The Woman in White
the schoolmaster. “The matter begins and ends with the boy’s own
perversity and folly. He saw, or thought he saw, a woman in white,
yesterday evening, as he was passing the churchyard; and the figure,
real or fancied, was standing by the marble cross, which he and every
one else in Limmeridge knows to be the monument over Mrs. Fairlie’s
grave. These two circumstances are surely sufficient to have suggested
to the boy himself the answer which has so naturally shocked you?”
Although Miss Halcombe did not seem to be convinced, she evidently felt
that the schoolmaster’s statement of the case was too sensible to be
openly combated. She merely replied by thanking him for his attention,
and by promising to see him again when her doubts were satisfied. This
said, she bowed, and led the way out of the schoolroom.
Throughout the whole of this strange scene I had stood apart, listening
attentively, and drawing my own conclusions. As soon as we were alone
again, Miss Halcombe asked me if I had formed any opinion on what I had
heard.
“A very strong opinion,” I answered; “the boy’s story, as I believe,
has a foundation in fact. I confess I am anxious to see the monument
over Mrs. Fairlie’s grave, and to examine the ground about it.”
“You shall see the grave.”
She paused after making that reply, and reflected a little as we
walked on. “What has happened in the schoolroom,” she resumed, “has so
completely distracted my attention from the subject of the letter, that
I feel a little bewildered when I try to return to it. Must we give up
all idea of making any further inquiries, and wait to place the thing
in Mr. Gilmore’s hands to-morrow?”
“By no means, Miss Halcombe. What has happened in the schoolroom
encourages me to persevere in the investigation.”
“Why does it encourage you?”
“Because it strengthens a suspicion I felt when you gave me the letter
to read.”
“I suppose you had your reasons, Mr. Hartright, for concealing that
suspicion from me till this moment?”
“I was afraid to encourage it in myself. I thought it was utterly
preposterous—I distrusted it as the result of some perversity in my own
imagination. But I can do so no longer. Not only the boy’s own answers
to your questions, but even a chance expression that dropped from the
schoolmaster’s lips in explaining his story, have forced the idea
back into my mind. Events may yet prove that idea to be a delusion,
Miss Halcombe; but the belief is strong in me, at this moment, that
the fancied ghost in the churchyard, and the writer of the anonymous
letter, are one and the same person.”
She stopped, turned pale, and looked me eagerly in the face.
“What person?”
“The schoolmaster unconsciously told you. When he spoke of the figure
that the boy saw in the churchyard he called it ‘a woman in white.’”
“Not Anne Catherick?”
“Yes, Anne Catherick.”
She put her hand through my arm and leaned on it heavily.
“I don’t know why,” she said in low tones, “but there is something in
this suspicion of yours that seems to startle and unnerve me. I feel——”
She stopped, and tried to laugh it off. “Mr. Hartright,” she went on,
“I will show you the grave, and then go back at once to the house. I
had better not leave Laura too long alone. I had better go back and sit
with her.”
We were close to the churchyard when she spoke. The church, a dreary
building of grey stone, was situated in a little valley, so as to be
sheltered from the bleak winds blowing over the moorland all round
it. The burial-ground advanced, from the side of the church, a little
way up the slope of the hill. It was surrounded by a rough, low stone
wall, and was bare and open to the sky, except at one extremity, where
a brook trickled down the stony hill-side, and a clump of dwarf trees
threw their narrow shadows over the short, meagre grass. Just beyond
the brook and the trees, and not far from one of the three stone stiles
which afforded entrance, at various points, to the churchyard, rose the
white marble cross that distinguished Mrs. Fairlie’s grave from the
humbler monuments scattered about it.
“I need go no farther with you,” said Miss Halcombe, pointing to the
grave. “You will let me know if you find anything to confirm the idea
you have just mentioned to me. Let us meet again at the house.”
She left me. I descended at once to the churchyard, and crossed the
stile which led directly to Mrs. Fairlie’s grave.
The grass about it was too short, and the ground too hard, to show any
marks of footsteps. Disappointed thus far, I next looked attentively
at the cross, and at the square block of marble below it, on which the
inscription was cut.
The natural whiteness of the cross was a little clouded, here and
there, by weather stains, and rather more than one half of the square
block beneath it, on the side which bore the inscription, was in the
same condition. The other half, however, attracted my attention at
once by its singular freedom from stain or impurity of any kind. I
looked closer, and saw that it had been cleaned—recently cleaned, in a
downward direction from top to bottom. The boundary line between the
part that had been cleaned and the part that had not was traceable
wherever the inscription left a blank space of marble—sharply traceable
as a line that had been produced by artificial means. Who had begun the
cleansing of the marble, and who had left it unfinished?
I looked about me, wondering how the question was to be solved. No
sign of a habitation could be discerned from the point at which I was
standing—the burial-ground was left in the lonely possession of the
dead. I returned to the church, and walked round it till I came to the
back of the building; then crossed the boundary wall beyond, by another
of the stone stiles, and found myself at the head of a path leading
down into a deserted stone quarry. Against one side of the quarry a
little two-room cottage was built, and just outside the door an old
woman was engaged in washing.
I walked up to her, and entered into conversation about the church
and burial-ground. She was ready enough to talk, and almost the first
words she said informed me that her husband filled the two offices of
clerk and sexton. I said a few words next in praise of Mrs. Fairlie’s
monument. The old woman shook her head, and told me I had not seen it
at its best. It was her husband’s business to look after it, but he
had been so ailing and weak for months and months past, that he had
hardly been able to crawl into church on Sundays to do his duty, and
the monument had been neglected in consequence. He was getting a little
better now, and in a week or ten days’ time he hoped to be strong
enough to set to work and clean it.
This information—extracted from a long rambling answer in the broadest
Cumberland dialect—told me all that I most wanted to know. I gave the
poor woman a trifle, and returned at once to Limmeridge House.
The partial cleansing of the monument had evidently been accomplished
by a strange hand. Connecting what I had discovered, thus far, with
what I had suspected after hearing the story of the ghost seen at
twilight, I wanted nothing more to confirm my resolution to watch
Mrs. Fairlie’s grave, in secret, that evening, returning to it at
sunset, and waiting within sight of it till the night fell. The work of
cleansing the monument had been left unfinished, and the person by whom
it had been begun might return to complete it.
On getting back to the house I informed Miss Halcombe of what I
intended to do. She looked surprised and uneasy while I was explaining
my purpose, but she made no positive objection to the execution of it.
She only said, “I hope it may end well.”
Just as she was leaving me again, I stopped her to inquire, as calmly
as I could, after Miss Fairlie’s health. She was in better spirits,
and Miss Halcombe hoped she might be induced to take a little walking
exercise while the afternoon sun lasted.
I returned to my own room to resume setting the drawings in order. It
was necessary to do this, and doubly necessary to keep my mind employed
on anything that would help to distract my attention from myself, and
from the hopeless future that lay before me. From time to time I paused
in my work to look out of window and watch the sky as the sun sank
nearer and nearer to the horizon. On one of those occasions I saw a
figure on the broad gravel walk under my window. It was Miss Fairlie.
I had not seen her since the morning, and I had hardly spoken to her
then. Another day at Limmeridge was all that remained to me, and after
that day my eyes might never look on her again. This thought was enough
to hold me at the window. I had sufficient consideration for her to
arrange the blind so that she might not see me if she looked up, but I
had no strength to resist the temptation of letting my eyes, at least,
follow her as far as they could on her walk.
She was dressed in a brown cloak, with a plain black silk gown under
it. On her head was the same simple straw hat which she had worn on
the morning when we first met. A veil was attached to it now which hid
her face from me. By her side trotted a little Italian greyhound, the
pet companion of all her walks, smartly dressed in a scarlet cloth
wrapper, to keep the sharp air from his delicate skin. She did not seem
to notice the dog. She walked straight forward, with her head drooping
a little, and her arms folded in her cloak. The dead leaves, which
had whirled in the wind before me when I had heard of her marriage
engagement in the morning, whirled in the wind before her, and rose and
fell and scattered themselves at her feet as she walked on in the pale
waning sunlight. The dog shivered and trembled, and pressed against her
dress impatiently for notice and encouragement. But she never heeded
him. She walked on, farther and farther away from me, with the dead
leaves whirling about her on the path—walked on, till my aching eyes
could see her no more, and I was left alone again with my own heavy
heart.
In another hour’s time I had done my work, and the sunset was at hand.
I got my hat and coat in the hall, and slipped out of the house without
meeting any one.
The clouds were wild in the western heaven, and the wind blew chill
from the sea. Far as the shore was, the sound of the surf swept over
the intervening moorland, and beat drearily in my ears when I entered
the churchyard. Not a living creature was in sight. The place looked
lonelier than ever as I chose my position, and waited and watched, with
my eyes on the white cross that rose over Mrs. Fairlie’s grave.
XIII
The exposed situation of the churchyard had obliged me to be cautious
in choosing the position that I was to occupy.
The main entrance to the church was on the side next to the
burial-ground, and the door was screened by a porch walled in on either
side. After some little hesitation, caused by natural reluctance to
conceal myself, indispensable as that concealment was to the object
in view, I had resolved on entering the porch. A loophole window was
pierced in each of its side walls. Through one of these windows I
could see Mrs. Fairlie’s grave. The other looked towards the stone
quarry in which the sexton’s cottage was built. Before me, fronting the
porch entrance, was a patch of bare burial-ground, a line of low stone
wall, and a strip of lonely brown hill, with the sunset clouds sailing
heavily over it before the strong, steady wind. No living creature was
visible or audible—no bird flew by me, no dog barked from the sexton’s
cottage. The pauses in the dull beating of the surf were filled up by
the dreary rustling of the dwarf trees near the grave, and the cold
faint bubble of the brook over its stony bed. A dreary scene and a