The Woman in White
Asylum, and there sees a certain female patient. It is known that a
woman named Anne Catherick, and bearing an extraordinary personal
resemblance to Lady Glyde, escaped from the Asylum; it is known that
the person received there last July was received as Anne Catherick
brought back; it is known that the gentleman who brought her back
warned Mr. Fairlie that it was part of her insanity to be bent on
personating his dead niece; and it is known that she did repeatedly
declare herself in the Asylum (where no one believed her) to be Lady
Glyde. These are all facts. What have you to set against them? Miss
Halcombe’s recognition of the woman, which recognition after-events
invalidate or contradict. Does Miss Halcombe assert her supposed
sister’s identity to the owner of the Asylum, and take legal means for
rescuing her? No, she secretly bribes a nurse to let her escape. When
the patient has been released in this doubtful manner, and is taken to
Mr. Fairlie, does he recognise her? Is he staggered for one instant in
his belief of his niece’s death? No. Do the servants recognise her? No.
Is she kept in the neighbourhood to assert her own identity, and to
stand the test of further proceedings? No, she is privately taken to
London. In the meantime you have recognised her also, but you are not
a relative—you are not even an old friend of the family. The servants
contradict you, and Mr. Fairlie contradicts Miss Halcombe, and the
supposed Lady Glyde contradicts herself. She declares she passed the
night in London at a certain house. Your own evidence shows that she
has never been near that house, and your own admission is that her
condition of mind prevents you from producing her anywhere to submit to
investigation, and to speak for herself. I pass over minor points of
evidence on both sides to save time, and I ask you, if this case were
to go now into a court of law—to go before a jury, bound to take facts
as they reasonably appear—where are your proofs?”
I was obliged to wait and collect myself before I could answer him.
It was the first time the story of Laura and the story of Marian had
been presented to me from a stranger’s point of view—the first time
the terrible obstacles that lay across our path had been made to show
themselves in their true character.
“There can be no doubt,” I said, “that the facts, as you have stated
them, appear to tell against us, but——”
“But you think those facts can be explained away,” interposed Mr.
Kyrle. “Let me tell you the result of my experience on that point.
When an English jury has to choose between a plain fact ON the surface
and a long explanation UNDER the surface, it always takes the fact in
preference to the explanation. For example, Lady Glyde (I call the lady
you represent by that name for argument’s sake) declares she has slept
at a certain house, and it is proved that she has not slept at that
house. You explain this circumstance by entering into the state of her
mind, and deducing from it a metaphysical conclusion. I don’t say the
conclusion is wrong—I only say that the jury will take the fact of her
contradicting herself in preference to any reason for the contradiction
that you can offer.”
“But is it not possible,” I urged, “by dint of patience and exertion,
to discover additional evidence? Miss Halcombe and I have a few hundred
pounds——”
He looked at me with a half-suppressed pity, and shook his head.
“Consider the subject, Mr. Hartright, from your own point of view,” he
said. “If you are right about Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco (which
I don’t admit, mind), every imaginable difficulty would be thrown in
the way of your getting fresh evidence. Every obstacle of litigation
would be raised—every point in the case would be systematically
contested—and by the time we had spent our thousands instead of our
hundreds, the final result would, in all probability, be against
us. Questions of identity, where instances of personal resemblance
are concerned, are, in themselves, the hardest of all questions to
settle—the hardest, even when they are free from the complications
which beset the case we are now discussing. I really see no prospect of
throwing any light whatever on this extraordinary affair. Even if the
person buried in Limmeridge churchyard be not Lady Glyde, she was, in
life, on your own showing, so like her, that we should gain nothing,
if we applied for the necessary authority to have the body exhumed. In
short, there is no case, Mr. Hartright—there is really no case.”
I was determined to believe that there WAS a case, and in that
determination shifted my ground, and appealed to him once more.
“Are there not other proofs that we might produce besides the proof of
identity?” I asked.
“Not as you are situated,” he replied. “The simplest and surest of
all proofs, the proof by comparison of dates, is, as I understand,
altogether out of your reach. If you could show a discrepancy between
the date of the doctor’s certificate and the date of Lady Glyde’s
journey to London, the matter would wear a totally different aspect,
and I should be the first to say, Let us go on.”
“That date may yet be recovered, Mr. Kyrle.”
“On the day when it is recovered, Mr. Hartright, you will have a case.
If you have any prospect, at this moment, of getting at it—tell me, and
we shall see if I can advise you.”
I considered. The housekeeper could not help us—Laura could not help
us—Marian could not help us. In all probability, the only persons in
existence who knew the date were Sir Percival and the Count.
“I can think of no means of ascertaining the date at present,” I said,
“because I can think of no persons who are sure to know it, but Count
Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde.”
Mr. Kyrle’s calmly attentive face relaxed, for the first time, into a
smile.
“With your opinion of the conduct of those two gentlemen,” he said,
“you don’t expect help in that quarter, I presume? If they have
combined to gain large sums of money by a conspiracy, they are not
likely to confess it, at any rate.”
“They may be forced to confess it, Mr. Kyrle.”
“By whom?”
“By me.”
We both rose. He looked me attentively in the face with more appearance
of interest than he had shown yet. I could see that I had perplexed him
a little.
“You are very determined,” he said. “You have, no doubt, a personal
motive for proceeding, into which it is not my business to inquire.
If a case can be produced in the future, I can only say, my best
assistance is at your service. At the same time I must warn you, as the
money question always enters into the law question, that I see little
hope, even if you ultimately established the fact of Lady Glyde’s being
alive, of recovering her fortune. The foreigner would probably leave
the country before proceedings were commenced, and Sir Percival’s
embarrassments are numerous enough and pressing enough to transfer
almost any sum of money he may possess from himself to his creditors.
You are of course aware——”
I stopped him at that point.
“Let me beg that we may not discuss Lady Glyde’s affairs,” I said.
“I have never known anything about them in former times, and I know
nothing of them now—except that her fortune is lost. You are right in
assuming that I have personal motives for stirring in this matter. I
wish those motives to be always as disinterested as they are at the
present moment——”
He tried to interpose and explain. I was a little heated, I suppose, by
feeling that he had doubted me, and I went on bluntly, without waiting
to hear him.
“There shall be no money motive,” I said, “no idea of personal
advantage in the service I mean to render to Lady Glyde. She has been
cast out as a stranger from the house in which she was born—a lie
which records her death has been written on her mother’s tomb—and
there are two men, alive and unpunished, who are responsible for it.
That house shall open again to receive her in the presence of every
soul who followed the false funeral to the grave—that lie shall be
publicly erased from the tombstone by the authority of the head of the
family, and those two men shall answer for their crime to ME, though
the justice that sits in tribunals is powerless to pursue them. I have
given my life to that purpose, and, alone as I stand, if God spares me,
I will accomplish it.”
He drew back towards his table, and said nothing. His face showed
plainly that he thought my delusion had got the better of my reason,
and that he considered it totally useless to give me any more advice.
“We each keep our opinion, Mr. Kyrle,” I said, “and we must wait till
the events of the future decide between us. In the meantime, I am much
obliged to you for the attention you have given to my statement. You
have shown me that the legal remedy lies, in every sense of the word,
beyond our means. We cannot produce the law proof, and we are not rich
enough to pay the law expenses. It is something gained to know that.”
I bowed and walked to the door. He called me back and gave me the
letter which I had seen him place on the table by itself at the
beginning of our interview.
“This came by post a few days ago,” he said. “Perhaps you will not
mind delivering it? Pray tell Miss Halcombe, at the same time, that I
sincerely regret being, thus far, unable to help her, except by advice,
which will not be more welcome, I am afraid, to her than to you.”
I looked at the letter while he was speaking. It was addressed to
“Miss Halcombe. Care of Messrs. Gilmore & Kyrle, Chancery Lane.” The
handwriting was quite unknown to me.
On leaving the room I asked one last question.
“Do you happen to know,” I said, “if Sir Percival Glyde is still in
Paris?”
“He has returned to London,” replied Mr. Kyrle. “At least I heard so
from his solicitor, whom I met yesterday.”
After that answer I went out.
On leaving the office the first precaution to be observed was to
abstain from attracting attention by stopping to look about me. I
walked towards one of the quietest of the large squares on the north of
Holborn, then suddenly stopped and turned round at a place where a long
stretch of pavement was left behind me.
There were two men at the corner of the square who had stopped also,
and who were standing talking together. After a moment’s reflection I
turned back so as to pass them. One moved as I came near, and turned
the corner leading from the square into the street. The other remained
stationary. I looked at him as I passed and instantly recognised one of
the men who had watched me before I left England.
If I had been free to follow my own instincts, I should probably have
begun by speaking to the man, and have ended by knocking him down. But
I was bound to consider consequences. If I once placed myself publicly
in the wrong, I put the weapons at once into Sir Percival’s hands.
There was no choice but to oppose cunning by cunning. I turned into
the street down which the second man had disappeared, and passed him,
waiting in a doorway. He was a stranger to me, and I was glad to make
sure of his personal appearance in case of future annoyance. Having
done this, I again walked northward till I reached the New Road. There
I turned aside to the west (having the men behind me all the time),
and waited at a point where I knew myself to be at some distance from
a cab-stand, until a fast two-wheel cab, empty, should happen to pass
me. One passed in a few minutes. I jumped in and told the man to drive
rapidly towards Hyde Park. There was no second fast cab for the spies
behind me. I saw them dart across to the other side of the road, to
follow me by running, until a cab or a cab-stand came in their way. But
I had the start of them, and when I stopped the driver and got out,
they were nowhere in sight. I crossed Hyde Park and made sure, on the