LEAVING by an early train, I got to Limmeridge in time for dinner. The house was oppressively empty and dull. I had expected that good Mrs. Vesey would have been company for me in the absence of the young ladies, but she was confined to her room by a cold. The servants were so surprised at seeing me that they hurried and bustled absurdly, and made all sorts of annoying mistakes. Even the butler, who was old enough to have known better, brought me a bottle of port that was chilled. The reports of Mr. Fairlie's health were just as usual, and when I sent up a message to announce my arrival, I was told that he would be delighted to see me the next morning, but that the sudden news of my appearance had prostrated him with palpitations for the rest of the evening. The wind howled dismally all night, and strange cracking and groaning noises sounded here, there, and everywhere in the empty house. I slept as wretchedly as possible, and got up in a mighty bad humour to breakfast by myself the next morning.
At ten o'clock I was conducted to Mr. Fairlie's apartments. He was in his usual room, his usual chair, and his usual aggravating state of mind and body. When I went in, his valet was standing before him, holding up for inspection a heavy volume of etchings, as long and as broad as my office writing-desk. The miserable foreigner grinned in the most abject manner, and looked ready to drop with fatigue, while his master composedly turned over the etchings, and brought their hidden beauties to light with the help of a magnifying glass.
'You very best of good old friends,' said Mr. Fairlie, leaning back lazily before he could look at me, 'are you quite well? How nice of you to come here and see me in my solitude. Dear Gilmore!'
I had expected that the valet would be dismissed when I appeared, but nothing of the sort happened. There he stood, in front of his master's chair, trembling under the weight of the etchings, and there Mr. Fairlie sat, serenely twirling the magnifying glass between his white fingers and thumbs.
'I have come to speak to you on a very important matter,' I said, 'and you will therefore excuse me, if I suggest that we had better be alone.'
The unfortunate valet looked at me gratefully. Mr. Fairlie faintly repeated my last three words, 'better be alone,' with every appearance of the utmost possible astonishment.
I was in no humour for trifling, and I resolved to make him understand what I meant.
'Oblige me by giving that man permission to withdraw,' I said, pointing to the valet.
Mr. Fairlie arched his eyebrows and pursed up his lips in sarcastic surprise.
'Man?' he repeated. 'You provoking old Gilmore, what can you possibly mean by calling him a man? He's nothing of the sort. He might have been a man half an hour ago, before I wanted my etchings, and he may be a man half an hour hence, when I don't want them any longer. At present he is simply a portfolio stand. Why object, Gilmore, to a portfolio stand?'
'I do object. For the third time, Mr. Fairlie, I beg that we may be alone.'
My tone and manner left him no alternative but to comply with my request. He looked at the servant, and pointed peevishly to a chair at his side.
'Put down the etchings and go away,' he said. 'Don't upset me by losing my place. Have you, or have you not, lost my place? Are you sure you have not? And have you put my hand-bell quite within my reach? Yes? Then why the devil don't you go?'
The valet went out. Mr. Fairlie twisted himself round in his chair, polished the magnifying glass with his delicate cambric handkerchief, and indulged himself with a sidelong inspection of the open volume of etchings. It was not easy to keep my temper under these circumstances, but I did keep it.
'I have come here at great personal inconvenience,' I said, 'to serve the interests of your niece and your family, and I think I have established some slight claim to be favoured with your attention in return.'
'Don't bully me!' exclaimed Mr. Fairlie, falling back helplessly in the chair, and closing his eyes. 'Please don't bully me. I'm not strong enough.'
I was determined not to let him provoke me, for Laura Fairlie's sake.
'My object,' I went on, 'is to entreat you to reconsider your letter, and not to force me to abandon the just rights of your niece, and of all who belong to her. Let me state the case to you once more, and for the last time.'
Mr. Fairlie shook his head and sighed piteously.
'This is heartless of you, Gilmore very heartless,' he said. 'Never mind, go on.'
I put all the points to him carefully I set the matter before him in every conceivable light. He lay back in the chair the whole time I was speaking with his eyes closed. When I had done he opened them indolently, took his silver smelling-bottle from the table, and sniffed at it with an air of gentle relish.
'Good Gilmore!' he said between the sniffs, 'how very nice this is of you! How you reconcile one to human nature!'
'Give me a plain answer to a plain question, Mr. Fairlie. I tell you again, Sir Percival Glyde has no shadow of a claim to expect more than the income of the money. The money itself, if your niece has no children, ought to be under her control, and to return to her family. If you stand firm, Sir Percival must give way he must give way, I tell you, or he exposes himself to the base imputation of marrying Miss Fairlie entirely from mercenary motives.'
Mr. Fairlie shook the silver smelling-bottle at me playfully.
'You dear old Gilmore, how you do hate rank and family, don't you? How you detest Glyde because he happens to be a baronet. What a Radical you are oh, dear me, what a Radical you are!'
A Radical!!! I could put up with a good deal of provocation, but, after holding the soundest Conservative principles all my life, I could not put up with being called a Radical. My blood boiled at it I started out of my chair I was speechless with indignation.
'Don't shake the room!' cried Mr. Fairlie 'for Heaven's sake don't shake the room! Worthiest of all possible Gilmores, I meant no offence. My own views are so extremely liberal that I think I am a Radical myself. Yes. We are a pair of Radicals. Please don't be angry. I can't quarrel I haven't stamina enough. Shall we drop the subject? Yes. Come and look at these sweet etchings. Do let me teach you to understand the heavenly pearliness of these lines. Do now, there's a good Gilmore!'
While he was maundering on in this way I was, fortunately for my own self-respect, returning to my senses. When I spoke again I was composed enough to treat his impertinence with the silent contempt, that it deserved.
'You are entirely wrong, sir,' I said, 'in supposing that I speak from any prejudice against Sir Percival Glyde. I may regret that he has so unreservedly resigned himself in this matter to his lawyer's direction as to make any appeal to himself impossible, but I am not prejudiced against him. What I have said would equally apply to any other man in his situation, high or low. The principle I maintain is a recognised principle. If you were to apply at the nearest town here, to the first respectable solicitor you could find, he would tell you as a stranger what I tell you as a friend. He would inform you that it is against all rule to abandon the lady's money entirely to the man she marries. He would decline, on grounds of common legal caution, to give the husband, under any circumstances whatever, an interest of twenty thousand pounds in his wife's death.'
'Would he really, Gilmore?' said Mr. Fairlie. 'If he said anything half so horrid, I do assure you I should tinkle my bell for Louis, and have him sent out of the house immediately.'
'You shall not irritate me, Mr. Fairlie for your niece's sake and for her father's sake, you shall not irritate me. You shall take the whole responsibility of this discreditable settlement on your own shoulders before I leave the room.'
'Don't! now please don't!' said Mr. Fairlie. 'Think how precious your time is, Gilmore, and don't throw it away. I would dispute with you if I could, but I can't I haven't stamina enough. You want to upset me, to upset yourself, to upset Glyde, and to upset Laura; and oh, dear me! all for the sake of the very last thing in the world that is likely to happen. No, dear friend, in the interests of peace and quietness, positively No!'
'I am to understand, then, that you hold by the determination expressed in your letter?'
'Yes, please. So glad we understand each other at last. Sit down again do!'
I walked at once to the door, and Mr. Fairlie resignedly 'tinkled' his hand-bell. Before I left the room I turned round and addressed him for the last time.
'Whatever happens in the future, sir,' I said, 'remember that my plain duty of warning you has been performed. As the faithful friend and servant of your family, I tell you, at parting, that no daughter of mine should be married to any man alive under such a settlement as you are forcing me to make for Miss Fairlie.'
The door opened behind me, and the valet stood waiting on the threshold.
'Louis,' said Mr. Fairlie, 'show Mr. Gilmore out, and then come back and hold up my etchings for me again. Make them give you a good lunch downstairs. Do, Gilmore, make my idle beasts of servants give you a good lunch!'
I was too much disgusted to reply I turned on my heel, and left him in silence. There was an up-train at two o'clock in the afternoon, and by that train I returned to London.
On the Tuesday I sent in the altered settlement, which practically disinherited the very persons whom Miss Fairlie's own lips had informed me she was most anxious to benefit. I had no choice. Another lawyer would have drawn up the deed if I had refused to undertake it.
My task is done. My personal share in the events of the family story extends no farther than the point which I have just reached. Other pens than mine will describe the strange circumstances which are now shortly to follow. Seriously and sorrowfully I close this brief record. Seriously and sorrowfully I repeat here the parting words that I spoke at Limmeridge House: No daughter of mine should have been married to any man alive under such a settlement as I was compelled to make for Laura Fairlie.
The End of Mr. Gilmore's Narrative.
THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE.
(in Extracts from her Diary) I.
LIMMERIDGE HOUSE, Nov. 8.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.
THIS morning Mr. Gilmore left us.
His interview with Laura had evidently grieved and surprised him more than he liked to confess. I felt afraid, from his look and manner when we parted, that she might have inadvertently betrayed to him the real secret of her depression and my anxiety. This doubt grew on me so, after he had gone, that I declined riding out with Sir Percival, and went up to Laura's room instead.
I have been sadly distrustful of myself, in this difficult and lamentable matter, ever since I found out my own ignorance of the strength of Laura's unhappy attachment. I ought to have known that the delicacy and forbearance and sense of honour which drew me to poor Hartright, and made me so sincerely admire and respect him, were just the qualities to appeal most irresistibly to Laura's natural sensitiveness and natural generosity of nature. And yet, until she opened her heart, to me of her own accord, I had no suspicion that this new feeling had taken root so deeply. I once thought time and care might remove it. I now fear that it will remain with her and alter her for life. The discovery that I have committed such an error in judgment as this makes me hesitate about everything else. I hesitate about Sir Percival, in the face of the plainest proofs. I hesitate even in speaking to Laura. On this very morning I doubted, with my hand on the door, whether I should ask her the questions I had come to put, or not.
When I went into her room I found her walking up and down in great impatience. She looked flushed and excited, and she came forward at once, and spoke to me before I could open my lips.
'I wanted you,' she said. 'Come and sit down on the sofa with me. Marian! I can bear this no longer I must and will end it.'
There was too much colour in her cheeks, too much energy in her manner, too much firmness in her voice. The little book of Hartright's drawings the fatal book that she will dream over whenever she is alone was in one of her hands. I began by gently and firmly taking it from her, and putting it out of sight on a side-table.
'Tell me quietly, my darling, what you wish to do,' I said. 'Has Mr. Gilmore been advising you?'
She shook her head. 'No, not in what I am thinking of now. He was very kind and good to me, Marian, and I am ashamed to say I distressed him by crying. I am miserably helpless I can't control myself. For my own sake, and for all our sakes, I must have courage enough to end it.'
'Do you mean courage enough to claim your release?' I asked.
'No,' she said simply. 'Courage, dear, to tell the truth.'
She put her arms round my neck, and rested her head quietly on my bosom. On the opposite wall hung the miniature portrait of her father. I bent over her, and saw that she was looking at it while her head lay on my breast.
'I can never claim my release from my engagement,' she went on. 'Whatever way it ends it must end wretchedly for me. All I can do, Marian, is not to add the remembrance that I have broken my promise and forgotten my father's dying words, to make that wretchedness worse.'
'What is it you propose, then?' I asked.
'To tell Sir Percival Glyde the truth with my own lips,' she answered, 'and to let him release me, if he will, not because I ask him, but because he knows all.'
'What do you mean, Laura, by "all"?' Sir Percival will know enough (he has told me so himself) if he knows that the engagement is opposed to your own wishes.'
'Can I tell him that, when the engagement was made for me by my father, with my own consent? I should have kept my promise, not happily, I am afraid, but still contentedly ' she stopped, turned her face to me, and laid her cheek close against mine 'I should have kept my engagement, Marian, if another love had not grown up in my heart, which was not there when I first promised to be Sir Percival's wife.'
'Laura! you will never lower yourself by making a confession to him?'
'I shall lower myself, indeed, if I gain my release by hiding from him what he has a right to know.'
'He has not the shadow of a right to know it!'
'Wrong, Marian, wrong! I ought to deceive no one least of all the man to whom my father gave me, and to whom I gave myself.' She put her lips to mine, and kissed me. 'My own love,' she said softly, 'you are so much too fond of me, and so much too proud of me, that you forget, in my case, what you would remember in your own. Better that Sir Percival should doubt my motives, and misjudge my conduct if he will, than that I should be first false to him in thought, and then mean enough to serve my own interests by hiding the falsehood.'
I held her away from me in astonishment. For the first time in our lives we had changed places the resolution was all on her side, the hesitation all on mine. I looked into the pale, quiet, resigned young face I saw the pure, innocent heart, in the loving eyes that looked back at me and the poor worldly cautions and objections that rose to my lips dwindled and died away in their own emptiness. I hung my head in silence. In her place the despicably small pride which makes so many women deceitful would have been my pride, and would have made me deceitful too.
'Don't be angry with me, Marian,' she said, mistaking my silence.
I only answered by drawing her close to me again. I was afraid of crying if I spoke. My tears do not flow so easily as they ought they come almost like men's tears, with sobs that seem to tear me in pieces, and that frighten every one about me.
'I have thought of this, love, for many days,' she went on, twining and twisting my hair with that childish restlessness in her fingers, which poor Mrs. Vesey still tries so patiently and so vainly to cure her of 'I have thought of it very seriously, and I can be sure of my courage when my own conscience tells me I am right. Let me speak to him to-morrow in your presence, Marian. I will say nothing that is wrong, nothing that you or I need be ashamed of but, oh, it will ease my heart so to end this miserable concealment! Only let me know and feel that I have no deception to answer for on my side, and then, when he has heard what I have to say, let him act towards me as he will.'
She sighed, and put her head back in its old position on my bosom. Sad misgivings about what the end would be weighed upon my mind, but still distrusting myself, I told her that I would do as she wished. She thanked me, and we passed gradually into talking of other things.
At dinner she joined us again, and was more easy and more herself with Sir Percival than I have seen her yet. In the evening she went to the piano, choosing new music of the dexterous, tuneless, florid kind. The lovely old melodies of Mozart, which poor Hartright was so fond of, she has never played since he left. The book is no longer in the music-stand. She took the volume away herself, so that nobody might find it out and ask her to play from it.
I had no opportunity of discovering whether her purpose of the morning had changed or not, until she wished Sir Percival good-night and then her own words informed me that it was unaltered. She said, very quietly, that she wished to speak to him after breakfast, and that he would find her in her sitting-room with me. He changed colour at those words, and I felt his hand trembling a little when it came to my turn to take it. The event of the next morning would decide his future life, and he evidently knew it.
I went in, as usual, through the door between our two bedrooms, to bid Laura good-night before she went to sleep. In stooping over her to kiss her I saw the little book of Hartright's drawings half hidden under her pillow, just in the place where she used to hide her favourite toys when she was a child. I could not find it in my heart to say anything, but I pointed to the book and shook my head. She reached both hands up to my cheeks, and drew my face down to hers till our lips met.
'Leave it there to-night,' she whispered; 'to-morrow may be cruel, and may make me say good-bye to it for ever.'
9th The first event of the morning was not of a kind to raise my spirits a letter arrived for me from poor Walter Hartright. It is the answer to mine describing the manner in which Sir Percival cleared himself of the suspicions raised by Anne Catherick's letter. He writes shortly and bitterly about Sir Percival's explanations, only saying that he has no right to offer an opinion on the conduct of those who are above him. This is sad, but his occasional references to himself grieve me still more. He says that the effort to return to his old habits and pursuits grows harder instead of easier to him every day, and he implores me, if I have any interest, to exert it to get him employment that will necessitate his absence from England, and take him among new scenes and new people. I have been made all the readier to comply with this request by a passage at the end of his letter, which has almost alarmed me.
After mentioning that he has neither seen nor heard anything of Anne Catherick, he suddenly breaks off, and hints in the most abrupt, mysterious manner, that he has been perpetually watched and followed by strange men ever since he returned to London. He acknowledges that he cannot prove this extraordinary suspicion by fixing on any particular persons, but he declares that the suspicion itself is present to him night and day. This has frightened me, because it looks as if his one fixed idea about Laura was becoming too much for his mind. I will write immediately to some of my mother's influential old friends in London, and press his claims on their notice. Change of scene and change of occupation may really be the salvation of him at this crisis in his life.
Greatly to my relief. Sir Percival sent an apology for not joining us at breakfast. He had taken an early cup of coffee in his own room, and he was still engaged there in writing letters. At eleven o'clock, if that hour was convenient, he would do himself the honour of waiting on Miss Fairlie and Miss Halcombe.
My eyes were on Laura's face while the message was being delivered. I had found her unaccountably quiet and composed on going into her room in the morning, and so she remained all through breakfast. Even when we were sitting together on the sofa in her room, waiting for Sir Percival, she still preserved her self-control.
'Don't be afraid of me, Marian,' was all she said; 'I may forget myself with an old friend like Mr. Gilmore, or with a dear sister like you, but I will not forget myself with Sir Percival Glyde.'
I looked at her, and listened to her in silent surprise. Through all the years of our close intimacy this passive force in her character had been hidden from me hidden even from herself, till love found it, and suffering called it forth.
As the clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven Sir Percival knocked at the door and came in. There was suppressed anxiety and agitation in every line of his face. The dry, sharp cough, which teases him at most times, seemed to be troubling him more incessantly than ever. He sat down opposite to us at the table, and Laura remained by me. I looked attentively at them both, and he was the palest of the two.
He said a few unimportant words, with a visible effort to preserve his customary ease of manner. But his voice was not to be steadied, and the restless uneasiness in his eyes was not to be concealed. He must have felt this himself, for he stopped in the middle of a sentence, and gave up even the attempt to hide his embarrassment any longer.
There was just one moment of dead silence before Laura addressed him.
'I wish to speak to you, Sir Percival,' she said, 'on a subject that is very important to us both. My sister is here, because her presence helps me and gives me confidence. She has not suggested one word of what I am going to say I speak from my own thoughts, not from hers. I am sure you will be kind enough to understand that before I go any farther?'
Sir Percival bowed. She had proceeded thus far, with perfect outward tranquillity and perfect propriety of manner. She looked at him, and he looked at her. They seemed, at the outset, at least, resolved to understand one another plainly.
'I have heard from Marian,' she went on, 'that I have only to claim my release from our engagement to obtain that release from you. It was forbearing and generous on your part, Sir Percival, to send me such a message. It is only doing you justice to say that I am grateful for the offer, and I hope and believe that it is only doing myself justice to tell you that I decline to accept it.'
His attentive face relaxed a little. But I saw one of his feet, softly, quietly, incessantly beating on the carpet under the table, and I felt that he was secretly as anxious as ever.
'I have not forgotten,' she said, 'that you asked my father's permission before you honoured me with a proposal of marriage. Perhaps you have not forgotten either what I said when I consented to our engagement? I ventured to tell you that my father's influence and advice had mainly decided me to give you my promise. I was guided by my father, because I had always found him the truest of all advisers, the best and fondest of all protectors and friends. I have lost him now I have only his memory to love, but my faith in that dear dead friend has never been shaken. I believe at this moment, as truly as I ever believed, that he knew what was best, and that his hopes and wishes ought to be my hopes and wishes too.'
Her voice trembled for the first time. Her restless fingers stole their way into my lap, and held fast by one of my hands. There was another moment of silence, and then Sir Percival spoke.
'May I ask,' he said, 'if I have ever proved myself unworthy of the trust which it has been hitherto my greatest honour and greatest happiness to possess?'
'I have found nothing in your conduct to blame,' she answered. 'You have always treated me with the same delicacy and the same forbearance. You have deserved my trust, and, what is of far more importance in my estimation, you have deserved my father's trust, out of which mine grew. You have given me no excuse, even if I had wanted to find one, for asking to be released from my pledge. What I have said so far has been spoken with the wish to acknowledge my whole obligation to you. My regard for that obligation, my regard for my father's memory, and my regard for my own promise, all forbid me to set the example, on my side, of withdrawing from our present position. The breaking of our engagement must be entirely your wish and your act, Sir Percival not mine.'
The uneasy beating of his foot suddenly stopped, and he leaned forward eagerly across the table.
'My act?' he said. 'What reason can there be on my side for withdrawing?'
I heard her breath quickening I felt her hand growing cold. In spite of what she had said to me when we were alone, I began to be afraid of her. I was wrong.
'A reason that it is very hard to tell you,' she answered. 'There is a change in me, Sir Percival a change which is serious enough to justify you, to yourself and to me, in breaking off our engagement.'
His face turned so pale again that even his lips lost their colour. He raised the arm which lay on the table, turned a little away in his chair, and supported his head on his hand, so that his profile only was presented to us.
'What change?' he asked. The tone in which he put the question jarred on me there was something painfully suppressed in it.
She sighed heavily, and leaned towards me a little, so as to rest her shoulder against mine. I felt her trembling, and tried to spare her by speaking myself. She stopped me by a warning pressure of her hand, and then addressed Sir Percival once more, but this time without looking at him.
'I have heard,' she said, 'and I believe it, that the fondest and truest of all affections is the affection which a woman ought to bear to her husband. When our engagement began that affection was mine to give, if I could, and yours to win, if you could. Will you pardon me, and spare me, Sir Percival, if I acknowledge that it is not so any longer?'