The Woman in White
the monotony of the prospect, and helped the mind to look forward to
summer-time and shade.
As I moved away from the back of the church, and passed some of
the dismantled cottages in search of a person who might direct me
to the clerk, I saw two men saunter out after me from behind a
wall. The tallest of the two—a stout muscular man in the dress of a
gamekeeper—was a stranger to me. The other was one of the men who had
followed me in London on the day when I left Mr. Kyrle’s office. I had
taken particular notice of him at the time; and I felt sure that I was
not mistaken in identifying the fellow on this occasion.
Neither he nor his companion attempted to speak to me, and both kept
themselves at a respectful distance, but the motive of their presence
in the neighbourhood of the church was plainly apparent. It was exactly
as I had supposed—Sir Percival was already prepared for me. My visit to
Mrs. Catherick had been reported to him the evening before, and those
two men had been placed on the look-out near the church in anticipation
of my appearance at Old Welmingham. If I had wanted any further proof
that my investigations had taken the right direction at last, the plan
now adopted for watching me would have supplied it.
I walked on away from the church till I reached one of the inhabited
houses, with a patch of kitchen garden attached to it on which a
labourer was at work. He directed me to the clerk’s abode, a cottage at
some little distance off, standing by itself on the outskirts of the
forsaken village. The clerk was indoors, and was just putting on his
greatcoat. He was a cheerful, familiar, loudly-talkative old man, with
a very poor opinion (as I soon discovered) of the place in which he
lived, and a happy sense of superiority to his neighbours in virtue of
the great personal distinction of having once been in London.
“It’s well you came so early, sir,” said the old man, when I had
mentioned the object of my visit. “I should have been away in ten
minutes more. Parish business, sir, and a goodish long trot before it’s
all done for a man at my age. But, bless you, I’m strong on my legs
still! As long as a man don’t give at his legs, there’s a deal of work
left in him. Don’t you think so yourself, sir?”
He took his keys down while he was talking from a hook behind the
fireplace, and locked his cottage door behind us.
“Nobody at home to keep house for me,” said the clerk, with a cheerful
sense of perfect freedom from all family encumbrances. “My wife’s in
the churchyard there, and my children are all married. A wretched place
this, isn’t it, sir? But the parish is a large one—every man couldn’t
get through the business as I do. It’s learning does it, and I’ve had
my share, and a little more. I can talk the Queen’s English (God bless
the Queen!), and that’s more than most of the people about here can do.
You’re from London, I suppose, sir? I’ve been in London a matter of
five-and-twenty year ago. What’s the news there now, if you please?”
Chattering on in this way, he led me back to the vestry. I looked about
to see if the two spies were still in sight. They were not visible
anywhere. After having discovered my application to the clerk, they
had probably concealed themselves where they could watch my next
proceedings in perfect freedom.
The vestry door was of stout old oak, studded with strong nails, and
the clerk put his large heavy key into the lock with the air of a man
who knew that he had a difficulty to encounter, and who was not quite
certain of creditably conquering it.
“I’m obliged to bring you this way, sir,” he said, “because the door
from the vestry to the church is bolted on the vestry side. We might
have got in through the church otherwise. This is a perverse lock, if
ever there was one yet. It’s big enough for a prison-door—it’s been
hampered over and over again, and it ought to be changed for a new one.
I’ve mentioned that to the churchwarden fifty times over at least—he’s
always saying, ‘I’ll see about it’—and he never does see. Ah, it’s a
sort of lost corner, this place. Not like London—is it, sir? Bless you,
we are all asleep here! We don’t march with the times.”
After some twisting and turning of the key, the heavy lock yielded, and
he opened the door.
The vestry was larger than I should have supposed it to be, judging
from the outside only. It was a dim, mouldy, melancholy old room, with
a low, raftered ceiling. Round two sides of it, the sides nearest to
the interior of the church, ran heavy wooden presses, worm-eaten and
gaping with age. Hooked to the inner corner of one of these presses
hung several surplices, all bulging out at their lower ends in an
irreverent-looking bundle of limp drapery. Below the surplices, on the
floor, stood three packing-cases, with the lids half off, half on, and
the straw profusely bursting out of their cracks and crevices in every
direction. Behind them, in a corner, was a litter of dusty papers,
some large and rolled up like architects’ plans, some loosely strung
together on files like bills or letters. The room had once been lighted
by a small side window, but this had been bricked up, and a lantern
skylight was now substituted for it. The atmosphere of the place was
heavy and mouldy, being rendered additionally oppressive by the closing
of the door which led into the church. This door also was composed of
solid oak, and was bolted at the top and bottom on the vestry side.
“We might be tidier, mightn’t we, sir?” said the cheerful clerk; “but
when you’re in a lost corner of a place like this, what are you to do?
Why, look here now, just look at these packing-cases. There they’ve
been, for a year or more, ready to go down to London—there they are,
littering the place, and there they’ll stop as long as the nails hold
them together. I’ll tell you what, sir, as I said before, this is not
London. We are all asleep here. Bless you, WE don’t march with the
times!”
“What is there in the packing-cases?” I asked.
“Bits of old wood carvings from the pulpit, and panels from the
chancel, and images from the organ-loft,” said the clerk. “Portraits
of the twelve apostles in wood, and not a whole nose among ’em. All
broken, and worm-eaten, and crumbling to dust at the edges. As brittle
as crockery, sir, and as old as the church, if not older.”
“And why were they going to London? To be repaired?”
“That’s it, sir, to be repaired, and where they were past repair, to be
copied in sound wood. But, bless you, the money fell short, and there
they are, waiting for new subscriptions, and nobody to subscribe. It
was all done a year ago, sir. Six gentlemen dined together about it, at
the hotel in the new town. They made speeches, and passed resolutions,
and put their names down, and printed off thousands of prospectuses.
Beautiful prospectuses, sir, all flourished over with Gothic devices
in red ink, saying it was a disgrace not to restore the church and
repair the famous carvings, and so on. There are the prospectuses that
couldn’t be distributed, and the architect’s plans and estimates,
and the whole correspondence which set everybody at loggerheads and
ended in a dispute, all down together in that corner, behind the
packing-cases. The money dribbled in a little at first—but what CAN
you expect out of London? There was just enough, you know, to pack the
broken carvings, and get the estimates, and pay the printer’s bill,
and after that there wasn’t a halfpenny left. There the things are,
as I said before. We have nowhere else to put them—nobody in the new
town cares about accommodating us—we’re in a lost corner—and this is an
untidy vestry—and who’s to help it?—that’s what I want to know.”
My anxiety to examine the register did not dispose me to offer much
encouragement to the old man’s talkativeness. I agreed with him that
nobody could help the untidiness of the vestry, and then suggested that
we should proceed to our business without more delay.
“Ay, ay, the marriage-register, to be sure,” said the clerk, taking
a little bunch of keys from his pocket. “How far do you want to look
back, sir?”
Marian had informed me of Sir Percival’s age at the time when we had
spoken together of his marriage engagement with Laura. She had then
described him as being forty-five years old. Calculating back from
this, and making due allowance for the year that had passed since I had
gained my information, I found that he must have been born in eighteen
hundred and four, and that I might safely start on my search through
the register from that date.
“I want to begin with the year eighteen hundred and four,” I said.
“Which way after that, sir?” asked the clerk. “Forwards to our time or
backwards away from us?”
“Backwards from eighteen hundred and four.”
He opened the door of one of the presses—the press from the side of
which the surplices were hanging—and produced a large volume bound
in greasy brown leather. I was struck by the insecurity of the place
in which the register was kept. The door of the press was warped and
cracked with age, and the lock was of the smallest and commonest kind.
I could have forced it easily with the walking-stick I carried in my
hand.
“Is that considered a sufficiently secure place for the register?”
I inquired. “Surely a book of such importance as this ought to be
protected by a better lock, and kept carefully in an iron safe?”
“Well, now, that’s curious!” said the clerk, shutting up the book
again, just after he had opened it, and smacking his hand cheerfully
on the cover. “Those were the very words my old master was always
saying years and years ago, when I was a lad. ‘Why isn’t the register’
(meaning this register here, under my hand)—‘why isn’t it kept in an
iron safe?’ If I’ve heard him say that once, I’ve heard him say it
a hundred times. He was the solicitor in those days, sir, who had
the appointment of vestry-clerk to this church. A fine hearty old
gentleman, and the most particular man breathing. As long as he lived
he kept a copy of this book in his office at Knowlesbury, and had it
posted up regular, from time to time, to correspond with the fresh
entries here. You would hardly think it, but he had his own appointed
days, once or twice in every quarter, for riding over to this church on
his old white pony, to check the copy, by the register, with his own
eyes and hands. ‘How do I know?’ (he used to say) ‘how do I know that
the register in this vestry may not be stolen or destroyed? Why isn’t
it kept in an iron safe? Why can’t I make other people as careful as
I am myself? Some of these days there will be an accident happen, and
when the register’s lost, then the parish will find out the value of my
copy.’ He used to take his pinch of snuff after that, and look about
him as bold as a lord. Ah! the like of him for doing business isn’t
easy to find now. You may go to London and not match him, even THERE.
Which year did you say, sir? Eighteen hundred and what?”
“Eighteen hundred and four,” I replied, mentally resolving to give the
old man no more opportunities of talking, until my examination of the
register was over.
The clerk put on his spectacles, and turned over the leaves of the
register, carefully wetting his finger and thumb at every third page.
“There it is, sir,” said he, with another cheerful smack on the open
volume. “There’s the year you want.”
As I was ignorant of the month in which Sir Percival was born, I began
my backward search with the early part of the year. The register-book
was of the old-fashioned kind, the entries being all made on blank
pages in manuscript, and the divisions which separated them being
indicated by ink lines drawn across the page at the close of each entry.
I reached the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and four without