The Woman in White (21 page)

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.

I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out on me in that
way. We see so much malice and so little indignation in my
profession.

"In that case," I said, "excuse me if I tell you, in our legal
phrase, that you are travelling out of the record. Whatever the
consequences may be, Sir Percival has a right to expect that your
sister should carefully consider her engagement from every
reasonable point of view before she claims her release from it.
If that unlucky letter has prejudiced her against him, go at once,
and tell her that he has cleared himself in your eyes and in mine.
What objection can she urge against him after that? What excuse
can she possibly have for changing her mind about a man whom she
had virtually accepted for her husband more than two years ago?"

"In the eyes of law and reason, Mr. Gilmore, no excuse, I daresay.
If she still hesitates, and if I still hesitate, you must
attribute our strange conduct, if you like, to caprice in both
cases, and we must bear the imputation as well as we can."

With those words she suddenly rose and left me. When a sensible
woman has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a
flippant answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred, that she has something to conceal. I returned to the
perusal of the newspaper, strongly suspecting that Miss Halcombe
and Miss Fairlie had a secret between them which they were keeping
from Sir Percival, and keeping from me. I thought this hard on
both of us, especially on Sir Percival.

My doubts—or to speak more correctly, my convictions—were
confirmed by Miss Halcombe's language and manner when I saw her
again later in the day. She was suspiciously brief and reserved
in telling me the result of her interview with her sister. Miss
Fairlie, it appeared, had listened quietly while the affair of the
letter was placed before her in the right point of view, but when
Miss Halcombe next proceeded to say that the object of Sir
Percival's visit at Limmeridge was to prevail on her to let a day
be fixed for the marriage she checked all further reference to the
subject by begging for time. If Sir Percival would consent to
spare her for the present, she would undertake to give him his
final answer before the end of the year. She pleaded for this
delay with such anxiety and agitation, that Miss Halcombe had
promised to use her influence, if necessary, to obtain it, and
there, at Miss Fairlie's earnest entreaty, all further discussion
of the marriage question had ended.

The purely temporary arrangement thus proposed might have been
convenient enough to the young lady, but it proved somewhat
embarrassing to the writer of these lines. That morning's post
had brought a letter from my partner, which obliged me to return
to town the next day by the afternoon train. It was extremely
probable that I should find no second opportunity of presenting
myself at Limmeridge House during the remainder of the year. In
that case, supposing Miss Fairlie ultimately decided on holding to
her engagement, my necessary personal communication with her,
before I drew her settlement, would become something like a
downright impossibility, and we should be obliged to commit to
writing questions which ought always to be discussed on both sides
by word of mouth. I said nothing about this difficulty until Sir
Percival had been consulted on the subject of the desired delay.
He was too gallant a gentleman not to grant the request
immediately. When Miss Halcombe informed me of this I told her
that I must absolutely speak to her sister before I left
Limmeridge, and it was, therefore, arranged that I should see Miss
Fairlie in her own sitting-room the next morning. She did not
come down to dinner, or join us in the evening. Indisposition was
the excuse, and I thought Sir Percival looked, as well he might, a
little annoyed when he heard of it.

The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, I went up to Miss
Fairlie's sitting-room. The poor girl looked so pale and sad, and
came forward to welcome me so readily and prettily, that the
resolution to lecture her on her caprice and indecision, which I
had been forming all the way upstairs, failed me on the spot. I
led her back to the chair from which she had risen, and placed
myself opposite to her. Her cross-grained pet greyhound was in
the room, and I fully expected a barking and snapping reception.
Strange to say, the whimsical little brute falsified my
expectations by jumping into my lap and poking its sharp muzzle
familiarly into my hand the moment I sat down.

"You used often to sit on my knee when you were a child, my
dear," I said, "and now your little dog seems determined to
succeed you in the vacant throne. Is that pretty drawing your
doing?"

I pointed to a little album which lay on the table by her side and
which she had evidently been looking over when I came in. The
page that lay open had a small water-colour landscape very neatly
mounted on it. This was the drawing which had suggested my
question—an idle question enough—but how could I begin to talk
of business to her the moment I opened my lips?

"No," she said, looking away from the drawing rather confusedly,
"it is not my doing."

Her fingers had a restless habit, which I remembered in her as a
child, of always playing with the first thing that came to hand
whenever any one was talking to her. On this occasion they
wandered to the album, and toyed absently about the margin of the
little water-colour drawing. The expression of melancholy
deepened on her face. She did not look at the drawing, or look at
me. Her eyes moved uneasily from object to object in the room,
betraying plainly that she suspected what my purpose was in coming
to speak to her. Seeing that, I thought it best to get to the
purpose with as little delay as possible.

"One of the errands, my dear, which brings me here is to bid you
good-bye," I began. "I must get back to London to-day: and,
before I leave, I want to have a word with you on the subject of
your own affairs."

"I am very sorry you are going, Mr. Gilmore," she said, looking at
me kindly. "It is like the happy old times to have you here.

"I hope I may be able to come back and recall those pleasant
memories once more," I continued; "but as there is some
uncertainty about the future, I must take my opportunity when I
can get it, and speak to you now. I am your old lawyer and your
old friend, and I may remind you, I am sure, without offence, of
the possibility of your marrying Sir Percival Glyde."

She took her hand off the little album as suddenly as if it had
turned hot and burnt her. Her fingers twined together nervously
in her lap, her eyes looked down again at the floor, and an
expression of constraint settled on her face which looked almost
like an expression of pain.

"Is it absolutely necessary to speak of my marriage engagement?"
she asked in low tones.

"It is necessary to refer to it," I answered, "but not to dwell on
it. Let us merely say that you may marry, or that you may not
marry. In the first case, I must be prepared, beforehand, to draw
your settlement, and I ought not to do that without, as a matter
of politeness, first consulting you. This may be my only chance
of hearing what your wishes are. Let us, therefore, suppose the
case of your marrying, and let me inform you, in as few words as
possible, what your position is now, and what you may make it, if
you please, in the future."

I explained to her the object of a marriage-settlement, and then
told her exactly what her prospects were—in the first place, on
her coming of age, and in the second place, on the decease of her
uncle—marking the distinction between the property in which she
had a life-interest only, and the property which was left at her
own control. She listened attentively, with the constrained
expression still on her face, and her hands still nervously
clasped together in her lap.

"And now," I said in conclusion, "tell me if you can think of any
condition which, in the case we have supposed, you would wish me
to make for you—subject, of course, to your guardian's approval,
as you are not yet of age."

She moved uneasily in her chair, then looked in my face on a
sudden very earnestly.

"If it does happen," she began faintly, "if I am—-"

"If you are married," I added, helping her out.