The Woman in White
The obligation I had to perform took me once more into the presence of
Mrs. Clements. I had promised to return, and to confide to her those
particulars relating to the death and burial of Anne Catherick which
I had been obliged to withhold at our first interview. Changed as
circumstances now were, there was no hindrance to my trusting the good
woman with as much of the story of the conspiracy as it was necessary
to tell. I had every reason that sympathy and friendly feeling could
suggest to urge on me the speedy performance of my promise, and I did
conscientiously and carefully perform it. There is no need to burden
these pages with any statement of what passed at the interview. It will
be more to the purpose to say, that the interview itself necessarily
brought to my mind the one doubtful question still remaining to be
solved—the question of Anne Catherick’s parentage on the father’s side.
A multitude of small considerations in connection with this
subject—trifling enough in themselves, but strikingly important when
massed together—had latterly led my mind to a conclusion which I
resolved to verify. I obtained Marian’s permission to write to Major
Donthorne, of Varneck Hall (where Mrs. Catherick had lived in service
for some years previous to her marriage), to ask him certain questions.
I made the inquiries in Marian’s name, and described them as relating
to matters of personal history in her family, which might explain
and excuse my application. When I wrote the letter I had no certain
knowledge that Major Donthorne was still alive—I despatched it on the
chance that he might be living, and able and willing to reply.
After a lapse of two days proof came, in the shape of a letter, that
the Major was living, and that he was ready to help us.
The idea in my mind when I wrote to him, and the nature of my inquiries
will be easily inferred from his reply. His letter answered my
questions by communicating these important facts—
In the first place, “the late Sir Percival Glyde, of Blackwater Park,”
had never set foot in Varneck Hall. The deceased gentleman was a total
stranger to Major Donthorne, and to all his family.
In the second place, “the late Mr. Philip Fairlie, of Limmeridge
House,” had been, in his younger days, the intimate friend and constant
guest of Major Donthorne. Having refreshed his memory by looking back
to old letters and other papers, the Major was in a position to say
positively that Mr. Philip Fairlie was staying at Varneck Hall in the
month of August, eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that he remained
there for the shooting during the month of September and part of
October following. He then left, to the best of the Major’s belief,
for Scotland, and did not return to Varneck Hall till after a lapse of
time, when he reappeared in the character of a newly-married man.
Taken by itself, this statement was, perhaps, of little positive value,
but taken in connection with certain facts, every one of which either
Marian or I knew to be true, it suggested one plain conclusion that
was, to our minds, irresistible.
Knowing, now, that Mr. Philip Fairlie had been at Varneck Hall in the
autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that Mrs. Catherick had
been living there in service at the same time, we knew also—first,
that Anne had been born in June, eighteen hundred and twenty-seven;
secondly, that she had always presented an extraordinary personal
resemblance to Laura; and, thirdly, that Laura herself was strikingly
like her father. Mr. Philip Fairlie had been one of the notoriously
handsome men of his time. In disposition entirely unlike his brother
Frederick, he was the spoilt darling of society, especially of the
women—an easy, light-hearted, impulsive, affectionate man—generous
to a fault—constitutionally lax in his principles, and notoriously
thoughtless of moral obligations where women were concerned. Such were
the facts we knew—such was the character of the man. Surely the plain
inference that follows needs no pointing out?
Read by the new light which had now broken upon me, even Mrs.
Catherick’s letter, in despite of herself, rendered its mite of
assistance towards strengthening the conclusion at which I had arrived.
She had described Mrs. Fairlie (in writing to me) as “plain-looking,”
and as having “entrapped the handsomest man in England into marrying
her.” Both assertions were gratuitously made, and both were false.
Jealous dislike (which, in such a woman as Mrs. Catherick, would
express itself in petty malice rather than not express itself at
all) appeared to me to be the only assignable cause for the peculiar
insolence of her reference to Mrs. Fairlie, under circumstances which
did not necessitate any reference at all.
The mention here of Mrs. Fairlie’s name naturally suggests one other
question. Did she ever suspect whose child the little girl brought to
her at Limmeridge might be?
Marian’s testimony was positive on this point. Mrs. Fairlie’s
letter to her husband, which had been read to me in former days—the
letter describing Anne’s resemblance to Laura, and acknowledging
her affectionate interest in the little stranger—had been written,
beyond all question, in perfect innocence of heart. It even seemed
doubtful, on consideration, whether Mr. Philip Fairlie himself had been
nearer than his wife to any suspicion of the truth. The disgracefully
deceitful circumstances under which Mrs. Catherick had married, the
purpose of concealment which the marriage was intended to answer, might
well keep her silent for caution’s sake, perhaps for her own pride’s
sake also, even assuming that she had the means, in his absence, of
communicating with the father of her unborn child.
As this surmise floated through my mind, there rose on my memory the
remembrance of the Scripture denunciation which we have all thought of
in our time with wonder and with awe: “The sins of the fathers shall
be visited on the children.” But for the fatal resemblance between the
two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the
innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been
planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of
circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the
father to the heartless injury inflicted on the child!
These thoughts came to me, and others with them, which drew my mind
away to the little Cumberland churchyard where Anne Catherick now
lay buried. I thought of the bygone days when I had met her by Mrs.
Fairlie’s grave, and met her for the last time. I thought of her poor
helpless hands beating on the tombstone, and her weary, yearning words,
murmured to the dead remains of her protectress and her friend: “Oh,
if I could die, and be hidden and at rest with YOU!” Little more than
a year had passed since she breathed that wish; and how inscrutably,
how awfully, it had been fulfilled! The words she had spoken to Laura
by the shores of the lake, the very words had now come true. “Oh, if
I could only be buried with your mother! If I could only wake at her
side when the angel’s trumpet sounds and the graves give up their dead
at the resurrection!” Through what mortal crime and horror, through
what darkest windings of the way down to death—the lost creature
had wandered in God’s leading to the last home that, living, she
never hoped to reach! In that sacred rest I leave her—in that dread
companionship let her remain undisturbed.
So the ghostly figure which has haunted these pages, as it haunted my
life, goes down into the impenetrable gloom. Like a shadow she first
came to me in the loneliness of the night. Like a shadow she passes
away in the loneliness of the dead.
III
Four months elapsed. April came—the month of spring—the month of change.
The course of time had flowed through the interval since the winter
peacefully and happily in our new home. I had turned my long leisure
to good account, had largely increased my sources of employment, and
had placed our means of subsistence on surer grounds. Freed from the
suspense and the anxiety which had tried her so sorely and hung over
her so long, Marian’s spirits rallied, and her natural energy of
character began to assert itself again, with something, if not all, of
the freedom and the vigour of former times.
More pliable under change than her sister, Laura showed more plainly
the progress made by the healing influences of her new life. The worn
and wasted look which had prematurely aged her face was fast leaving
it, and the expression which had been the first of its charms in past
days was the first of its beauties that now returned. My closest
observations of her detected but one serious result of the conspiracy
which had once threatened her reason and her life. Her memory of
events, from the period of her leaving Blackwater Park to the period
of our meeting in the burial-ground of Limmeridge Church, was lost
beyond all hope of recovery. At the slightest reference to that time
she changed and trembled still, her words became confused, her memory
wandered and lost itself as helplessly as ever. Here, and here only,
the traces of the past lay deep—too deep to be effaced.
In all else she was now so far on the way to recovery that, on her
best and brightest days, she sometimes looked and spoke like the Laura
of old times. The happy change wrought its natural result in us both.
From their long slumber, on her side and on mine, those imperishable
memories of our past life in Cumberland now awoke, which were one and
all alike, the memories of our love.
Gradually and insensibly our daily relations towards each other became
constrained. The fond words which I had spoken to her so naturally,
in the days of her sorrow and her suffering, faltered strangely on my
lips. In the time when my dread of losing her was most present to my
mind, I had always kissed her when she left me at night and when she
met me in the morning. The kiss seemed now to have dropped between
us—to be lost out of our lives. Our hands began to tremble again when
they met. We hardly ever looked long at one another out of Marian’s
presence. The talk often flagged between us when we were alone. When
I touched her by accident I felt my heart beating fast, as it used to
beat at Limmeridge House—I saw the lovely answering flush glowing again
in her cheeks, as if we were back among the Cumberland Hills in our
past characters of master and pupil once more. She had long intervals
of silence and thoughtfulness, and denied she had been thinking when
Marian asked her the question. I surprised myself one day neglecting my
work to dream over the little water-colour portrait of her which I had
taken in the summer-house where we first met—just as I used to neglect
Mr. Fairlie’s drawings to dream over the same likeness when it was
newly finished in the bygone time. Changed as all the circumstances now
were, our position towards each other in the golden days of our first
companionship seemed to be revived with the revival of our love. It was
as if Time had drifted us back on the wreck of our early hopes to the
old familiar shore!
To any other woman I could have spoken the decisive words which I still
hesitated to speak to HER. The utter helplessness of her position—her
friendless dependence on all the forbearing gentleness that I could
show her—my fear of touching too soon some secret sensitiveness
in her which my instinct as a man might not have been fine enough
to discover—these considerations, and others like them, kept me
self-distrustfully silent. And yet I knew that the restraint on both
sides must be ended, that the relations in which we stood towards one
another must be altered in some settled manner for the future, and that