The Woman in White
glides down the current. All memory of the past, all thought of the
future, all sense of the falseness and hopelessness of my own position,
lay hushed within me into deceitful rest. Lulled by the Syren-song that
my own heart sung to me, with eyes shut to all sight, and ears closed
to all sound of danger, I drifted nearer and nearer to the fatal rocks.
The warning that aroused me at last, and startled me into sudden,
self-accusing consciousness of my own weakness, was the plainest, the
truest, the kindest of all warnings, for it came silently from HER.
We had parted one night as usual. No word had fallen from my lips, at
that time or at any time before it, that could betray me, or startle
her into sudden knowledge of the truth. But when we met again in the
morning, a change had come over her—a change that told me all.
I shrank then—I shrink still—from invading the innermost sanctuary of
her heart, and laying it open to others, as I have laid open my own.
Let it be enough to say that the time when she first surprised my
secret was, I firmly believe, the time when she first surprised her
own, and the time, also, when she changed towards me in the interval of
one night. Her nature, too truthful to deceive others, was too noble to
deceive itself. When the doubt that I had hushed asleep first laid its
weary weight on her heart, the true face owned all, and said, in its
own frank, simple language—I am sorry for him; I am sorry for myself.
It said this, and more, which I could not then interpret. I understood
but too well the change in her manner, to greater kindness and
quicker readiness in interpreting all my wishes, before others—to
constraint and sadness, and nervous anxiety to absorb herself in the
first occupation she could seize on, whenever we happened to be left
together alone. I understood why the sweet sensitive lips smiled so
rarely and so restrainedly now, and why the clear blue eyes looked at
me, sometimes with the pity of an angel, sometimes with the innocent
perplexity of a child. But the change meant more than this. There
was a coldness in her hand, there was an unnatural immobility in her
face, there was in all her movements the mute expression of constant
fear and clinging self-reproach. The sensations that I could trace to
herself and to me, the unacknowledged sensations that we were feeling
in common, were not these. There were certain elements of the change in
her that were still secretly drawing us together, and others that were,
as secretly, beginning to drive us apart.
In my doubt and perplexity, in my vague suspicion of something hidden
which I was left to find by my own unaided efforts, I examined Miss
Halcombe’s looks and manner for enlightenment. Living in such intimacy
as ours, no serious alteration could take place in any one of us which
did not sympathetically affect the others. The change in Miss Fairlie
was reflected in her half-sister. Although not a word escaped Miss
Halcombe which hinted at an altered state of feeling towards myself,
her penetrating eyes had contracted a new habit of always watching me.
Sometimes the look was like suppressed anger, sometimes like suppressed
dread, sometimes like neither—like nothing, in short, which I could
understand. A week elapsed, leaving us all three still in this position
of secret constraint towards one another. My situation, aggravated by
the sense of my own miserable weakness and forgetfulness of myself,
now too late awakened in me, was becoming intolerable. I felt that I
must cast off the oppression under which I was living, at once and for
ever—yet how to act for the best, or what to say first, was more than I
could tell.
From this position of helplessness and humiliation I was rescued
by Miss Halcombe. Her lips told me the bitter, the necessary, the
unexpected truth; her hearty kindness sustained me under the shock of
hearing it; her sense and courage turned to its right use an event
which threatened the worst that could happen, to me and to others, in
Limmeridge House.
X
It was on a Thursday in the week, and nearly at the end of the third
month of my sojourn in Cumberland.
In the morning, when I went down into the breakfast-room at the usual
hour, Miss Halcombe, for the first time since I had known her, was
absent from her customary place at the table.
Miss Fairlie was out on the lawn. She bowed to me, but did not come in.
Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that could unsettle
either of us—and yet the same unacknowledged sense of embarrassment
made us shrink alike from meeting one another alone. She waited on
the lawn, and I waited in the breakfast-room, till Mrs. Vesey or Miss
Halcombe came in. How quickly I should have joined her: how readily we
should have shaken hands, and glided into our customary talk, only a
fortnight ago.
In a few minutes Miss Halcombe entered. She had a preoccupied look, and
she made her apologies for being late rather absently.
“I have been detained,” she said, “by a consultation with Mr. Fairlie
on a domestic matter which he wished to speak to me about.”
Miss Fairlie came in from the garden, and the usual morning greeting
passed between us. Her hand struck colder to mine than ever. She did
not look at me, and she was very pale. Even Mrs. Vesey noticed it when
she entered the room a moment after.
“I suppose it is the change in the wind,” said the old lady. “The
winter is coming—ah, my love, the winter is coming soon!”
In her heart and in mine it had come already!
Our morning meal—once so full of pleasant good-humoured discussion of
the plans for the day—was short and silent. Miss Fairlie seemed to
feel the oppression of the long pauses in the conversation, and looked
appealingly to her sister to fill them up. Miss Halcombe, after once
or twice hesitating and checking herself, in a most uncharacteristic
manner, spoke at last.
“I have seen your uncle this morning, Laura,” she said. “He thinks the
purple room is the one that ought to be got ready, and he confirms what
I told you. Monday is the day—not Tuesday.”
While these words were being spoken Miss Fairlie looked down at the
table beneath her. Her fingers moved nervously among the crumbs that
were scattered on the cloth. The paleness on her cheeks spread to her
lips, and the lips themselves trembled visibly. I was not the only
person present who noticed this. Miss Halcombe saw it, too, and at once
set us the example of rising from table.
Mrs. Vesey and Miss Fairlie left the room together. The kind sorrowful
blue eyes looked at me, for a moment, with the prescient sadness of
a coming and a long farewell. I felt the answering pang in my own
heart—the pang that told me I must lose her soon, and love her the more
unchangeably for the loss.
I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her. Miss
Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her shawl over her
arm, by the large window that led out to the lawn, and was looking at
me attentively.
“Have you any leisure time to spare,” she asked, “before you begin to
work in your own room?”
“Certainly, Miss Halcombe. I have always time at your service.”
“I want to say a word to you in private, Mr. Hartright. Get your hat
and come out into the garden. We are not likely to be disturbed there
at this hour in the morning.”
As we stepped out on to the lawn, one of the under-gardeners—a mere
lad—passed us on his way to the house, with a letter in his hand. Miss
Halcombe stopped him.
“Is that letter for me?” she asked.
“Nay, miss; it’s just said to be for Miss Fairlie,” answered the lad,
holding out the letter as he spoke.
Miss Halcombe took it from him and looked at the address.
“A strange handwriting,” she said to herself. “Who can Laura’s
correspondent be? Where did you get this?” she continued, addressing
the gardener.
“Well, miss,” said the lad, “I just got it from a woman.”
“What woman?”
“A woman well stricken in age.”
“Oh, an old woman. Any one you knew?”
“I canna’ tak’ it on mysel’ to say that she was other than a stranger
to me.”
“Which way did she go?”
“That gate,” said the under-gardener, turning with great deliberation
towards the south, and embracing the whole of that part of England with
one comprehensive sweep of his arm.
“Curious,” said Miss Halcombe; “I suppose it must be a begging-letter.
There,” she added, handing the letter back to the lad, “take it to the
house, and give it to one of the servants. And now, Mr. Hartright, if
you have no objection, let us walk this way.”
She led me across the lawn, along the same path by which I had followed
her on the day after my arrival at Limmeridge.
At the little summer-house, in which Laura Fairlie and I had first seen
each other, she stopped, and broke the silence which she had steadily
maintained while we were walking together.
“What I have to say to you I can say here.”
With those words she entered the summer-house, took one of the chairs
at the little round table inside, and signed to me to take the other. I
suspected what was coming when she spoke to me in the breakfast-room; I
felt certain of it now.
“Mr. Hartright,” she said, “I am going to begin by making a frank
avowal to you. I am going to say—without phrase-making, which I detest,
or paying compliments, which I heartily despise—that I have come,
in the course of your residence with us, to feel a strong friendly
regard for you. I was predisposed in your favour when you first told
me of your conduct towards that unhappy woman whom you met under such
remarkable circumstances. Your management of the affair might not have
been prudent, but it showed the self-control, the delicacy, and the
compassion of a man who was naturally a gentleman. It made me expect
good things from you, and you have not disappointed my expectations.”
She paused—but held up her hand at the same time, as a sign that she
awaited no answer from me before she proceeded. When I entered the
summer-house, no thought was in me of the woman in white. But now,
Miss Halcombe’s own words had put the memory of my adventure back in
my mind. It remained there throughout the interview—remained, and not
without a result.
“As your friend,” she proceeded, “I am going to tell you, at once, in
my own plain, blunt, downright language, that I have discovered your
secret—without help or hint, mind, from any one else. Mr. Hartright,
you have thoughtlessly allowed yourself to form an attachment—a serious
and devoted attachment I am afraid—to my sister Laura. I don’t put
you to the pain of confessing it in so many words, because I see and
know that you are too honest to deny it. I don’t even blame you—I
pity you for opening your heart to a hopeless affection. You have not
attempted to take any underhand advantage—you have not spoken to my
sister in secret. You are guilty of weakness and want of attention to
your own best interests, but of nothing worse. If you had acted, in any
single respect, less delicately and less modestly, I should have told
you to leave the house without an instant’s notice, or an instant’s
consultation of anybody. As it is, I blame the misfortune of your years
and your position—I don’t blame YOU. Shake hands—I have given you pain;
I am going to give you more, but there is no help for it—shake hands
with your friend, Marian Halcombe, first.”
The sudden kindness—the warm, high-minded, fearless sympathy which met
me on such mercifully equal terms, which appealed with such delicate
and generous abruptness straight to my heart, my honour, and my
courage, overcame me in an instant. I tried to look at her when she
took my hand, but my eyes were dim. I tried to thank her, but my voice
failed me.
“Listen to me,” she said, considerately avoiding all notice of my loss