The Woman in White
hot and burnt her. Her fingers twined together nervously in her
lap, her eyes looked down again at the floor, and an expression of
constraint settled on her face which looked almost like an expression
of pain.
“Is it absolutely necessary to speak of my marriage engagement?” she
asked in low tones.
“It is necessary to refer to it,” I answered, “but not to dwell on it.
Let us merely say that you may marry, or that you may not marry. In the
first case, I must be prepared, beforehand, to draw your settlement,
and I ought not to do that without, as a matter of politeness, first
consulting you. This may be my only chance of hearing what your wishes
are. Let us, therefore, suppose the case of your marrying, and let me
inform you, in as few words as possible, what your position is now, and
what you may make it, if you please, in the future.”
I explained to her the object of a marriage-settlement, and then told
her exactly what her prospects were—in the first place, on her coming
of age, and in the second place, on the decease of her uncle—marking
the distinction between the property in which she had a life-interest
only, and the property which was left at her own control. She listened
attentively, with the constrained expression still on her face, and her
hands still nervously clasped together in her lap.
“And now,” I said in conclusion, “tell me if you can think of any
condition which, in the case we have supposed, you would wish me to
make for you—subject, of course, to your guardian’s approval, as you
are not yet of age.”
She moved uneasily in her chair, then looked in my face on a sudden
very earnestly.
“If it does happen,” she began faintly, “if I am——”
“If you are married,” I added, helping her out.
“Don’t let him part me from Marian,” she cried, with a sudden outbreak
of energy. “Oh, Mr. Gilmore, pray make it law that Marian is to live
with me!”
Under other circumstances I might, perhaps, have been amused at this
essentially feminine interpretation of my question, and of the long
explanation which had preceded it. But her looks and tones, when she
spoke, were of a kind to make me more than serious—they distressed me.
Her words, few as they were, betrayed a desperate clinging to the past
which boded ill for the future.
“Your having Marian Halcombe to live with you can easily be settled by
private arrangement,” I said. “You hardly understood my question, I
think. It referred to your own property—to the disposal of your money.
Supposing you were to make a will when you come of age, who would you
like the money to go to?”
“Marian has been mother and sister both to me,” said the good,
affectionate girl, her pretty blue eyes glistening while she spoke.
“May I leave it to Marian, Mr. Gilmore?”
“Certainly, my love,” I answered. “But remember what a large sum it is.
Would you like it all to go to Miss Halcombe?”
She hesitated; her colour came and went, and her hand stole back again
to the little album.
“Not all of it,” she said. “There is some one else besides Marian——”
She stopped; her colour heightened, and the fingers of the hand that
rested upon the album beat gently on the margin of the drawing, as if
her memory had set them going mechanically with the remembrance of a
favourite tune.
“You mean some other member of the family besides Miss Halcombe?” I
suggested, seeing her at a loss to proceed.
The heightening colour spread to her forehead and her neck, and the
nervous fingers suddenly clasped themselves fast round the edge of the
book.
“There is some one else,” she said, not noticing my last words, though
she had evidently heard them; “there is some one else who might like
a little keepsake if—if I might leave it. There would be no harm if I
should die first——”
She paused again. The colour that had spread over her cheeks suddenly,
as suddenly left them. The hand on the album resigned its hold,
trembled a little, and moved the book away from her. She looked
at me for an instant—then turned her head aside in the chair. Her
handkerchief fell to the floor as she changed her position, and she
hurriedly hid her face from me in her hands.
Sad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that ever
laughed the day through, and to see her now, in the flower of her age
and her beauty, so broken and so brought down as this!
In the distress that she caused me I forgot the years that had passed,
and the change they had made in our position towards one another. I
moved my chair close to her, and picked up her handkerchief from the
carpet, and drew her hands from her face gently. “Don’t cry, my love,”
I said, and dried the tears that were gathering in her eyes with my own
hand, as if she had been the little Laura Fairlie of ten long years ago.
It was the best way I could have taken to compose her. She laid her
head on my shoulder, and smiled faintly through her tears.
“I am very sorry for forgetting myself,” she said artlessly. “I have
not been well—I have felt sadly weak and nervous lately, and I often
cry without reason when I am alone. I am better now—I can answer you as
I ought, Mr. Gilmore, I can indeed.”
“No, no, my dear,” I replied, “we will consider the subject as done
with for the present. You have said enough to sanction my taking the
best possible care of your interests, and we can settle details at
another opportunity. Let us have done with business now, and talk of
something else.”
I led her at once into speaking on other topics. In ten minutes’ time
she was in better spirits, and I rose to take my leave.
“Come here again,” she said earnestly. “I will try to be worthier of
your kind feeling for me and for my interests if you will only come
again.”
Still clinging to the past—that past which I represented to her, in my
way, as Miss Halcombe did in hers! It troubled me sorely to see her
looking back, at the beginning of her career, just as I look back at
the end of mine.
“If I do come again, I hope I shall find you better,” I said; “better
and happier. God bless you, my dear!”
She only answered by putting up her cheek to me to be kissed. Even
lawyers have hearts, and mine ached a little as I took leave of her.
The whole interview between us had hardly lasted more than half an
hour—she had not breathed a word, in my presence, to explain the
mystery of her evident distress and dismay at the prospect of her
marriage, and yet she had contrived to win me over to her side of the
question, I neither knew how nor why. I had entered the room, feeling
that Sir Percival Glyde had fair reason to complain of the manner in
which she was treating him. I left it, secretly hoping that matters
might end in her taking him at his word and claiming her release. A man
of my age and experience ought to have known better than to vacillate
in this unreasonable manner. I can make no excuse for myself; I can
only tell the truth, and say—so it was.
The hour for my departure was now drawing near. I sent to Mr. Fairlie
to say that I would wait on him to take leave if he liked, but that he
must excuse my being rather in a hurry. He sent a message back, written
in pencil on a slip of paper: “Kind love and best wishes, dear Gilmore.
Hurry of any kind is inexpressibly injurious to me. Pray take care of
yourself. Good-bye.”
Just before I left I saw Miss Halcombe for a moment alone.
“Have you said all you wanted to Laura?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “She is very weak and nervous—I am glad she has you
to take care of her.”
Miss Halcombe’s sharp eyes studied my face attentively.
“You are altering your opinion about Laura,” she said. “You are readier
to make allowances for her than you were yesterday.”
No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words
with a woman. I only answered—
“Let me know what happens. I will do nothing till I hear from you.”
She still looked hard in my face. “I wish it was all over, and well
over, Mr. Gilmore—and so do you.” With those words she left me.
Sir Percival most politely insisted on seeing me to the carriage door.
“If you are ever in my neighbourhood,” he said, “pray don’t forget
that I am sincerely anxious to improve our acquaintance. The tried and
trusted old friend of this family will be always a welcome visitor in
any house of mine.”
A really irresistible man—courteous, considerate, delightfully free
from pride—a gentleman, every inch of him. As I drove away to the
station I felt as if I could cheerfully do anything to promote the
interests of Sir Percival Glyde—anything in the world, except drawing
the marriage settlement of his wife.
III
A week passed, after my return to London, without the receipt of any
communication from Miss Halcombe.
On the eighth day a letter in her handwriting was placed among the
other letters on my table.
It announced that Sir Percival Glyde had been definitely accepted, and
that the marriage was to take place, as he had originally desired,
before the end of the year. In all probability the ceremony would
be performed during the last fortnight in December. Miss Fairlie’s
twenty-first birthday was late in March. She would, therefore, by this
arrangement, become Sir Percival’s wife about three months before she
was of age.
I ought not to have been surprised, I ought not to have been sorry, but
I was surprised and sorry, nevertheless. Some little disappointment,
caused by the unsatisfactory shortness of Miss Halcombe’s letter,
mingled itself with these feelings, and contributed its share towards
upsetting my serenity for the day. In six lines my correspondent
announced the proposed marriage—in three more, she told me that Sir
Percival had left Cumberland to return to his house in Hampshire,
and in two concluding sentences she informed me, first, that Laura
was sadly in want of change and cheerful society; secondly, that she
had resolved to try the effect of some such change forthwith, by
taking her sister away with her on a visit to certain old friends in
Yorkshire. There the letter ended, without a word to explain what
the circumstances were which had decided Miss Fairlie to accept Sir
Percival Glyde in one short week from the time when I had last seen her.
At a later period the cause of this sudden determination was fully
explained to me. It is not my business to relate it imperfectly, on
hearsay evidence. The circumstances came within the personal experience
of Miss Halcombe, and when her narrative succeeds mine, she will
describe them in every particular exactly as they happened. In the
meantime, the plain duty for me to perform—before I, in my turn, lay
down my pen and withdraw from the story—is to relate the one remaining
event connected with Miss Fairlie’s proposed marriage in which I was
concerned, namely, the drawing of the settlement.
It is impossible to refer intelligibly to this document without first
entering into certain particulars in relation to the bride’s pecuniary
affairs. I will try to make my explanation briefly and plainly, and
to keep it free from professional obscurities and technicalities.
The matter is of the utmost importance. I warn all readers of these
lines that Miss Fairlie’s inheritance is a very serious part of Miss
Fairlie’s story, and that Mr. Gilmore’s experience, in this particular,
must be their experience also, if they wish to understand the
narratives which are yet to come.
Miss Fairlie’s expectations, then, were of a twofold kind, comprising
her possible inheritance of real property, or land, when her uncle
died, and her absolute inheritance of personal property, or money, when
she came of age.
Let us take the land first.
In the time of Miss Fairlie’s paternal grandfather (whom we will call
Mr. Fairlie, the elder) the entailed succession to the Limmeridge
estate stood thus—