Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (286 page)

Miss Halcombe was not long in writing the note. When it was done she rose from the writing-table, and handed the open sheet of paper to Sir Percival. He bowed, took it from her, folded it up immediately without looking at the contents, sealed it, wrote the address, and handed it back to her in silence. I never saw anything more gracefully and more becomingly done in my life.

“You insist on my posting this letter, Sir Percival?” said Miss Halcombe.

“I beg you will post it,” he answered. “And now that it is written and sealed up, allow me to ask one or two last questions about the unhappy woman to whom it refers. I have read the communication which Mr. Gilmore kindly addressed to my solicitor, describing the circumstances under which the writer of the anonymous letter was identified. But there are certain points to which that statement does not refer. Did Anne Catherick see Miss Fairlie?”

“Certainly not,” replied Miss Halcombe.

“Did she see you?”

“No.”

“She saw nobody from the house then, except a certain Mr. Hartright, who accidentally met with her in the churchyard here?”

“Nobody else.”

“Mr. Hartright was employed at Limmeridge as a drawing-master, I believe? Is he a member of one of the Water-Colour Societies?”

“I believe he is,” answered Miss Halcombe.

He paused for a moment, as if he was thinking over the last answer, and then added —

“Did you find out where Anne Catherick was living, when she was in this neighbourhood?”

“Yes. At a farm on the moor, called Todd’s Corner.”

“It is a duty we all owe to the poor creature herself to trace her,” continued Sir Percival. “She may have said something at Todd’s Corner which may help us to find her. I will go there and make inquiries on the chance. In the meantime, as I cannot prevail on myself to discuss this painful subject with Miss Fairlie, may I beg, Miss Halcombe, that you will kindly undertake to give her the necessary explanation, deferring it of course until you have received the reply to that note.”

Miss Halcombe promised to comply with his request. He thanked her, nodded pleasantly, and left us, to go and establish himself in his own room. As he opened the door the cross-grained greyhound poked out her sharp muzzle from under the sofa, and barked and snapped at him.

“A good morning’s work, Miss Halcombe,” I said, as soon as we were alone. “Here is an anxious day well ended already.”

“Yes,” she answered; “no doubt. I am very glad your mind is satisfied.”

“My mind! Surely, with that note in your hand, your mind is at ease too?”

“Oh yes — how can it be otherwise? I know the thing could not be,” she went on, speaking more to herself than to me; “but I almost wish Walter Hartright had stayed here long enough to be present at the explanation, and to hear the proposal to me to write this note.”

I was a little surprised — perhaps a little piqued also — by these last words.

“Events, it is true, connected Mr. Hartright very remarkably with the affair of the letter,” I said; “and I readily admit that he conducted himself, all things considered, with great delicacy and discretion. But I am quite at a loss to understand what useful influence his presence could have exercised in relation to the effect of Sir Percival’s statement on your mind or mine.”

“It was only a fancy,” she said absently. “There is no need to discuss it, Mr. Gilmore. Your experience ought to be, and is, the best guide I can desire.”

I did not altogether like her thrusting the whole responsibility, in this marked manner, on my shoulders. If Mr. Fairlie had done it, I should not have been surprised. But resolute, clear-minded Miss Halcombe was the very last person in the world whom I should have expected to find shrinking from the expression of an opinion of her own.

“If any doubts still trouble you,” I said, “why not mention them to me at once? Tell me plainly, have you any reason to distrust Sir Percival Glyde?”

“None whatever.”

“Do you see anything improbable, or contradictory, in his explanation?”

“How can I say I do, after the proof he has offered me of the truth of it? Can there be better testimony in his favour, Mr. Gilmore, than the testimony of the woman’s mother?”

“None better. If the answer to your note of inquiry proves to be satisfactory, I for one cannot see what more any friend of Sir Percival’s can possibly expect from him.”

“Then we will post the note,” she said, rising to leave the room, “and dismiss all further reference to the subject until the answer arrives. Don’t attach any weight to my hesitation. I can give no better reason for it than that I have been over-anxious about Laura lately — and anxiety, Mr. Gilmore, unsettles the strongest of us.”

She left me abruptly, her naturally firm voice faltering as she spoke those last words. A sensitive, vehement, passionate nature — a woman of ten thousand in these trivial, superficial times. I had known her from her earliest years — I had seen her tested, as she grew up, in more than one trying family crisis, and my long experience made me attach an importance to her hesitation under the circumstances here detailed, which I should certainly not have felt in the case of another woman. I could see no cause for any uneasiness or any doubt, but she had made me a little uneasy, and a little doubtful, nevertheless. In my youth, I should have chafed and fretted under the irritation of my own unreasonable state of mind. In my age, I knew better, and went out philosophically to walk it off.

II

We all met again at dinner-time.

Sir Percival was in such boisterous high spirits that I hardly recognised him as the same man whose quiet tact, refinement, and good sense had impressed me so strongly at the interview of the morning. The only trace of his former self that I could detect reappeared, every now and then, in his manner towards Miss Fairlie. A look or a word from her suspended his loudest laugh, checked his gayest flow of talk, and rendered him all attention to her, and to no one else at table, in an instant. Although he never openly tried to draw her into the conversation, he never lost the slightest chance she gave him of letting her drift into it by accident, and of saying the words to her, under those favourable circumstances, which a man with less tact and delicacy would have pointedly addressed to her the moment they occurred to him. Rather to my surprise, Miss Fairlie appeared to be sensible of his attentions without being moved by them. She was a little confused from time to time when he looked at her, or spoke to her; but she never warmed towards him. Rank, fortune, good breeding, good looks, the respect of a gentleman, and the devotion of a lover were all humbly placed at her feet, and, so far as appearances went, were all offered in vain.

On the next day, the Tuesday, Sir Percival went in the morning (taking one of the servants with him as a guide) to Todd’s Corner. His inquiries, as I afterwards heard, led to no results. On his return he had an interview with Mr. Fairlie, and in the afternoon he and Miss Halcombe rode out together. Nothing else happened worthy of record. The evening passed as usual. There was no change in Sir Percival, and no change in Miss Fairlie.

The Wednesday’s post brought with it an event — the reply from Mrs. Catherick. I took a copy of the document, which I have preserved, and which I may as well present in this place. It ran as follows —

“MADAM, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, inquiring whether my daughter, Anne, was placed under medical superintendence with my knowledge and approval, and whether the share taken in the matter by Sir Percival Glyde was such as to merit the expression of my gratitude towards that gentleman. Be pleased to accept my answer in the affirmative to both those questions, and believe me to remain, your obedient servant,
“JANE ANNE CATHERICK.”

Short, sharp, and to the point; in form rather a business-like letter for a woman to write — in substance as plain a confirmation as could be desired of Sir Percival Glyde’s statement. This was my opinion, and with certain minor reservations, Miss Halcombe’s opinion also. Sir Percival, when the letter was shown to him, did not appear to be struck by the sharp, short tone of it. He told us that Mrs. Catherick was a woman of few words, a clear-headed, straightforward, unimaginative person, who wrote briefly and plainly, just as she spoke.

The next duty to be accomplished, now that the answer had been received, was to acquaint Miss Fairlie with Sir Percival’s explanation. Miss Halcombe had undertaken to do this, and had left the room to go to her sister, when she suddenly returned again, and sat down by the easy-chair in which I was reading the newspaper. Sir Percival had gone out a minute before to look at the stables, and no one was in the room but ourselves.

“I suppose we have really and truly done all we can?” she said, turning and twisting Mrs. Catherick’s letter in her hand.

“If we are friends of Sir Percival’s, who know him and trust him, we have done all, and more than all, that is necessary,” I answered, a little annoyed by this return of her hesitation. “But if we are enemies who suspect him —
 
— ”

“That alternative is not even to be thought of,” she interposed. “We are Sir Percival’s friends, and if generosity and forbearance can add to our regard for him, we ought to be Sir Percival’s admirers as well. You know that he saw Mr. Fairlie yesterday, and that he afterwards went out with me.”

“Yes. I saw you riding away together.”

“We began the ride by talking about Anne Catherick, and about the singular manner in which Mr. Hartright met with her. But we soon dropped that subject, and Sir Percival spoke next, in the most unselfish terms, of his engagement with Laura. He said he had observed that she was out of spirits, and he was willing, if not informed to the contrary, to attribute to that cause the alteration in her manner towards him during his present visit. If, however, there was any more serious reason for the change, he would entreat that no constraint might be placed on her inclinations either by Mr. Fairlie or by me. All he asked, in that case, was that she would recall to mind, for the last time, what the circumstances were under which the engagement between them was made, and what his conduct had been from the beginning of the courtship to the present time. If, after due reflection on those two subjects, she seriously desired that he should withdraw his pretensions to the honour of becoming her husband — and if she would tell him so plainly with her own lips — he would sacrifice himself by leaving her perfectly free to withdraw from the engagement.”

“No man could say more than that, Miss Halcombe. As to my experience, few men in his situation would have said as much.”

She paused after I had spoken those words, and looked at me with a singular expression of perplexity and distress.

“I accuse nobody, and I suspect nothing,” she broke out abruptly. “But I cannot and will not accept the responsibility of persuading Laura to this marriage.”

“That is exactly the course which Sir Percival Glyde has himself requested you to take,” I replied in astonishment. “He has begged you not to force her inclinations.”

“And he indirectly obliges me to force them, if I give her his message.”

“How can that possibly be?”

“Consult your own knowledge of Laura, Mr. Gilmore. If I tell her to reflect on the circumstances of her engagement, I at once appeal to two of the strongest feelings in her nature — to her love for her father’s memory, and to her strict regard for truth. You know that she never broke a promise in her life — you know that she entered on this engagement at the beginning of her father’s fatal illness, and that he spoke hopefully and happily of her marriage to Sir Percival Glyde on his deathbed.”

I own that I was a little shocked at this view of the case.

“Surely,” I said, “you don’t mean to infer that when Sir Percival spoke to you yesterday he speculated on such a result as you have just mentioned?”

Her frank, fearless face answered for her before she spoke.

“Do you think I would remain an instant in the company of any man whom I suspected of such baseness as that?” she asked angrily.