'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.'
I heard her lips kissing the stone I saw her hands beating on it passionately. The sound and the sight deeply affected me. I stooped down, and took the poor helpless hands tenderly in mine, and tried to soothe her.
It was useless. She snatched her hands from me, and never moved her face from the stone. Seeing the urgent necessity of quieting her at any hazard and by any means, I appealed to the only anxiety that she appeared to feel, in connection with me and with my opinion of her the anxiety to convince me of her fitness to be mistress of her own actions.
'Come, come,' I said gently. 'Try to compose yourself, or you will make me later my opinion of you. Don't let me think that the person who put you in the Asylum might have had some excuse -'
The next words died away on my lips. The instant I risked that chance reference to the person who had put her in the Asylum she sprang up on her knees. A most extraordinary and startling change passed over her. Her face, at all ordinary times so touching to look at, in its nervous sensitiveness, weakness, and uncertainty, became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear, which communicated a wild, unnatural force to every feature. Her eyes dilated in the dim evening light, like the eyes of a wild animal. She caught up the cloth that had fallen at her side, as if it had been a living creature that she could kill, and crushed it in both her hands with such convulsive strength, that the few drops of moisture left in it trickled down on the stone beneath her.
'Talk of something else,' she said, whispering through her teeth. 'I shall lose myself if you talk of that.'
Every vestige of the gentler thoughts which had filled her mind hardly a minute since seemed to be swept from it now. It was evident that the impression left by Mrs. Fairlie's kindness was not, as I had supposed, the only strong impression on her memory. With the grateful remembrance of her school-days at Limmeridge, there existed the vindictive remembrance of the wrong inflicted on her by her confinement in the Asylum. Who had done that wrong? Could it really be her mother?
It was hard to give up pursuing the inquiry to that final point, but I forced myself to abandon all idea of continuing it. Seeing her as I saw her now, it would have been cruel to think of anything but the necessity and the humanity of restoring her composure.
'I will talk of nothing to distress you,' I said soothingly.
'You want something,' she answered sharply and suspiciously. 'Don't look at me like that. Speak to me tell me what you want.'
'I only want you to quiet yourself, and when you are calmer, to think over what I have said.'
'Said?' She paused twisted the cloth in her hands, backwards and forwards, and whispered to herself, 'What is it he said?' She turned again towards me, and shook her head impatiently. 'Why don't you help me?' she asked, with angry suddenness.
'Yes, yes,' I said, 'I will help you, and you will soon remember. I asked you to see Miss Fairlie to-morrow, and to tell her the truth about the letter.'
'Ah! Miss Fairlie Fairlie Fairlie -'
The mere utterance of the loved familiar name seemed to quiet her. Her face softened and grew like itself again.
'You need have no fear of Miss Fairlie,' I continued, 'and no fear of getting into trouble through the letter. She knows so much about it already, that you will have no difficulty in telling her all. There can be little necessity for concealment where there is hardly anything left to conceal. You mention no names in the letter; but Miss Fairlie knows that the person you write of is Sir Percival Glyde -'
The instant I pronounced that name she started to her feet, and a scream burst from her that rang through the churchyard, and made my heart leap in me with the terror of it. The dark deformity of the expression which had just left her face lowered on it once more, with doubled and trebled intensity. The shriek at the name, the reiterated look of hatred and fear that instantly followed, told all. Not even a last doubt now remained. Her mother was guiltless of imprisoning her in the Asylum. A man had shut her up and that man was Sir Percival Glyde.
The scream had reached other ears than mine. On one side I heard the door of the sexton's cottage open; on the other I heard the voice of her companion, the woman in the shawl, the woman whom she had spoken of as Mrs. Clements.
'I'm coming! I'm coming!' cried the voice from behind the clump of dwarf trees.
In a moment more Mrs. Clements hurried into view.
'Who are you?' she cried, facing me resolutely as she set her foot on the stile. 'How dare you frighten a poor helpless woman like that?'
She was at Anne Catherick's side, and had put one arm around her, before I could answer. 'What is it, my dear?' she said. 'What has he done to you?'
'Nothing,' the poor creature answered. 'Nothing. I'm only frightened.'
Mrs. Clements turned on me with a fearless indignation, for which I respected her.
'I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I deserved that angry look,' I said. 'But I do not deserve it. I have unfortunately startled her without intending it. This is not the first time she has seen me. Ask her yourself, and she will tell you that I am incapable of willingly harming her or any woman.'
I spoke distinctly, so that Anne Catherick might hear and understand me, and I saw that the words and their meaning had reached her.
'Yes, yes,' she said 'he was good to me once he helped me -' She whispered the rest into her friend's ear.
'Strange, indeed!' said Mrs. Clements, with a look of perplexity. 'It makes all the difference, though. I'm sorry I spoke so rough to you, sir; but you must own that appearances looked suspicious to a stranger. It's more my fault than yours, for humouring her whims, and letting her be alone in such a place as this. Come, my dear come home now.'
I thought the good woman looked a little uneasy at the prospect of the walk back, and I offered to go with them until they were both within sight of home. Mrs. Clements thanked me civilly, and declined. She said they were sure to meet some of the farm-labourers as soon as they got to the moor.
'Try to forgive me,' I said, when Anne Catherick took her friend's arm to go away. Innocent as I had been of any intention to terrify and agitate her, my heart smote me as I looked at the poor, pale, frightened face.
'I will try,' she answered. 'But you know too much I'm afraid you'll always frighten me now.'
Mrs. Clements glanced at me, and shook her head pityingly.
'Good-night, sir,' she said. 'You couldn't help it, I know; but I wish it was me you had frightened, and not her.'
They moved away a few steps. I thought they had left me, but Anne suddenly stopped, and separated herself from her friend.
'Wait a little,' she said. 'I must say good-bye.'
She returned to the grave, rested both hands tenderly on the marble cross, and kissed it.
'I'm better now,' she sighed, looking up at me quietly. 'I forgive you.'
She joined her companion again, and they left the burial-ground. I saw them stop near the church and speak to the sexton's wife, who had come from the cottage, and had waited, watching us from a distance. Then they went on again up the path that led to the moor. I looked after Anne Catherick as she disappeared, till all trace of her had faded in the twilight looked as anxiously and sorrowfully as if that was the last I was to see in this weary world of the woman in white.
XIV.
HALF an hour later I was back at the house, and was informing Miss Halcombe of all that had happened.
She listened to me from beginning to end with a steady, silent attention, which, in a woman of her temperament and disposition, was the strongest proof that could be offered of the serious manner in which my narrative affected her.
'My mind misgives me,' was all she said when I had done. 'My mind misgives me sadly about the future.'
'The future may depend,' I suggested, 'on the use we make of the present. It is not improbable that Anne Catherick may speak more readily and unreservedly to a woman than she has spoken to me. If Miss Fairlie -'
'Not to be thought of for a moment,' interposed Miss Halcombe, in her most decided manner.
'Let me suggest, then,' I continued, 'that you should see Anne Catherick yourself, and do all you can to win her confidence. For my own part, I shrink from the idea of alarming the poor creature a second time, as I have most unhappily alarmed her already. Do you see any objection to accompanying me to the farmhouse to-morrow?'
'None whatever. I will go anywhere and do anything to serve Laura's interests. What did you say the place was called?'
'You must know it well. It is called Todd's Corner.'
'Certainly. Todd's Corner is one of Mr. Fairlie's farms. Our dairymaid here is the farmer's second daughter. She goes backwards and forwards constantly between this house and her father's farm, and she may have heard or seen something which it may be useful to us to know. Shall I ascertain, at once, if the girl is downstairs?'
She rang the bell, and sent the servant with his message. He returned, and announced that the dairymaid was then at the farm. She had not been there for the last three days, and the housekeeper had given her leave to go home for an hour or two that evening.
'I can speak to her to-morrow,' said Miss Halcombe, when the servant had left the room again. 'In the meantime, let me thoroughly understand the object to be gained by my interview with Anne Catherick. Is there no doubt in your mind that the person who confined her in the Asylum was Sir Percival Glyde?'
'There is not the shadow of a doubt. The only mystery that remains is the mystery of his motive. Looking to the great difference between his station in life and hers, which seems to preclude all idea of the most distant relationship between them, it is of the last importance even assuming that she really required to be placed under restraint to know why he should have been the person to assume the serious responsibility of shutting her up -'
'In a private Asylum, I think you said?'
'Yes, in a private Asylum, where a sum of money, which no poor person could afford to give, must have been paid for her maintenance as a patient.'
'I see where the doubt lies, Mr. Hartright, and I promise you that it shall be set at rest, whether Anne Catherick assists us to-morrow or not. Sir Percival Glyde shall not be long in this house without satisfying Mr. Gilmore, and satisfying me. My sister's future is my dearest care in life, and I have influence enough over her to give me some power, where her marriage is concerned, in the disposal of it.'
We parted for the night.
After breakfast the next morning, an obstacle, which the events of the evening before had put out of my memory, interposed to prevent our proceeding immediately to the farm. This was my last day at Limmeridge House, and it was necessary, as soon as the post came in, to follow Miss Halcombe's advice, and to ask Mr. Fairlie's permission to shorten my engagement by a month, in consideration of an unforeseen necessity for my return to London.
Fortunately for the probability of this excuse, so far as appearances were concerned, the post brought me two letters from London friends that morning. I took them away at once to my own room, and sent the servant with a message to Mr. Fairlie, requesting to know when I could see him on a matter of business.
I awaited the man's return, free from the slightest feeling of anxiety about the manner in which his master might receive my application. With Mr. Fairlie's leave or without it, I must go. The consciousness of having now taken the first step on the dreary journey which was henceforth to separate my life from Miss Fairlie's seemed to have blunted my sensibility to every consideration connected with myself. I had done with my poor man's touchy pride I had done with all my little artist vanities. No insolence of Mr. Fairlie's, if he chose to be insolent, could wound me now.
The servant returned with a message for which I was not unprepared. Mr. Fairlie regretted that the state of his health, on that particular morning, was such as to preclude all hope of his having the pleasure of receiving me. He begged, therefore, that I would accept his apologies, and kindly communicate what I had to say in the form of a letter. Similar messages to this had reached me, at various intervals, during my three months' residence in the house. Throughout the whole of that period Mr. Fairlie had been rejoiced to 'possess' me, but had never been well enough to see me for a second time. The servant took every fresh batch of drawings that I mounted and restored back to his master with my 'respects,' and returned empty-handed with Mr. Fairlie's 'kind compliments,' 'best thanks,' and 'sincere regrets' that the state of his health still obliged him to remain a solitary prisoner in his own room. A more satisfactory arrangement to both sides could not possibly have been adopted. It would be hard to say which of us, under the circumstances, felt the most grateful sense of obligation to Mr. Fairlie's accommodating nerves.
I sat down at once to write the letter, expressing myself in it as civilly, as clearly, and as briefly as possible. Mr. Fairlie did not hurry his reply. Nearly an hour elapsed before the answer was placed in my hands. It was written with beautiful regularity and neatness of character, in violet-coloured ink, on note-paper as smooth as ivory and almost as thick as cardboard, and it addressed me in these terms 'Mr. Fairlie's compliments to Mr. Hartright. Mr. Fairlie is more surprised and disappointed than he can say (in the present state of his health) by Mr. Hartright's application. Mr. Fairlie is not a man of business, but he has consulted his steward, who is, and that person confirms Mr. Fairlie's opinion that Mr. Hartright's request to be allowed to break his engagement cannot be justified by any necessity whatever, excepting perhaps a case of life and death. If the highly-appreciative feeling towards Art and its professors, which it is the consolation and happiness of Mr. Fairlie's suffering existence to cultivate, could be easily shaken, Mr. Hartright's present proceeding would have shaken it. It has not done so except in the instance of Mr. Hartright himself.
'Having stated his opinion so far, that is to say, as acute nervous suffering will allow him to state anything Mr. Fairlie has nothing to add but the expression of his decision, in reference to the highly irregular application that has been made to him. Perfect repose of body and mind being to the last degree important in his case, Mr. Fairlie will not suffer Mr. Hartright to disturb that repose by remaining in the house under circumstances of an essentially irritating nature to both sides. Accordingly, Mr. Fairlie waives his right of refusal, purely with a view to the preservation of his own tranquillity and informs Mr. Hartright that he may go.'
I folded the letter up, and put it away with my other papers. The time had been when I should have resented it as an insult I accepted it now as a written release from my engagement. It was off my mind, it was almost out of my memory, when I went downstairs to the breakfast-room, and informed Miss Halcombe that I was ready to walk with her to the farm.
'Has Mr. Fairlie given you a satisfactory answer?' she asked as we left the house.
'He has allowed me to go, Miss Halcombe.'
She looked up at me quickly, and then, for the first time since I had known her, took my arm of her own accord. No words could have expressed so delicately that she understood how the permission to leave my employment had been granted, and that she gave me her sympathy, not as my superior, but as my friend. I had not felt the man's insolent letter, but I felt deeply the woman's atoning kindness.
On our way to the farm we arranged that Miss Halcombe was to enter the house alone, and that I was to wait outside, within call. We adopted this mode of proceeding from an apprehension that my presence, after what had happened in the churchyard the evening before, might have the effect of renewing Anne Catherick's nervous dread, and of rendering her additionally distrustful of the advances of a lady who was a stranger to her. Miss Halcombe left me, with the intention of speaking, in the first instance, to the farmer's wife (of whose friendly readiness to help her in any way she was well assured), while I waited for her in the near neighbourhood of the house.
I had fully expected to be left alone for some time. To my surprise, however, little more than five minutes had elapsed before Miss Halcombe returned.
'Does Anne Catherick refuse to see you?' I asked in astonishment.
'Anne Catherick is gone,' replied Miss Halcombe.
'Gone?'
'Gone with Mrs. Clements. They both left the farm at eight o'clock this morning.'
I could say nothing I could only feel that our last chance of discovery had gone with them.
'All that Mrs. Todd knows about her guests, I know,' Miss Halcombe went on, 'and it leaves me, as it leaves her, in the dark. They both came back safe last night, after they left you, and they passed the first part of the evening with Mr. Todd's family as usual. Just before supper-time, however, Anne Catherick startled them all by being suddenly seized with faintness. She had had a similar attack, of a less alarming kind, on the day she arrived at the farm; and Mrs. Todd had connected it, on that occasion, with something she was reading at the time in our local newspaper, which lay on the farm table, and which she had taken up only a minute or two before.'
'Does Mrs. Todd know what particular passage in the newspaper affected her in that way?' I inquired.
'No,' replied Miss Halcombe. 'She had looked it over, and had seen nothing in it to agitate any one. I asked leave, however, to look it over in my turn, and at the very first page I opened I found that the editor had enriched his small stock of news by drawing upon our family affairs, and had published my sister's marriage engagement, among his other announcements, copied from the London papers, of Marriages in High Life. I concluded at once that this was the paragraph which had so strangely affected Anne Catherick, and I thought I saw in it, also, the origin of the letter which she sent to our house the next day.'
'There can be no doubt in either case. But what did you hear about her second attack of faintness yesterday evening?'
'Nothing. The cause of it is a complete mystery. There was no stranger in the room. The only visitor was our dairymaid, who, as I told you, is one of Mr. Todd's daughters, and the only conversation was the usual gossip about local affairs. They heard her cry out, and saw her turn deadly pale, without the slightest apparent reason. Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Clements took her upstairs, and Mrs. Clements remained with her. They were heard talking together until long after the usual bedtime, and early this morning Mrs. Clements took Mrs. Todd aside, and amazed her beyond all power of expression by saying that they must go. The only explanation Mrs. Todd could extract from her guest was, that something had happened, which was not the fault of any one at the farmhouse, but which was serious enough to make Anne Catherick resolve to leave Limmeridge immediately. It was quite useless to press Mrs. Clements to be more explicit. She only shook her head, and said that, for Anne's sake, she must beg and pray that no one would question her. All she could repeat, with every appearance of being seriously agitated herself, was that Anne must go, that she must go with her, and that the destination to which they might both betake themselves must be kept a secret from everybody. I spare you the recital of Mrs. Todd's hospitable remonstrances and refusals. It ended in her driving them both to the nearest station, more than three hours since. She tried hard on the way to get them to speak more plainly, but without success; and she set them down outside the station-door, so hurt and offended by the unceremonious abruptness of their departure and their unfriendly reluctance to place the least confidence in her, that she drove away in anger, without so much as stopping to bid them good-bye. That is exactly what has taken place. Search your own memory, Mr. Hartright, and tell me if anything happened in the burial-ground yesterday evening which can at all account for the extraordinary departure of those two women this morning.'
'I should like to account first, Miss Halcombe, for the sudden change in Anne Catherick which alarmed them at the farmhouse, hours after she and I had parted, and when time enough had elapsed to quiet any violent agitation that I might have been unfortunate enough to cause. Did you inquire particularly about the gossip which was going on in the room when she turned faint?'
'Yes. But Mrs. Todd's household affairs seem to have divided her attention that evening with the talk in the farmhouse parlour. She could only tell me that it was "just the news," meaning, I suppose, that they all talked as usual about each other.'
'The dairymaid's memory may be better than her mother's,' I said. 'It may be as well for you to speak to the girl, Miss Halcombe, as soon as we get back.'
My suggestion was acted on the moment we returned to the house. Miss Halcombe led me round to the servants' offices, and we found the girl in the dairy, with her sleeves tucked up to her shoulders, cleaning a large milk-pan and singing blithely over her work.
'I have brought this gentleman to see your dairy, Hannah,' said Miss Halcombe. 'It is one of the sights of the house, and it always does you credit.'
The girl blushed and curtseyed, and said shyly that she hoped she always did her best to keep things neat and clean.
'We have just come from your father's,' Miss Halcombe continued. 'You were there yesterday evening, I hear, and you found visitors at the house?'
'Yes, miss.'
'One of them was taken faint and ill, I am told. I suppose nothing was said or done to frighten her? You were not talking of anything very terrible, were you?'