The Woman in White
the loneliness and emptiness of the house, that I was glad, on my side,
to have a companion near me. Her ladyship sat up late, reading letters
and burning them, and emptying her drawers and cabinets of little
things she prized, as if she never expected to return to Blackwater
Park. Her sleep was sadly disturbed when she at last went to bed—she
cried out in it several times, once so loud that she woke herself.
Whatever her dreams were, she did not think fit to communicate them
to me. Perhaps, in my situation, I had no right to expect that she
should do so. It matters little now. I was sorry for her, I was indeed
heartily sorry for her all the same.
The next day was fine and sunny. Sir Percival came up, after breakfast,
to tell us that the chaise would be at the door at a quarter to
twelve—the train to London stopping at our station at twenty minutes
after. He informed Lady Glyde that he was obliged to go out, but added
that he hoped to be back before she left. If any unforeseen accident
delayed him, I was to accompany her to the station, and to take special
care that she was in time for the train. Sir Percival communicated
these directions very hastily—walking here and there about the room all
the time. Her ladyship looked attentively after him wherever he went.
He never once looked at her in return.
She only spoke when he had done, and then she stopped him as he
approached the door, by holding out her hand.
“I shall see you no more,” she said, in a very marked manner. “This is
our parting—our parting, it may be for ever. Will you try to forgive
me, Percival, as heartily as I forgive YOU?”
His face turned of an awful whiteness all over, and great beads of
perspiration broke out on his bald forehead. “I shall come back,” he
said, and made for the door, as hastily as if his wife’s farewell words
had frightened him out of the room.
I had never liked Sir Percival, but the manner in which he left Lady
Glyde made me feel ashamed of having eaten his bread and lived in his
service. I thought of saying a few comforting and Christian words to
the poor lady, but there was something in her face, as she looked after
her husband when the door closed on him, that made me alter my mind and
keep silence.
At the time named the chaise drew up at the gates. Her ladyship was
right—Sir Percival never came back. I waited for him till the last
moment, and waited in vain.
No positive responsibility lay on my shoulders, and yet I did not feel
easy in my mind. “It is of your own free will,” I said, as the chaise
drove through the lodge-gates, “that your ladyship goes to London?”
“I will go anywhere,” she answered, “to end the dreadful suspense that
I am suffering at this moment.”
She had made me feel almost as anxious and as uncertain about Miss
Halcombe as she felt herself. I presumed to ask her to write me a
line, if all went well in London. She answered, “Most willingly, Mrs.
Michelson.”
“We all have our crosses to bear, my lady,” I said, seeing her silent
and thoughtful, after she had promised to write.
She made no reply—she seemed to be too much wrapped up in her own
thoughts to attend to me.
“I fear your ladyship rested badly last night,” I remarked, after
waiting a little.
“Yes,” she said, “I was terribly disturbed by dreams.”
“Indeed, my lady?” I thought she was going to tell me her dreams, but
no, when she spoke next it was only to ask a question.
“You posted the letter to Mrs. Vesey with your own hands?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Did Sir Percival say, yesterday, that Count Fosco was to meet me at
the terminus in London?”
“He did, my lady.”
She sighed heavily when I answered that last question, and said no more.
We arrived at the station, with hardly two minutes to spare. The
gardener (who had driven us) managed about the luggage, while I took
the ticket. The whistle of the train was sounding when I joined her
ladyship on the platform. She looked very strangely, and pressed her
hand over her heart, as if some sudden pain or fright had overcome her
at that moment.
“I wish you were going with me!” she said, catching eagerly at my arm
when I gave her the ticket.
If there had been time, if I had felt the day before as I felt then,
I would have made my arrangements to accompany her, even though the
doing so had obliged me to give Sir Percival warning on the spot. As it
was, her wishes, expressed at the last moment only, were expressed too
late for me to comply with them. She seemed to understand this herself
before I could explain it, and did not repeat her desire to have me for
a travelling companion. The train drew up at the platform. She gave the
gardener a present for his children, and took my hand, in her simple
hearty manner, before she got into the carriage.
“You have been very kind to me and to my sister,” she said—“kind when
we were both friendless. I shall remember you gratefully, as long as I
live to remember any one. Good-bye—and God bless you!”
She spoke those words with a tone and a look which brought the tears
into my eyes—she spoke them as if she was bidding me farewell for ever.
“Good-bye, my lady,” I said, putting her into the carriage, and trying
to cheer her; “good-bye, for the present only; good-bye, with my best
and kindest wishes for happier times.”
She shook her head, and shuddered as she settled herself in the
carriage. The guard closed the door. “Do you believe in dreams?” she
whispered to me at the window. “My dreams, last night, were dreams I
have never had before. The terror of them is hanging over me still.”
The whistle sounded before I could answer, and the train moved. Her
pale quiet face looked at me for the last time—looked sorrowfully and
solemnly from the window. She waved her hand, and I saw her no more.
Towards five o’clock on the afternoon of that same day, having a little
time to myself in the midst of the household duties which now pressed
upon me, I sat down alone in my own room, to try and compose my mind
with the volume of my husband’s Sermons. For the first time in my life
I found my attention wandering over those pious and cheering words.
Concluding that Lady Glyde’s departure must have disturbed me far more
seriously than I had myself supposed, I put the book aside, and went
out to take a turn in the garden. Sir Percival had not yet returned, to
my knowledge, so I could feel no hesitation about showing myself in the
grounds.
On turning the corner of the house, and gaining a view of the garden,
I was startled by seeing a stranger walking in it. The stranger was
a woman—she was lounging along the path with her back to me, and was
gathering the flowers.
As I approached she heard me, and turned round.
My blood curdled in my veins. The strange woman in the garden was Mrs.
Rubelle!
I could neither move nor speak. She came up to me, as composedly as
ever, with her flowers in her hand.
“What is the matter, ma’am?” she said quietly.
“You here!” I gasped out. “Not gone to London! Not gone to Cumberland!”
Mrs. Rubelle smelt at her flowers with a smile of malicious pity.
“Certainly not,” she said. “I have never left Blackwater Park.”
I summoned breath enough and courage enough for another question.
“Where is Miss Halcombe?”
Mrs. Rubelle fairly laughed at me this time, and replied in these words—
“Miss Halcombe, ma’am, has not left Blackwater Park either.”
When I heard that astounding answer, all my thoughts were startled
back on the instant to my parting with Lady Glyde. I can hardly say I
reproached myself, but at that moment I think I would have given many a
year’s hard savings to have known four hours earlier what I knew now.
Mrs. Rubelle waited, quietly arranging her nosegay, as if she expected
me to say something.
I could say nothing. I thought of Lady Glyde’s worn-out energies and
weakly health, and I trembled for the time when the shock of the
discovery that I had made would fall on her. For a minute or more my
fears for the poor ladies silenced me. At the end of that time Mrs.
Rubelle looked up sideways from her flowers, and said, “Here is Sir
Percival, ma’am, returned from his ride.”
I saw him as soon as she did. He came towards us, slashing viciously
at the flowers with his riding-whip. When he was near enough to see
my face he stopped, struck at his boot with the whip, and burst out
laughing, so harshly and so violently that the birds flew away,
startled, from the tree by which he stood.
“Well, Mrs. Michelson,” he said, “you have found it out at last, have
you?”
I made no reply. He turned to Mrs. Rubelle.
“When did you show yourself in the garden?”
“I showed myself about half an hour ago, sir. You said I might take my
liberty again as soon as Lady Glyde had gone away to London.”
“Quite right. I don’t blame you—I only asked the question.” He waited
a moment, and then addressed himself once more to me. “You can’t
believe it, can you?” he said mockingly. “Here! come along and see for
yourself.”
He led the way round to the front of the house. I followed him, and
Mrs. Rubelle followed me. After passing through the iron gates he
stopped, and pointed with his whip to the disused middle wing of the
building.
“There!” he said. “Look up at the first floor. You know the old
Elizabethan bedrooms? Miss Halcombe is snug and safe in one of the best
of them at this moment. Take her in, Mrs. Rubelle (you have got your
key?); take Mrs. Michelson in, and let her own eyes satisfy her that
there is no deception this time.”
The tone in which he spoke to me, and the minute or two that had passed
since we left the garden, helped me to recover my spirits a little.
What I might have done at this critical moment, if all my life had been
passed in service, I cannot say. As it was, possessing the feelings,
the principles, and the bringing up of a lady, I could not hesitate
about the right course to pursue. My duty to myself, and my duty to
Lady Glyde, alike forbade me to remain in the employment of a man who
had shamefully deceived us both by a series of atrocious falsehoods.
“I must beg permission, Sir Percival, to speak a few words to you in
private,” I said. “Having done so, I shall be ready to proceed with
this person to Miss Halcombe’s room.”
Mrs. Rubelle, whom I had indicated by a slight turn of my head,
insolently sniffed at her nosegay and walked away, with great
deliberation, towards the house door.
“Well,” said Sir Percival sharply, “what is it now?”
“I wish to mention, sir, that I am desirous of resigning the situation
I now hold at Blackwater Park.” That was literally how I put it. I was
resolved that the first words spoken in his presence should be words
which expressed my intention to leave his service.
He eyed me with one of his blackest looks, and thrust his hands
savagely into the pockets of his riding-coat.
“Why?” he said; “why, I should like to know?”
“It is not for me, Sir Percival, to express an opinion on what has
taken place in this house. I desire to give no offence. I merely wish
to say that I do not feel it consistent with my duty to Lady Glyde and
to myself to remain any longer in your service.”
“Is it consistent with your duty to me to stand there, casting
suspicion on me to my face?” he broke out in his most violent manner.
“I see what you’re driving at. You have taken your own mean, underhand
view of an innocent deception practised on Lady Glyde for her own
good. It was essential to her health that she should have a change of
air immediately, and you know as well as I do she would never have
gone away if she had been told Miss Halcombe was still left here. She
has been deceived in her own interests—and I don’t care who knows it.
Go, if you like—there are plenty of housekeepers as good as you to be