The Woman in White (15 page)

I shuddered at the thought. There was something horrible in the
blind unreasoning distrust of the future which the mere passage of
it through my mind seemed to imply. It was a welcome interruption
to be roused by feeling Anne Catherick's hand laid on my shoulder.
The touch was as stealthy and as sudden as that other touch which
had petrified me from head to foot on the night when we first met.

"You are looking at me, and you are thinking of something," she
said, with her strange breathless rapidity of utterance. "What is
it?"

"Nothing extraordinary," I answered. "I was only wondering how
you came here."

"I came with a friend who is very good to me. I have only been
here two days."

"And you found your way to this place yesterday?"

"How do you know that?"

"I only guessed it."

She turned from me, and knelt down before the inscription once
more.

"Where should I go if not here?" she said. "The friend who was
better than a mother to me is the only friend I have to visit at
Limmeridge. Oh, it makes my heart ache to see a stain on her
tomb! It ought to be kept white as snow, for her sake. I was
tempted to begin cleaning it yesterday, and I can't help coming
back to go on with it to-day. Is there anything wrong in that? I
hope not. Surely nothing can be wrong that I do for Mrs.
Fairlie's sake?"

The old grateful sense of her benefactress's kindness was
evidently the ruling idea still in the poor creature's mind—the
narrow mind which had but too plainly opened to no other lasting
impression since that first impression of her younger and happier
days. I saw that my best chance of winning her confidence lay in
encouraging her to proceed with the artless employment which she
had come into the burial-ground to pursue. She resumed it at
once, on my telling her she might do so, touching the hard marble
as tenderly as if it had been a sentient thing, and whispering the
words of the inscription to herself, over and over again, as if
the lost days of her girlhood had returned and she was patiently
learning her lesson once more at Mrs. Fairlie's knees.

"Should you wonder very much," I said, preparing the way as
cautiously as I could for the questions that were to come, "if I
owned that it is a satisfaction to me, as well as a surprise, to
see you here? I felt very uneasy about you after you left me in
the cab."

She looked up quickly and suspiciously.

"Uneasy," she repeated. "Why?"

"A strange thing happened after we parted that night. Two men
overtook me in a chaise. They did not see where I was standing,
but they stopped near me, and spoke to a policeman on the other
side of the way."

She instantly suspended her employment. The hand holding the damp
cloth with which she had been cleaning the inscription dropped to
her side. The other hand grasped the marble cross at the head of
the grave. Her face turned towards me slowly, with the blank look
of terror set rigidly on it once more. I went on at all hazards—
it was too late now to draw back.

"The two men spoke to the policeman," I said, "and asked him if he
had seen you. He had not seen you; and then one of the men spoke
again, and said you had escaped from his Asylum."

She sprang to her feet as if my last words had set the pursuers on
her track.

"Stop! and hear the end," I cried. "Stop! and you shall know how
I befriended you. A word from me would have told the men which
way you had gone—and I never spoke that word. I helped your
escape—I made it safe and certain. Think, try to think. Try to
understand what I tell you."

My manner seemed to influence her more than my words. She made an
effort to grasp the new idea. Her hands shifted the damp cloth
hesitatingly from one to the other, exactly as they had shifted
the little travelling-bag on the night when I first saw her.
Slowly the purpose of my words seemed to force its way through the
confusion and agitation of her mind. Slowly her features relaxed,
and her eyes looked at me with their expression gaining in
curiosity what it was fast losing in fear.

"YOU don't think I ought to be back in the Asylum, do you?" she
said.

"Certainly not. I am glad you escaped from it—I am glad I helped
you."

"Yes, yes, you did help me indeed; you helped me at the hard
part," she went on a little vacantly. "It was easy to escape, or
I should not have got away. They never suspected me as they
suspected the others. I was so quiet, and so obedient, and so
easily frightened. The finding London was the hard part, and
there you helped me. Did I thank you at the time? I thank you now
very kindly."

"Was the Asylum far from where you met me? Come! show that you
believe me to be your friend, and tell me where it was."

She mentioned the place—a private Asylum, as its situation
informed me; a private Asylum not very far from the spot where I
had seen her—and then, with evident suspicion of the use to which
I might put her answer, anxiously repeated her former inquiry,
"You don't think I ought to be taken back, do you?"

"Once again, I am glad you escaped—I am glad you prospered well
after you left me," I answered. "You said you had a friend in
London to go to. Did you find the friend?"

"Yes. It was very late, but there was a girl up at needle-work in
the house, and she helped me to rouse Mrs. Clements. Mrs.
Clements is my friend. A good, kind woman, but not like Mrs.
Fairlie. Ah no, nobody is like Mrs. Fairlie!"

"Is Mrs. Clements an old friend of yours? Have you known her a
long time?"

"Yes, she was a neighbour of ours once, at home, in Hampshire, and
liked me, and took care of me when I was a little girl. Years
ago, when she went away from us, she wrote down in my Prayer-book
for me where she was going to live in London, and she said, 'If
you are ever in trouble, Anne, come to me. I have no husband
alive to say me nay, and no children to look after, and I will
take care of you.' Kind words, were they not? I suppose I remember
them because they were kind. It's little enough I remember
besides—little enough, little enough!"

"Had you no father or mother to take care of you?"

"Father?—I never saw him—I never heard mother speak of him.
Father? Ah, dear! he is dead, I suppose."

"And your mother?"

"I don't get on well with her. We are a trouble and a fear to
each other."

A trouble and a fear to each other! At those words the suspicion
crossed my mind, for the first time, that her mother might be the
person who had placed her under restraint.

"Don't ask me about mother," she went on. "I'd rather talk of
Mrs. Clements. Mrs. Clements is like you, she doesn't think that
I ought to be back in the Asylum, and she is as glad as you are
that I escaped from it. She cried over my misfortune, and said it
must be kept secret from everybody."

Her "misfortune." In what sense was she using that word? In a
sense which might explain her motive in writing the anonymous
letter? In a sense which might show it to be the too common and
too customary motive that has led many a woman to interpose
anonymous hindrances to the marriage of the man who has ruined
her? I resolved to attempt the clearing up of this doubt before
more words passed between us on either side.

"What misfortune?" I asked.

"The misfortune of my being shut up," she answered, with every
appearance of feeling surprised at my question. "What other
misfortune could there be?"

I determined to persist, as delicately and forbearingly as
possible. It was of very great importance that I should be
absolutely sure of every step in the investigation which I now
gained in advance.

"There is another misfortune," I said, "to which a woman may be
liable, and by which she may suffer lifelong sorrow and shame."

"What is it?" she asked eagerly.

"The misfortune of believing too innocently in her own virtue, and
in the faith and honour of the man she loves," I answered.

She looked up at me with the artless bewilderment of a child. Not
the slightest confusion or change of colour—not the faintest
trace of any secret consciousness of shame struggling to the
surface appeared in her face—that face which betrayed every other
emotion with such transparent clearness. No words that ever were
spoken could have assured me, as her look and manner now assured
me, that the motive which I had assigned for her writing the
letter and sending it to Miss Fairlie was plainly and distinctly
the wrong one. That doubt, at any rate, was now set at rest; but
the very removal of it opened a new prospect of uncertainty. The
letter, as I knew from positive testimony, pointed at Sir Percival
Glyde, though it did not name him. She must have had some strong
motive, originating in some deep sense of injury, for secretly
denouncing him to Miss Fairlie in such terms as she had employed,
and that motive was unquestionably not to be traced to the loss of
her innocence and her character. Whatever wrong he might have
inflicted on her was not of that nature. Of what nature could it
be?

"I don't understand you," she said, after evidently trying hard,
and trying in vain, to discover the meaning of the words I had
last said to her.

"Never mind," I answered. "Let us go on with what we were talking
about. Tell me how long you stayed with Mrs. Clements in London,
and how you came here."

"How long?" she repeated. "I stayed with Mrs. Clements till we
both came to this place, two days ago."

"You are living in the village, then?" I said. "It is strange I
should not have heard of you, though you have only been here two
days."

"No, no, not in the village. Three miles away at a farm. Do you
know the farm? They call it Todd's Corner."

I remembered the place perfectly—we had often passed by it in our
drives. It was one of the oldest farms in the neighbourhood,
situated in a solitary, sheltered spot, inland at the junction of
two hills.

"They are relations of Mrs. Clements at Todd's Corner," she went
on, "and they had often asked her to go and see them. She said
she would go, and take me with her, for the quiet and the fresh
air. It was very kind, was it not? I would have gone anywhere to
be quiet, and safe, and out of the way. But when I heard that
Todd's Corner was near Limmeridge—oh! I was so happy I would have
walked all the way barefoot to get there, and see the schools and
the village and Limmeridge House again. They are very good people
at Todd's Corner. I hope I shall stay there a long time. There
is only one thing I don't like about them, and don't like about
Mrs. Clements—-"

"What is it?"

"They will tease me about dressing all in white—they say it looks
so particular. How do they know? Mrs. Fairlie knew best. Mrs.
Fairlie would never have made me wear this ugly blue cloak! Ah!
she was fond of white in her lifetime, and here is white stone
about her grave—and I am making it whiter for her sake. She
often wore white herself, and she always dressed her little
daughter in white. Is Miss Fairlie well and happy? Does she wear
white now, as she used when she was a girl?"

Her voice sank when she put the questions about Miss Fairlie, and
she turned her head farther and farther away from me. I thought I
detected, in the alteration of her manner, an uneasy consciousness
of the risk she had run in sending the anonymous letter, and I
instantly determined so to frame my answer as to surprise her into
owning it.

"Miss Fairlie was not very well or very happy this morning," I
said.

She murmured a few words, but they were spoken so confusedly, and
in such a low tone, that I could not even guess at what they
meant.

"Did you ask me why Miss Fairlie was neither well nor happy this
morning?" I continued.

"No," she said quickly and eagerly—"oh no, I never asked that."

"I will tell you without your asking," I went on. "Miss Fairlie
has received your letter."

She had been down on her knees for some little time past,
carefully removing the last weather-stains left about the
inscription while we were speaking together. The first sentence
of the words I had just addressed to her made her pause in her
occupation, and turn slowly without rising from her knees, so as
to face me. The second sentence literally petrified her. The
cloth she had been holding dropped from her hands—her lips fell
apart—all the little colour that there was naturally in her face
left it in an instant.

"How do you know?" she said faintly. "Who showed it to you?" The
blood rushed back into her face—rushed overwhelmingly, as the
sense rushed upon her mind that her own words had betrayed her.
She struck her hands together in despair. "I never wrote it," she
gasped affrightedly; "I know nothing about it!"

"Yes," I said, "you wrote it, and you know about it. It was wrong
to send such a letter, it was wrong to frighten Miss Fairlie. If
you had anything to say that it was right and necessary for her to
hear, you should have gone yourself to Limmeridge House—you
should have spoken to the young lady with your own lips."

She crouched down over the flat stone of the grave, till her face
was hidden on it, and made no reply.

"Miss Fairlie will be as good and kind to you as her mother was,
if you mean well," I went on. "Miss Fairlie will keep your
secret, and not let you come to any harm. Will you see her to-
morrow at the farm? Will you meet her in the garden at Limmeridge
House?"

"Oh, if I could die, and be hidden and at rest with YOU!" Her lips
murmured the words close on the grave-stone, murmured them in
tones of passionate endearment, to the dead remains beneath. "You
know how I love your child, for your sake! Oh, Mrs. Fairlie! Mrs.
Fairlie! tell me how to save her. Be my darling and my mother
once more, and tell me what to do for the best."