The Woman in White (13 page)

The course of our useless investigations brought us, in time, to
the end of the village at which the schools established by Mrs.
Fairlie were situated. As we passed the side of the building
appropriated to the use of the boys, I suggested the propriety of
making a last inquiry of the schoolmaster, whom we might presume
to be, in virtue of his office, the most intelligent man in the
place.

"I am afraid the schoolmaster must have been occupied with his
scholars," said Miss Halcombe, "just at the time when the woman
passed through the village and returned again. However, we can
but try."

We entered the playground enclosure, and walked by the schoolroom
window to get round to the door, which was situated at the back of
the building. I stopped for a moment at the window and looked in.

The schoolmaster was sitting at his high desk, with his back to
me, apparently haranguing the pupils, who were all gathered
together in front of him, with one exception. The one exception
was a sturdy white-headed boy, standing apart from all the rest on
a stool in a corner—a forlorn little Crusoe, isolated in his own
desert island of solitary penal disgrace.

The door, when we got round to it, was ajar, and the school-
master's voice reached us plainly, as we both stopped for a minute
under the porch.

"Now, boys," said the voice, "mind what I tell you. If I hear
another word spoken about ghosts in this school, it will be the
worse for all of you. There are no such things as ghosts, and
therefore any boy who believes in ghosts believes in what can't
possibly be; and a boy who belongs to Limmeridge School, and
believes in what can't possibly be, sets up his back against
reason and discipline, and must be punished accordingly. You all
see Jacob Postlethwaite standing up on the stool there in
disgrace. He has been punished, not because he said he saw a
ghost last night, but because he is too impudent and too obstinate
to listen to reason, and because he persists in saying he saw the
ghost after I have told him that no such thing can possibly be.
If nothing else will do, I mean to cane the ghost out of Jacob
Postlethwaite, and if the thing spreads among any of the rest of
you, I mean to go a step farther, and cane the ghost out of the
whole school."

"We seem to have chosen an awkward moment for our visit," said
Miss Halcombe, pushing open the door at the end of the
schoolmaster's address, and leading the way in.

Our appearance produced a strong sensation among the boys. They
appeared to think that we had arrived for the express purpose of
seeing Jacob Postlethwaite caned.

"Go home all of you to dinner," said the schoolmaster, "except
Jacob. Jacob must stop where he is; and the ghost may bring him
his dinner, if the ghost pleases."

Jacob's fortitude deserted him at the double disappearance of his
schoolfellows and his prospect of dinner. He took his hands out
of his pockets, looked hard at his knuckles, raised them with
great deliberation to his eyes, and when they got there, ground
them round and round slowly, accompanying the action by short
spasms of sniffing, which followed each other at regular
intervals—the nasal minute guns of juvenile distress.

"We came here to ask you a question, Mr. Dempster." said Miss
Halcombe, addressing the schoolmaster; "and we little expected to
find you occupied in exorcising a ghost. What does it all mean?
What has really happened?"

"That wicked boy has been frightening the whole school, Miss
Halcombe, by declaring that he saw a ghost yesterday evening,"
answered the master; "and he still persists in his absurd story,
in spite of all that I can say to him."

"Most extraordinary," said Miss Halcombe "I should not have
thought it possible that any of the boys had imagination enough to
see a ghost. This is a new accession indeed to the hard labour of
forming the youthful mind at Limmeridge, and I heartily wish you
well through it, Mr. Dempster. In the meantime, let me explain
why you see me here, and what it is I want."

She then put the same question to the schoolmaster which we had
asked already of almost every one else in the village. It was met
by the same discouraging answer Mr. Dempster had not set eyes on
the stranger of whom we were in search.

"We may as well return to the house, Mr. Hartright," said Miss
Halcombe; "the information we want is evidently not to be found."

She had bowed to Mr. Dempster, and was about to leave the
schoolroom, when the forlorn position of Jacob Postlethwaite,
piteously sniffing on the stool of penitence, attracted her
attention as she passed him, and made her stop good-humouredly to
speak a word to the little prisoner before she opened the door.

"You foolish boy," she said, "why don't you beg Mr. Dempster's
pardon, and hold your tongue about the ghost?"

"Eh!—but I saw t' ghaist," persisted Jacob Postlethwaite, with a
stare of terror and a burst of tears.

"Stuff and nonsense! You saw nothing of the kind. Ghost indeed!
What ghost—-"

"I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe," interposed the school-master a
little uneasily—"but I think you had better not question the boy.
The obstinate folly of his story is beyond all belief; and you
might lead him into ignorantly—-"

"Ignorantly what?" inquired Miss Halcombe sharply.

"Ignorantly shocking your feelings," said Mr. Dempster, looking
very much discomposed.

"Upon my word, Mr. Dempster, you pay my feelings a great
compliment in thinking them weak enough to be shocked by such an
urchin as that!" She turned with an air of satirical defiance to
little Jacob, and began to question him directly. "Come!" she
said, "I mean to know all about this. You naughty boy, when did
you see the ghost?"

"Yestere'en, at the gloaming," replied Jacob.

"Oh! you saw it yesterday evening, in the twilight? And what was
it like?"

"Arl in white—as a ghaist should be," answered the ghost-seer,
with a confidence beyond his years.

"And where was it?"

"Away yander, in t' kirkyard—where a ghaist ought to be."

"As a 'ghaist' should be—where a 'ghaist' ought to be—why, you
little fool, you talk as if the manners and customs of ghosts had
been familiar to you from your infancy! You have got your story at
your fingers' ends, at any rate. I suppose I shall hear next that
you can actually tell me whose ghost it was?"

"Eh! but I just can," replied Jacob, nodding his head with an air
of gloomy triumph.

Mr. Dempster had already tried several times to speak while Miss
Halcombe was examining his pupil, and he now interposed resolutely
enough to make himself heard.

"Excuse me, Miss Halcombe," he said, "if I venture to say that you
are only encouraging the boy by asking him these questions."

"I will merely ask one more, Mr. Dempster, and then I shall be
quite satisfied. Well," she continued, turning to the boy, "and
whose ghost was it?"

"T' ghaist of Mistress Fairlie," answered Jacob in a whisper.

The effect which this extraordinary reply produced on Miss
Halcombe fully justified the anxiety which the schoolmaster had
shown to prevent her from hearing it. Her face crimsoned with
indignation—she turned upon little Jacob with an angry suddenness
which terrified him into a fresh burst of tears—opened her lips
to speak to him—then controlled herself, and addressed the master
instead of the boy.

"It is useless," she said, "to hold such a child as that
responsible for what he says. I have little doubt that the idea
has been put into his head by others. If there are people in this
village, Mr. Dempster, who have forgotten the respect and
gratitude due from every soul in it to my mother's memory, I will
find them out, and if I have any influence with Mr. Fairlie, they
shall suffer for it."

"I hope—indeed, I am sure, Miss Halcombe—that you are mistaken,"
said the schoolmaster. "The matter begins and ends with the boy's
own perversity and folly. He saw, or thought he saw, a woman in
white, yesterday evening, as he was passing the churchyard; and
the figure, real or fancied, was standing by the marble cross,
which he and every one else in Limmeridge knows to be the monument
over Mrs. Fairlie's grave. These two circumstances are surely
sufficient to have suggested to the boy himself the answer which
has so naturally shocked you?"

Although Miss Halcombe did not seem to be convinced, she evidently
felt that the schoolmaster's statement of the case was too
sensible to be openly combated. She merely replied by thanking
him for his attention, and by promising to see him again when her
doubts were satisfied. This said, she bowed, and led the way out
of the schoolroom.

Throughout the whole of this strange scene I had stood apart,
listening attentively, and drawing my own conclusions. As soon as
we were alone again, Miss Halcombe asked me if I had formed any
opinion on what I had heard.

"A very strong opinion," I answered; "the boy's story, as I
believe, has a foundation in fact. I confess I am anxious to see
the monument over Mrs. Fairlie's grave, and to examine the ground
about it."

"You shall see the grave."

She paused after making that reply, and reflected a little as we
walked on. "What has happened in the schoolroom," she resumed,
"has so completely distracted my attention from the subject of the
letter, that I feel a little bewildered when I try to return to
it. Must we give up all idea of making any further inquiries, and
wait to place the thing in Mr. Gilmore's hands to-morrow?"

"By no means, Miss Halcombe. What has happened in the schoolroom
encourages me to persevere in the investigation."

"Why does it encourage you?"

"Because it strengthens a suspicion I felt when you gave me the
letter to read."

"I suppose you had your reasons, Mr. Hartright, for concealing
that suspicion from me till this moment?"

"I was afraid to encourage it in myself. I thought it was utterly
preposterous—I distrusted it as the result of some perversity in
my own imagination. But I can do so no longer. Not only the
boy's own answers to your questions, but even a chance expression
that dropped from the schoolmaster's lips in explaining his story,
have forced the idea back into my mind. Events may yet prove that
idea to be a delusion, Miss Halcombe; but the belief is strong in
me, at this moment, that the fancied ghost in the churchyard, and
the writer of the anonymous letter, are one and the same person."

She stopped, turned pale, and looked me eagerly in the face.

"What person?"

"The schoolmaster unconsciously told you. When he spoke of the
figure that the boy saw in the churchyard he called it 'a woman in
white.'"

"Not Anne Catherick?"

"Yes, Anne Catherick."

She put her hand through my arm and leaned on it heavily.

"I don't know why," she said in low tones, "but there is something
in this suspicion of yours that seems to startle and unnerve me.
I feel—-" She stopped, and tried to laugh it off. "Mr.
Hartright," she went on, "I will show you the grave, and then go
back at once to the house. I had better not leave Laura too long
alone. I had better go back and sit with her."

We were close to the churchyard when she spoke. The church, a
dreary building of grey stone, was situated in a little valley, so
as to be sheltered from the bleak winds blowing over the moorland
all round it. The burial-ground advanced, from the side of the
church, a little way up the slope of the hill. It was surrounded
by a rough, low stone wall, and was bare and open to the sky,
except at one extremity, where a brook trickled down the stony
hill-side, and a clump of dwarf trees threw their narrow shadows
over the short, meagre grass. Just beyond the brook and the
trees, and not far from one of the three stone stiles which
afforded entrance, at various points, to the church-yard, rose the
white marble cross that distinguished Mrs. Fairlie's grave from
the humbler monuments scattered about it.

"I need go no farther with you," said Miss Halcombe, pointing to
the grave. "You will let me know if you find anything to confirm
the idea you have just mentioned to me. Let us meet again at the
house."

She left me. I descended at once to the churchyard, and crossed
the stile which led directly to Mrs. Fairlie's grave.

The grass about it was too short, and the ground too hard, to show
any marks of footsteps. Disappointed thus far, I next looked
attentively at the cross, and at the square block of marble below
it, on which the inscription was cut.

The natural whiteness of the cross was a little clouded, here and
there, by weather stains, and rather more than one half of the
square block beneath it, on the side which bore the inscription,
was in the same condition. The other half, however, attracted my
attention at once by its singular freedom from stain or impurity
of any kind. I looked closer, and saw that it had been cleaned—
recently cleaned, in a downward direction from top to bottom. The
boundary line between the part that had been cleaned and the part
that had not was traceable wherever the inscription left a blank
space of marble—sharply traceable as a line that had been
produced by artificial means. Who had begun the cleansing of the
marble, and who had left it unfinished?

I looked about me, wondering how the question was to be solved.
No sign of a habitation could be discerned from the point at which
I was standing—the burial-ground was left in the lonely
possession of the dead. I returned to the church, and walked
round it till I came to the back of the building; then crossed the
boundary wall beyond, by another of the stone stiles, and found
myself at the head of a path leading down into a deserted stone
quarry. Against one side of the quarry a little two-room cottage
was built, and just outside the door an old woman was engaged in
washing.