert itself again,
with something, if not all, of the freedom and the vigour of
former times.

More pliable under change than her sister, Laura showed more
plainly the progress made by the healing influences of her new
life. The worn and wasted look which had prematurely aged her
face was fast leaving it, and the expression which had been the
first of its charms in past days was the first of its beauties
that now returned. My closest observations of her detected but
one serious result of the conspiracy which had once threatened her
reason and her life. Her memory of events, from the period of her
leaving Blackwater Park to the period of our meeting in the
burial-ground of Limmeridge Church, was lost beyond all hope of
recovery. At the slightest reference to that time she changed and
trembled still, her words became confused, her memory wandered and
lost itself as helplessly as ever. Here, and here only, the
traces of the past lay deep—too deep to be effaced.

In all else she was now so far on the way to recovery that, on her
best and brightest days, she sometimes looked and spoke like the
Laura of old times. The happy change wrought its natural result
in us both. From their long slumber, on her side and on mine,
those imperishable memories of our past life in Cumberland now
awoke, which were one and all alike, the memories of our love.

Gradually and insensibly our daily relations towards each other
became constrained. The fond words which I had spoken to her so
naturally, in the days of her sorrow and her suffering, faltered
strangely on my lips. In the time when my dread of losing her was
most present to my mind, I had always kissed her when she left me
at night and when she met me in the morning. The kiss seemed now
to have dropped between us—to be lost out of our lives. Our
hands began to tremble again when they met. We hardly ever looked
long at one another out of Marian's presence. The talk often
flagged between us when we were alone. When I touched her by
accident I felt my heart beating fast, as it used to beat at
Limmeridge House—I saw the lovely answering flush glowing again
in her cheeks, as if we were back among the Cumberland Hills in
our past characters of master and pupil once more. She had long
intervals of silence and thoughtfulness, and denied she had been
thinking when Marian asked her the question. I surprised myself
one day neglecting my work to dream over the little water-colour
portrait of her which I had taken in the summer-house where we
first met—just as I used to neglect Mr. Fairlie's drawings to
dream over the same likeness when it was newly finished in the
bygone time. Changed as all the circumstances now were, our
position towards each other in the golden days of our first
companionship seemed to be revived with the revival of our love.
It was as if Time had drifted us back on the wreck of our early
hopes to the old familiar shore!

To any other woman I could have spoken the decisive words which I
still hesitated to speak to HER. The utter helplessness of her
position—her friendless dependence on all the forbearing
gentleness that I could show her—my fear of touching too soon
some secret sensitiveness in her which my instinct as a man might
not have been fine enough to discover—these considerations, and
others like them, kept me self-distrustfully silent. And yet I
knew that the restraint on both sides must be ended, that the
relations in which we stood towards one another must be altered in
some settled manner for the future, and that it rested with me, in
the first instance, to recognise the necessity for a change.

The more I thought of our position, the harder the attempt to
alter it appeared, while the domestic conditions on which we three
had been living together since the winter remained undisturbed. I
cannot account for the capricious state of mind in which this
feeling originated, but the idea nevertheless possessed me that
some previous change of place and circumstances, some sudden break
in the quiet monotony of our lives, so managed as to vary the home
aspect under which we had been accustomed to see each other, might
prepare the way for me to speak, and might make it easier and less
embarrassing for Laura and Marian to hear.