The Woman in White
I cannot write at any length of our interview with Mr. Fairlie, for I
cannot recall it to mind without feelings of impatience and contempt,
which make the scene, even in remembrance only, utterly repulsive to
me. I prefer to record simply that I carried my point. Mr. Fairlie
attempted to treat us on his customary plan. We passed without notice
his polite insolence at the outset of the interview. We heard without
sympathy the protestations with which he tried next to persuade us that
the disclosure of the conspiracy had overwhelmed him. He absolutely
whined and whimpered at last like a fretful child. “How was he to know
that his niece was alive when he was told that she was dead? He would
welcome dear Laura with pleasure, if we would only allow him time to
recover. Did we think he looked as if he wanted hurrying into his
grave? No. Then, why hurry him?” He reiterated these remonstrances at
every available opportunity, until I checked them once for all, by
placing him firmly between two inevitable alternatives. I gave him
his choice between doing his niece justice on my terms, or facing the
consequence of a public assertion of her existence in a court of law.
Mr. Kyrle, to whom he turned for help, told him plainly that he must
decide the question then and there. Characteristically choosing the
alternative which promised soonest to release him from all personal
anxiety, he announced with a sudden outburst of energy, that he was not
strong enough to bear any more bullying, and that we might do as we
pleased.
Mr. Kyrle and I at once went downstairs, and agreed upon a form of
letter which was to be sent round to the tenants who had attended the
false funeral, summoning them, in Mr. Fairlie’s name, to assemble
in Limmeridge House on the next day but one. An order referring to
the same date was also written, directing a statuary in Carlisle
to send a man to Limmeridge churchyard for the purpose of erasing
an inscription—Mr. Kyrle, who had arranged to sleep in the house,
undertaking that Mr. Fairlie should hear these letters read to him, and
should sign them with his own hand.
I occupied the interval day at the farm in writing a plain narrative
of the conspiracy, and in adding to it a statement of the practical
contradiction which facts offered to the assertion of Laura’s death.
This I submitted to Mr. Kyrle before I read it the next day to the
assembled tenants. We also arranged the form in which the evidence
should be presented at the close of the reading. After these matters
were settled, Mr. Kyrle endeavoured to turn the conversation next
to Laura’s affairs. Knowing, and desiring to know nothing of those
affairs, and doubting whether he would approve, as a man of business,
of my conduct in relation to my wife’s life-interest in the legacy left
to Madame Fosco, I begged Mr. Kyrle to excuse me if I abstained from
discussing the subject. It was connected, as I could truly tell him,
with those sorrows and troubles of the past which we never referred to
among ourselves, and which we instinctively shrank from discussing with
others.
My last labour, as the evening approached, was to obtain “The Narrative
of the Tombstone,” by taking a copy of the false inscription on the
grave before it was erased.
The day came—the day when Laura once more entered the familiar
breakfast-room at Limmeridge House. All the persons assembled rose
from their seats as Marian and I led her in. A perceptible shock of
surprise, an audible murmur of interest ran through them, at the sight
of her face. Mr. Fairlie was present (by my express stipulation),
with Mr. Kyrle by his side. His valet stood behind him with a
smelling-bottle ready in one hand, and a white handkerchief, saturated
with eau-de-Cologne, in the other.
I opened the proceedings by publicly appealing to Mr. Fairlie to say
whether I appeared there with his authority and under his express
sanction. He extended an arm, on either side, to Mr. Kyrle and to his
valet—was by them assisted to stand on his legs, and then expressed
himself in these terms: “Allow me to present Mr. Hartright. I am as
great an invalid as ever, and he is so very obliging as to speak for
me. The subject is dreadfully embarrassing. Please hear him, and don’t
make a noise!” With those words he slowly sank back again into the
chair, and took refuge in his scented pocket-handkerchief.
The disclosure of the conspiracy followed, after I had offered my
preliminary explanation, first of all, in the fewest and the plainest
words. I was there present (I informed my hearers) to declare, first,
that my wife, then sitting by me, was the daughter of the late Mr.
Philip Fairlie; secondly, to prove by positive facts, that the funeral
which they had attended in Limmeridge churchyard was the funeral of
another woman; thirdly, to give them a plain account of how it had all
happened. Without further preface, I at once read the narrative of the
conspiracy, describing it in clear outline, and dwelling only upon the
pecuniary motive for it, in order to avoid complicating my statement by
unnecessary reference to Sir Percival’s secret. This done, I reminded
my audience of the date on the inscription in the churchyard (the
25th), and confirmed its correctness by producing the certificate of
death. I then read them Sir Percival’s letter of the 25th, announcing
his wife’s intended journey from Hampshire to London on the 26th. I
next showed that she had taken that journey, by the personal testimony
of the driver of the fly, and I proved that she had performed it on
the appointed day, by the order-book at the livery stables. Marian
then added her own statement of the meeting between Laura and herself
at the mad-house, and of her sister’s escape. After which I closed the
proceedings by informing the persons present of Sir Percival’s death
and of my marriage.
Mr. Kyrle rose when I resumed my seat, and declared, as the legal
adviser of the family, that my case was proved by the plainest evidence
he had ever heard in his life. As he spoke those words, I put my arm
round Laura, and raised her so that she was plainly visible to every
one in the room. “Are you all of the same opinion?” I asked, advancing
towards them a few steps, and pointing to my wife.
The effect of the question was electrical. Far down at the lower end of
the room one of the oldest tenants on the estate started to his feet,
and led the rest with him in an instant. I see the man now, with his
honest brown face and his iron-grey hair, mounted on the window-seat,
waving his heavy riding-whip over his head, and leading the cheers.
“There she is, alive and hearty—God bless her! Gi’ it tongue, lads! Gi’
it tongue!” The shout that answered him, reiterated again and again,
was the sweetest music I ever heard. The labourers in the village and
the boys from the school, assembled on the lawn, caught up the cheering
and echoed it back on us. The farmers’ wives clustered round Laura, and
struggled which should be first to shake hands with her, and to implore
her, with the tears pouring over their own cheeks, to bear up bravely
and not to cry. She was so completely overwhelmed, that I was obliged
to take her from them, and carry her to the door. There I gave her into
Marian’s care—Marian, who had never failed us yet, whose courageous
self-control did not fail us now. Left by myself at the door, I invited
all the persons present (after thanking them in Laura’s name and mine)
to follow me to the churchyard, and see the false inscription struck
off the tombstone with their own eyes.
They all left the house, and all joined the throng of villagers
collected round the grave, where the statuary’s man was waiting for us.
In a breathless silence, the first sharp stroke of the steel sounded
on the marble. Not a voice was heard—not a soul moved, till those
three words, “Laura, Lady Glyde,” had vanished from sight. Then there
was a great heave of relief among the crowd, as if they felt that the
last fetters of the conspiracy had been struck off Laura herself, and
the assembly slowly withdrew. It was late in the day before the whole
inscription was erased. One line only was afterwards engraved in its
place: “Anne Catherick, July 25th, 1850.”
I returned to Limmeridge House early enough in the evening to take
leave of Mr. Kyrle. He and his clerk, and the driver of the fly, went
back to London by the night train. On their departure an insolent
message was delivered to me from Mr. Fairlie—who had been carried from
the room in a shattered condition, when the first outbreak of cheering
answered my appeal to the tenantry. The message conveyed to us “Mr.
Fairlie’s best congratulations,” and requested to know whether “we
contemplated stopping in the house.” I sent back word that the only
object for which we had entered his doors was accomplished—that I
contemplated stopping in no man’s house but my own—and that Mr. Fairlie
need not entertain the slightest apprehension of ever seeing us or
hearing from us again. We went back to our friends at the farm to rest
that night, and the next morning—escorted to the station, with the
heartiest enthusiasm and good will, by the whole village and by all the
farmers in the neighbourhood—we returned to London.
As our view of the Cumberland hills faded in the distance, I thought
of the first disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle
that was now past and over had been pursued. It was strange to look
back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of
assistance had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me
to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what
would have been the result? The gain (on Mr. Kyrle’s own showing) would
have been more than doubtful—the loss, judging by the plain test of
events as they had really happened, certain. The law would never have
obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The law would never have
made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count.
II
Two more events remain to be added to the chain before it reaches
fairly from the outset of the story to the close.
While our new sense of freedom from the long oppression of the past
was still strange to us, I was sent for by the friend who had given
me my first employment in wood engraving, to receive from him a fresh
testimony of his regard for my welfare. He had been commissioned by his
employers to go to Paris, and to examine for them a fresh discovery in
the practical application of his Art, the merits of which they were
anxious to ascertain. His own engagements had not allowed him leisure
time to undertake the errand, and he had most kindly suggested that it
should be transferred to me. I could have no hesitation in thankfully
accepting the offer, for if I acquitted myself of my commission as
I hoped I should, the result would be a permanent engagement on the
illustrated newspaper, to which I was now only occasionally attached.
I received my instructions and packed up for the journey the next day.
On leaving Laura once more (under what changed circumstances!) in her
sister’s care, a serious consideration recurred to me, which had more
than once crossed my wife’s mind, as well as my own, already—I mean the
consideration of Marian’s future. Had we any right to let our selfish
affection accept the devotion of all that generous life? Was it not our
duty, our best expression of gratitude, to forget ourselves, and to
think only of HER? I tried to say this when we were alone for a moment,
before I went away. She took my hand, and silenced me at the first
words.
“After all that we three have suffered together,” she said, “there can
be no parting between us till the last parting of all. My heart and my
happiness, Walter, are with Laura and you. Wait a little till there are