The Woman in White
followed again and attacked on the high-road.
My walking-stick was a light one, of little or no use for purposes
of defence. I stopped before leaving Knowlesbury and bought a stout
country cudgel, short, and heavy at the head. With this homely weapon,
if any one man tried to stop me I was a match for him. If more than one
attacked me I could trust to my heels. In my school-days I had been a
noted runner, and I had not wanted for practice since in the later time
of my experience in Central America.
I started from the town at a brisk pace, and kept the middle of the
road.
A small misty rain was falling, and it was impossible for the first
half of the way to make sure whether I was followed or not. But at the
last half of my journey, when I supposed myself to be about two miles
from the church, I saw a man run by me in the rain, and then heard
the gate of a field by the roadside shut to sharply. I kept straight
on, with my cudgel ready in my hand, my ears on the alert, and my
eyes straining to see through the mist and the darkness. Before I had
advanced a hundred yards there was a rustling in the hedge on my right,
and three men sprang out into the road.
I drew aside on the instant to the footpath. The two foremost men were
carried beyond me before they could check themselves. The third was as
quick as lightning. He stopped, half turned, and struck at me with his
stick. The blow was aimed at hazard, and was not a severe one. It fell
on my left shoulder. I returned it heavily on his head. He staggered
back and jostled his two companions just as they were both rushing at
me. This circumstance gave me a moment’s start. I slipped by them, and
took to the middle of the road again at the top of my speed.
The two unhurt men pursued me. They were both good runners—the road
was smooth and level, and for the first five minutes or more I was
conscious that I did not gain on them. It was perilous work to run for
long in the darkness. I could barely see the dim black line of the
hedges on either side, and any chance obstacle in the road would have
thrown me down to a certainty. Ere long I felt the ground changing—it
descended from the level at a turn, and then rose again beyond.
Downhill the men rather gained on me, but uphill I began to distance
them. The rapid, regular thump of their feet grew fainter on my ear,
and I calculated by the sound that I was far enough in advance to take
to the fields with a good chance of their passing me in the darkness.
Diverging to the footpath, I made for the first break that I could
guess at, rather than see, in the hedge. It proved to be a closed gate.
I vaulted over, and finding myself in a field, kept across it steadily
with my back to the road. I heard the men pass the gate, still running,
then in a minute more heard one of them call to the other to come back.
It was no matter what they did now, I was out of their sight and out of
their hearing. I kept straight across the field, and when I had reached
the farther extremity of it, waited there for a minute to recover my
breath.
It was impossible to venture back to the road, but I was determined
nevertheless to get to Old Welmingham that evening.
Neither moon nor stars appeared to guide me. I only knew that I had
kept the wind and rain at my back on leaving Knowlesbury, and if I
now kept them at my back still, I might at least be certain of not
advancing altogether in the wrong direction.
Proceeding on this plan, I crossed the country—meeting with no worse
obstacles than hedges, ditches, and thickets, which every now and then
obliged me to alter my course for a little while—until I found myself
on a hill-side, with the ground sloping away steeply before me. I
descended to the bottom of the hollow, squeezed my way through a hedge,
and got out into a lane. Having turned to the right on leaving the
road, I now turned to the left, on the chance of regaining the line
from which I had wandered. After following the muddy windings of the
lane for ten minutes or more, I saw a cottage with a light in one of
the windows. The garden gate was open to the lane, and I went in at
once to inquire my way.
Before I could knock at the door it was suddenly opened, and a man
came running out with a lighted lantern in his hand. He stopped and
held it up at the sight of me. We both started as we saw each other.
My wanderings had led me round the outskirts of the village, and had
brought me out at the lower end of it. I was back at Old Welmingham,
and the man with the lantern was no other than my acquaintance of the
morning, the parish clerk.
His manner appeared to have altered strangely in the interval since I
had last seen him. He looked suspicious and confused—his ruddy cheeks
were deeply flushed—and his first words, when he spoke, were quite
unintelligible to me.
“Where are the keys?” he asked. “Have you taken them?”
“What keys?” I repeated. “I have this moment come from Knowlesbury.
What keys do you mean?”
“The keys of the vestry. Lord save us and help us! what shall I do? The
keys are gone! Do you hear?” cried the old man, shaking the lantern at
me in his agitation, “the keys are gone!”
“How? When? Who can have taken them?”
“I don’t know,” said the clerk, staring about him wildly in the
darkness. “I’ve only just got back. I told you I had a long day’s work
this morning—I locked the door and shut the window down—it’s open now,
the window’s open. Look! somebody has got in there and taken the keys.”
He turned to the casement window to show me that it was wide open.
The door of the lantern came loose from its fastening as he swayed it
round, and the wind blew the candle out instantly.
“Get another light,” I said, “and let us both go to the vestry
together. Quick! quick!”
I hurried him into the house. The treachery that I had every reason to
expect, the treachery that might deprive me of every advantage I had
gained, was at that moment, perhaps, in process of accomplishment. My
impatience to reach the church was so great that I could not remain
inactive in the cottage while the clerk lit the lantern again. I walked
out, down the garden path, into the lane.
Before I had advanced ten paces a man approached me from the direction
leading to the church. He spoke respectfully as we met. I could not see
his face, but judging by his voice only, he was a perfect stranger to
me.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Percival——” he began.
I stopped him before he could say more.
“The darkness misleads you,” I said. “I am not Sir Percival.”
The man drew back directly.
“I thought it was my master,” he muttered, in a confused, doubtful way.
“You expected to meet your master here?”
“I was told to wait in the lane.”
With that answer he retraced his steps. I looked back at the cottage
and saw the clerk coming out, with the lantern lighted once more. I
took the old man’s arm to help him on the more quickly. We hastened
along the lane, and passed the person who had accosted me. As well as I
could see by the light of the lantern, he was a servant out of livery.
“Who’s that?” whispered the clerk. “Does he know anything about the
keys?”
“We won’t wait to ask him,” I replied. “We will go on to the vestry
first.”
The church was not visible, even by daytime, until the end of the lane
was reached. As we mounted the rising ground which led to the building
from that point, one of the village children—a boy—came close up to us,
attracted by the light we carried, and recognised the clerk.
“I say, measter,” said the boy, pulling officiously at the clerk’s
coat, “there be summun up yander in the church. I heerd un lock the
door on hisself—I heerd un strike a loight wi’ a match.”
The clerk trembled and leaned against me heavily.
“Come! come!” I said encouragingly. “We are not too late. We will catch
the man, whoever he is. Keep the lantern, and follow me as fast as you
can.”
I mounted the hill rapidly. The dark mass of the church-tower was the
first object I discerned dimly against the night sky. As I turned aside
to get round to the vestry, I heard heavy footsteps close to me. The
servant had ascended to the church after us. “I don’t mean any harm,”
he said, when I turned round on him, “I’m only looking for my master.”
The tones in which he spoke betrayed unmistakable fear. I took no
notice of him and went on.
The instant I turned the corner and came in view of the vestry, I saw
the lantern-skylight on the roof brilliantly lit up from within. It
shone out with dazzling brightness against the murky, starless sky.
I hurried through the churchyard to the door.
As I got near there was a strange smell stealing out on the damp
night air. I heard a snapping noise inside—I saw the light above grow
brighter and brighter—a pane of the glass cracked—I ran to the door and
put my hand on it. The vestry was on fire!
Before I could move, before I could draw my breath after that
discovery, I was horror-struck by a heavy thump against the door from
the inside. I heard the key worked violently in the lock—I heard a
man’s voice behind the door, raised to a dreadful shrillness, screaming
for help.
The servant who had followed me staggered back shuddering, and dropped
to his knees. “Oh, my God!” he said, “it’s Sir Percival!”
As the words passed his lips the clerk joined us, and at the same
moment there was another and a last grating turn of the key in the lock.
“The Lord have mercy on his soul!” said the old man. “He is doomed and
dead. He has hampered the lock.”
I rushed to the door. The one absorbing purpose that had filled all
my thoughts, that had controlled all my actions, for weeks and weeks
past, vanished in an instant from my mind. All remembrance of the
heartless injury the man’s crimes had inflicted—of the love, the
innocence, the happiness he had pitilessly laid waste—of the oath I
had sworn in my own heart to summon him to the terrible reckoning that
he deserved—passed from my memory like a dream. I remembered nothing
but the horror of his situation. I felt nothing but the natural human
impulse to save him from a frightful death.
“Try the other door!” I shouted. “Try the door into the church! The
lock’s hampered. You’re a dead man if you waste another moment on it.”
There had been no renewed cry for help when the key was turned for
the last time. There was no sound now of any kind, to give token that
he was still alive. I heard nothing but the quickening crackle of the
flames, and the sharp snap of the glass in the skylight above.
I looked round at my two companions. The servant had risen to his
feet—he had taken the lantern, and was holding it up vacantly at the
door. Terror seemed to have struck him with downright idiocy—he waited
at my heels, he followed me about when I moved like a dog. The clerk
sat crouched up on one of the tombstones, shivering, and moaning to
himself. The one moment in which I looked at them was enough to show me
that they were both helpless.
Hardly knowing what I did, acting desperately on the first impulse that
occurred to me, I seized the servant and pushed him against the vestry
wall. “Stoop!” I said, “and hold by the stones. I am going to climb
over you to the roof—I am going to break the skylight, and give him
some air!”
The man trembled from head to foot, but he held firm. I got on his
back, with my cudgel in my mouth, seized the parapet with both hands,
and was instantly on the roof. In the frantic hurry and agitation of
the moment, it never struck me that I might let out the flame instead
of letting in the air. I struck at the skylight, and battered in the
cracked, loosened glass at a blow. The fire leaped out like a wild
beast from its lair. If the wind had not chanced, in the position I
occupied, to set it away from me, my exertions might have ended then