The Woman in White
the fatal words of consent were spoken, and the marriage-settlement
was drawn? I have tried to think since, that the feeling which then
animated me began and ended in pure devotion to Miss Fairlie’s
interests, but I have never succeeded in deceiving myself into
believing it, and I must not now attempt to deceive others. The feeling
began and ended in reckless, vindictive, hopeless hatred of the man who
was to marry her.
“If we are to find out anything,” I said, speaking under the new
influence which was now directing me, “we had better not let another
minute slip by us unemployed. I can only suggest, once more, the
propriety of questioning the gardener a second time, and of inquiring
in the village immediately afterwards.”
“I think I may be of help to you in both cases,” said Miss Halcombe,
rising. “Let us go, Mr. Hartright, at once, and do the best we can
together.”
I had the door in my hand to open it for her—but I stopped, on a
sudden, to ask an important question before we set forth.
“One of the paragraphs of the anonymous letter,” I said, “contains some
sentences of minute personal description. Sir Percival Glyde’s name is
not mentioned, I know—but does that description at all resemble him?”
“Accurately—even in stating his age to be forty-five——”
Forty-five; and she was not yet twenty-one! Men of his age married
wives of her age every day—and experience had shown those marriages to
be often the happiest ones. I knew that—and yet even the mention of
his age, when I contrasted it with hers, added to my blind hatred and
distrust of him.
“Accurately,” Miss Halcombe continued, “even to the scar on his right
hand, which is the scar of a wound that he received years since when he
was travelling in Italy. There can be no doubt that every peculiarity
of his personal appearance is thoroughly well known to the writer of
the letter.”
“Even a cough that he is troubled with is mentioned, if I remember
right?”
“Yes, and mentioned correctly. He treats it lightly himself, though it
sometimes makes his friends anxious about him.”
“I suppose no whispers have ever been heard against his character?”
“Mr. Hartright! I hope you are not unjust enough to let that infamous
letter influence you?”
I felt the blood rush into my cheeks, for I knew that it HAD influenced
me.
“I hope not,” I answered confusedly. “Perhaps I had no right to ask the
question.”
“I am not sorry you asked it,” she said, “for it enables me to do
justice to Sir Percival’s reputation. Not a whisper, Mr. Hartright, has
ever reached me, or my family, against him. He has fought successfully
two contested elections, and has come out of the ordeal unscathed.
A man who can do that, in England, is a man whose character is
established.”
I opened the door for her in silence, and followed her out. She had
not convinced me. If the recording angel had come down from heaven to
confirm her, and had opened his book to my mortal eyes, the recording
angel would not have convinced me.
We found the gardener at work as usual. No amount of questioning could
extract a single answer of any importance from the lad’s impenetrable
stupidity. The woman who had given him the letter was an elderly woman;
she had not spoken a word to him, and she had gone away towards the
south in a great hurry. That was all the gardener could tell us.
The village lay southward of the house. So to the village we went next.
XII
Our inquiries at Limmeridge were patiently pursued in all directions,
and among all sorts and conditions of people. But nothing came of
them. Three of the villagers did certainly assure us that they had
seen the woman, but as they were quite unable to describe her, and
quite incapable of agreeing about the exact direction in which she was
proceeding when they last saw her, these three bright exceptions to the
general rule of total ignorance afforded no more real assistance to us
than the mass of their unhelpful and unobservant neighbours.
The course of our useless investigations brought us, in time, to the
end of the village at which the schools established by Mrs. Fairlie
were situated. As we passed the side of the building appropriated to
the use of the boys, I suggested the propriety of making a last inquiry
of the schoolmaster, whom we might presume to be, in virtue of his
office, the most intelligent man in the place.
“I am afraid the schoolmaster must have been occupied with his
scholars,” said Miss Halcombe, “just at the time when the woman passed
through the village and returned again. However, we can but try.”
We entered the playground enclosure, and walked by the schoolroom
window to get round to the door, which was situated at the back of the
building. I stopped for a moment at the window and looked in.
The schoolmaster was sitting at his high desk, with his back to me,
apparently haranguing the pupils, who were all gathered together in
front of him, with one exception. The one exception was a sturdy
white-headed boy, standing apart from all the rest on a stool in a
corner—a forlorn little Crusoe, isolated in his own desert island of
solitary penal disgrace.
The door, when we got round to it, was ajar, and the school-master’s
voice reached us plainly, as we both stopped for a minute under the
porch.
“Now, boys,” said the voice, “mind what I tell you. If I hear another
word spoken about ghosts in this school, it will be the worse for all
of you. There are no such things as ghosts, and therefore any boy who
believes in ghosts believes in what can’t possibly be; and a boy who
belongs to Limmeridge School, and believes in what can’t possibly be,
sets up his back against reason and discipline, and must be punished
accordingly. You all see Jacob Postlethwaite standing up on the stool
there in disgrace. He has been punished, not because he said he saw a
ghost last night, but because he is too impudent and too obstinate to
listen to reason, and because he persists in saying he saw the ghost
after I have told him that no such thing can possibly be. If nothing
else will do, I mean to cane the ghost out of Jacob Postlethwaite, and
if the thing spreads among any of the rest of you, I mean to go a step
farther, and cane the ghost out of the whole school.”
“We seem to have chosen an awkward moment for our visit,” said Miss
Halcombe, pushing open the door at the end of the schoolmaster’s
address, and leading the way in.
Our appearance produced a strong sensation among the boys. They
appeared to think that we had arrived for the express purpose of seeing
Jacob Postlethwaite caned.
“Go home all of you to dinner,” said the schoolmaster, “except Jacob.
Jacob must stop where he is; and the ghost may bring him his dinner, if
the ghost pleases.”
Jacob’s fortitude deserted him at the double disappearance of his
schoolfellows and his prospect of dinner. He took his hands out of
his pockets, looked hard at his knuckles, raised them with great
deliberation to his eyes, and when they got there, ground them round
and round slowly, accompanying the action by short spasms of sniffing,
which followed each other at regular intervals—the nasal minute guns of
juvenile distress.
“We came here to ask you a question, Mr. Dempster,” said Miss Halcombe,
addressing the schoolmaster; “and we little expected to find you
occupied in exorcising a ghost. What does it all mean? What has really
happened?”
“That wicked boy has been frightening the whole school, Miss Halcombe,
by declaring that he saw a ghost yesterday evening,” answered the
master; “and he still persists in his absurd story, in spite of all
that I can say to him.”
“Most extraordinary,” said Miss Halcombe, “I should not have thought it
possible that any of the boys had imagination enough to see a ghost.
This is a new accession indeed to the hard labour of forming the
youthful mind at Limmeridge, and I heartily wish you well through it,
Mr. Dempster. In the meantime, let me explain why you see me here, and
what it is I want.”
She then put the same question to the schoolmaster which we had asked
already of almost every one else in the village. It was met by the same
discouraging answer. Mr. Dempster had not set eyes on the stranger of
whom we were in search.
“We may as well return to the house, Mr. Hartright,” said Miss
Halcombe; “the information we want is evidently not to be found.”
She had bowed to Mr. Dempster, and was about to leave the schoolroom,
when the forlorn position of Jacob Postlethwaite, piteously sniffing on
the stool of penitence, attracted her attention as she passed him, and
made her stop good-humouredly to speak a word to the little prisoner
before she opened the door.
“You foolish boy,” she said, “why don’t you beg Mr. Dempster’s pardon,
and hold your tongue about the ghost?”
“Eh!—but I saw t’ ghaist,” persisted Jacob Postlethwaite, with a stare
of terror and a burst of tears.
“Stuff and nonsense! You saw nothing of the kind. Ghost indeed! What
ghost——”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe,” interposed the schoolmaster a
little uneasily—“but I think you had better not question the boy. The
obstinate folly of his story is beyond all belief; and you might lead
him into ignorantly——”
“Ignorantly what?” inquired Miss Halcombe sharply.
“Ignorantly shocking your feelings,” said Mr. Dempster, looking very
much discomposed.
“Upon my word, Mr. Dempster, you pay my feelings a great compliment in
thinking them weak enough to be shocked by such an urchin as that!” She
turned with an air of satirical defiance to little Jacob, and began
to question him directly. “Come!” she said, “I mean to know all about
this. You naughty boy, when did you see the ghost?”
“Yestere’en, at the gloaming,” replied Jacob.
“Oh! you saw it yesterday evening, in the twilight? And what was it
like?”
“Arl in white—as a ghaist should be,” answered the ghost-seer, with a
confidence beyond his years.
“And where was it?”
“Away yander, in t’ kirkyard—where a ghaist ought to be.”
“As a ‘ghaist’ should be—where a ‘ghaist’ ought to be—why, you little
fool, you talk as if the manners and customs of ghosts had been
familiar to you from your infancy! You have got your story at your
fingers’ ends, at any rate. I suppose I shall hear next that you can
actually tell me whose ghost it was?”
“Eh! but I just can,” replied Jacob, nodding his head with an air of
gloomy triumph.
Mr. Dempster had already tried several times to speak while Miss
Halcombe was examining his pupil, and he now interposed resolutely
enough to make himself heard.
“Excuse me, Miss Halcombe,” he said, “if I venture to say that you are
only encouraging the boy by asking him these questions.”
“I will merely ask one more, Mr. Dempster, and then I shall be quite
satisfied. Well,” she continued, turning to the boy, “and whose ghost
was it?”
“T’ ghaist of Mistress Fairlie,” answered Jacob in a whisper.
The effect which this extraordinary reply produced on Miss Halcombe
fully justified the anxiety which the schoolmaster had shown to prevent
her from hearing it. Her face crimsoned with indignation—she turned
upon little Jacob with an angry suddenness which terrified him into a
fresh burst of tears—opened her lips to speak to him—then controlled
herself, and addressed the master instead of the boy.
“It is useless,” she said, “to hold such a child as that responsible
for what he says. I have little doubt that the idea has been put into
his head by others. If there are people in this village, Mr. Dempster,
who have forgotten the respect and gratitude due from every soul in
it to my mother’s memory, I will find them out, and if I have any
influence with Mr. Fairlie, they shall suffer for it.”
“I hope—indeed, I am sure, Miss Halcombe—that you are mistaken,” said