The Woman in White
evening passed as usual. There was no change in Sir Percival, and no
change in Miss Fairlie.
The Wednesday’s post brought with it an event—the reply from Mrs.
Catherick. I took a copy of the document, which I have preserved, and
which I may as well present in this place. It ran as follows—
“MADAM,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, inquiring
whether my daughter, Anne, was placed under medical superintendence
with my knowledge and approval, and whether the share taken in the
matter by Sir Percival Glyde was such as to merit the expression of my
gratitude towards that gentleman. Be pleased to accept my answer in the
affirmative to both those questions, and believe me to remain, your
obedient servant,
“JANE ANNE CATHERICK.”
Short, sharp, and to the point; in form rather a business-like letter
for a woman to write—in substance as plain a confirmation as could be
desired of Sir Percival Glyde’s statement. This was my opinion, and
with certain minor reservations, Miss Halcombe’s opinion also. Sir
Percival, when the letter was shown to him, did not appear to be struck
by the sharp, short tone of it. He told us that Mrs. Catherick was a
woman of few words, a clear-headed, straightforward, unimaginative
person, who wrote briefly and plainly, just as she spoke.
The next duty to be accomplished, now that the answer had been
received, was to acquaint Miss Fairlie with Sir Percival’s explanation.
Miss Halcombe had undertaken to do this, and had left the room to go
to her sister, when she suddenly returned again, and sat down by the
easy-chair in which I was reading the newspaper. Sir Percival had gone
out a minute before to look at the stables, and no one was in the room
but ourselves.
“I suppose we have really and truly done all we can?” she said, turning
and twisting Mrs. Catherick’s letter in her hand.
“If we are friends of Sir Percival’s, who know him and trust him, we
have done all, and more than all, that is necessary,” I answered, a
little annoyed by this return of her hesitation. “But if we are enemies
who suspect him——”
“That alternative is not even to be thought of,” she interposed. “We
are Sir Percival’s friends, and if generosity and forbearance can add
to our regard for him, we ought to be Sir Percival’s admirers as well.
You know that he saw Mr. Fairlie yesterday, and that he afterwards went
out with me.”
“Yes. I saw you riding away together.”
“We began the ride by talking about Anne Catherick, and about the
singular manner in which Mr. Hartright met with her. But we soon
dropped that subject, and Sir Percival spoke next, in the most
unselfish terms, of his engagement with Laura. He said he had observed
that she was out of spirits, and he was willing, if not informed to
the contrary, to attribute to that cause the alteration in her manner
towards him during his present visit. If, however, there was any more
serious reason for the change, he would entreat that no constraint
might be placed on her inclinations either by Mr. Fairlie or by me. All
he asked, in that case, was that she would recall to mind, for the last
time, what the circumstances were under which the engagement between
them was made, and what his conduct had been from the beginning of the
courtship to the present time. If, after due reflection on those two
subjects, she seriously desired that he should withdraw his pretensions
to the honour of becoming her husband—and if she would tell him so
plainly with her own lips—he would sacrifice himself by leaving her
perfectly free to withdraw from the engagement.”
“No man could say more than that, Miss Halcombe. As to my experience,
few men in his situation would have said as much.”
She paused after I had spoken those words, and looked at me with a
singular expression of perplexity and distress.
“I accuse nobody, and I suspect nothing,” she broke out abruptly. “But
I cannot and will not accept the responsibility of persuading Laura to
this marriage.”
“That is exactly the course which Sir Percival Glyde has himself
requested you to take,” I replied in astonishment. “He has begged you
not to force her inclinations.”
“And he indirectly obliges me to force them, if I give her his message.”
“How can that possibly be?”
“Consult your own knowledge of Laura, Mr. Gilmore. If I tell her to
reflect on the circumstances of her engagement, I at once appeal
to two of the strongest feelings in her nature—to her love for her
father’s memory, and to her strict regard for truth. You know that she
never broke a promise in her life—you know that she entered on this
engagement at the beginning of her father’s fatal illness, and that he
spoke hopefully and happily of her marriage to Sir Percival Glyde on
his deathbed.”
I own that I was a little shocked at this view of the case.
“Surely,” I said, “you don’t mean to infer that when Sir Percival
spoke to you yesterday he speculated on such a result as you have just
mentioned?”
Her frank, fearless face answered for her before she spoke.
“Do you think I would remain an instant in the company of any man whom
I suspected of such baseness as that?” she asked angrily.
I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out on me in that way. We
see so much malice and so little indignation in my profession.
“In that case,” I said, “excuse me if I tell you, in our legal phrase,
that you are travelling out of the record. Whatever the consequences
may be, Sir Percival has a right to expect that your sister should
carefully consider her engagement from every reasonable point of
view before she claims her release from it. If that unlucky letter
has prejudiced her against him, go at once, and tell her that he has
cleared himself in your eyes and in mine. What objection can she urge
against him after that? What excuse can she possibly have for changing
her mind about a man whom she had virtually accepted for her husband
more than two years ago?”
“In the eyes of law and reason, Mr. Gilmore, no excuse, I daresay. If
she still hesitates, and if I still hesitate, you must attribute our
strange conduct, if you like, to caprice in both cases, and we must
bear the imputation as well as we can.”
With those words she suddenly rose and left me. When a sensible woman
has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer,
it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she
has something to conceal. I returned to the perusal of the newspaper,
strongly suspecting that Miss Halcombe and Miss Fairlie had a secret
between them which they were keeping from Sir Percival, and keeping
from me. I thought this hard on both of us, especially on Sir Percival.
My doubts—or to speak more correctly, my convictions—were confirmed
by Miss Halcombe’s language and manner when I saw her again later in
the day. She was suspiciously brief and reserved in telling me the
result of her interview with her sister. Miss Fairlie, it appeared,
had listened quietly while the affair of the letter was placed before
her in the right point of view, but when Miss Halcombe next proceeded
to say that the object of Sir Percival’s visit at Limmeridge was to
prevail on her to let a day be fixed for the marriage she checked all
further reference to the subject by begging for time. If Sir Percival
would consent to spare her for the present, she would undertake to give
him his final answer before the end of the year. She pleaded for this
delay with such anxiety and agitation, that Miss Halcombe had promised
to use her influence, if necessary, to obtain it, and there, at Miss
Fairlie’s earnest entreaty, all further discussion of the marriage
question had ended.
The purely temporary arrangement thus proposed might have been
convenient enough to the young lady, but it proved somewhat
embarrassing to the writer of these lines. That morning’s post had
brought a letter from my partner, which obliged me to return to town
the next day by the afternoon train. It was extremely probable that I
should find no second opportunity of presenting myself at Limmeridge
House during the remainder of the year. In that case, supposing Miss
Fairlie ultimately decided on holding to her engagement, my necessary
personal communication with her, before I drew her settlement, would
become something like a downright impossibility, and we should be
obliged to commit to writing questions which ought always to be
discussed on both sides by word of mouth. I said nothing about this
difficulty until Sir Percival had been consulted on the subject of the
desired delay. He was too gallant a gentleman not to grant the request
immediately. When Miss Halcombe informed me of this I told her that
I must absolutely speak to her sister before I left Limmeridge, and
it was, therefore, arranged that I should see Miss Fairlie in her own
sitting-room the next morning. She did not come down to dinner, or join
us in the evening. Indisposition was the excuse, and I thought Sir
Percival looked, as well he might, a little annoyed when he heard of it.
The next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, I went up to Miss
Fairlie’s sitting-room. The poor girl looked so pale and sad, and came
forward to welcome me so readily and prettily, that the resolution to
lecture her on her caprice and indecision, which I had been forming
all the way upstairs, failed me on the spot. I led her back to the
chair from which she had risen, and placed myself opposite to her. Her
cross-grained pet greyhound was in the room, and I fully expected a
barking and snapping reception. Strange to say, the whimsical little
brute falsified my expectations by jumping into my lap and poking its
sharp muzzle familiarly into my hand the moment I sat down.
“You used often to sit on my knee when you were a child, my dear,” I
said, “and now your little dog seems determined to succeed you in the
vacant throne. Is that pretty drawing your doing?”
I pointed to a little album which lay on the table by her side and
which she had evidently been looking over when I came in. The page that
lay open had a small water-colour landscape very neatly mounted on it.
This was the drawing which had suggested my question—an idle question
enough—but how could I begin to talk of business to her the moment I
opened my lips?
“No,” she said, looking away from the drawing rather confusedly, “it is
not my doing.”
Her fingers had a restless habit, which I remembered in her as a child,
of always playing with the first thing that came to hand whenever any
one was talking to her. On this occasion they wandered to the album,
and toyed absently about the margin of the little water-colour drawing.
The expression of melancholy deepened on her face. She did not look
at the drawing, or look at me. Her eyes moved uneasily from object
to object in the room, betraying plainly that she suspected what my
purpose was in coming to speak to her. Seeing that, I thought it best
to get to the purpose with as little delay as possible.
“One of the errands, my dear, which brings me here is to bid you
good-bye,” I began. “I must get back to London to-day: and, before
I leave, I want to have a word with you on the subject of your own
affairs.”
“I am very sorry you are going, Mr. Gilmore,” she said, looking at me
kindly. “It is like the happy old times to have you here.”
“I hope I may be able to come back and recall those pleasant memories
once more,” I continued; “but as there is some uncertainty about the
future, I must take my opportunity when I can get it, and speak to you
now. I am your old lawyer and your old friend, and I may remind you,
I am sure, without offence, of the possibility of your marrying Sir
Percival Glyde.”
She took her hand off the little album as suddenly as if it had turned