The Woman in White
the result? Could I have made my discovery a marketable commodity, even
for Laura’s sake, after I had found out that robbery of the rights of
others was the essence of Sir Percival’s crime? Could I have offered
the price of MY silence for HIS confession of the conspiracy, when the
effect of that silence must have been to keep the right heir from the
estates, and the right owner from the name? Impossible! If Sir Percival
had lived, the discovery, from which (in my ignorance of the true
nature of the Secret) I had hoped so much, could not have been mine to
suppress or to make public, as I thought best, for the vindication of
Laura’s rights. In common honesty and common honour I must have gone
at once to the stranger whose birthright had been usurped—I must have
renounced the victory at the moment when it was mine by placing my
discovery unreservedly in that stranger’s hands—and I must have faced
afresh all the difficulties which stood between me and the one object
of my life, exactly as I was resolved in my heart of hearts to face
them now!
I returned to Welmingham with my mind composed, feeling more sure of
myself and my resolution than I had felt yet.
On my way to the hotel I passed the end of the square in which Mrs.
Catherick lived. Should I go back to the house, and make another
attempt to see her? No. That news of Sir Percival’s death, which was
the last news she ever expected to hear, must have reached her hours
since. All the proceedings at the inquest had been reported in the
local paper that morning—there was nothing I could tell her which she
did not know already. My interest in making her speak had slackened. I
remembered the furtive hatred in her face when she said, “There is no
news of Sir Percival that I don’t expect—except the news of his death.”
I remembered the stealthy interest in her eyes when they settled on me
at parting, after she had spoken those words. Some instinct, deep in
my heart, which I felt to be a true one, made the prospect of again
entering her presence repulsive to me—I turned away from the square,
and went straight back to the hotel.
Some hours later, while I was resting in the coffee-room, a letter was
placed in my hands by the waiter. It was addressed to me by name, and
I found on inquiry that it had been left at the bar by a woman just as
it was near dusk, and just before the gas was lighted. She had said
nothing, and she had gone away again before there was time to speak to
her, or even to notice who she was.
I opened the letter. It was neither dated nor signed, and the
handwriting was palpably disguised. Before I had read the first
sentence, however, I knew who my correspondent was—Mrs. Catherick.
The letter ran as follows—I copy it exactly, word for word:—
THE STORY CONTINUED BY MRS. CATHERICK
SIR,—You have not come back, as you said you would. No matter—I know
the news, and I write to tell you so. Did you see anything particular
in my face when you left me? I was wondering, in my own mind, whether
the day of his downfall had come at last, and whether you were the
chosen instrument for working it. You were, and you HAVE worked it.
You were weak enough, as I have heard, to try and save his life. If
you had succeeded, I should have looked upon you as my enemy. Now you
have failed, I hold you as my friend. Your inquiries frightened him
into the vestry by night—your inquiries, without your privity and
against your will, have served the hatred and wreaked the vengeance of
three-and-twenty years. Thank you, sir, in spite of yourself.
I owe something to the man who has done this. How can I pay my debt?
If I was a young woman still I might say, “Come, put your arm round my
waist, and kiss me, if you like.” I should have been fond enough of you
even to go that length, and you would have accepted my invitation—you
would, sir, twenty years ago! But I am an old woman now. Well! I can
satisfy your curiosity, and pay my debt in that way. You HAD a great
curiosity to know certain private affairs of mine when you came to see
me—private affairs which all your sharpness could not look into without
my help—private affairs which you have not discovered, even now. You
SHALL discover them—your curiosity shall be satisfied. I will take any
trouble to please you, my estimable young friend!
You were a little boy, I suppose, in the year twenty-seven? I was a
handsome young woman at that time, living at Old Welmingham. I had
a contemptible fool for a husband. I had also the honour of being
acquainted (never mind how) with a certain gentleman (never mind whom).
I shall not call him by his name. Why should I? It was not his own. He
never had a name: you know that, by this time, as well as I do.
It will be more to the purpose to tell you how he worked himself into
my good graces. I was born with the tastes of a lady, and he gratified
them—in other words, he admired me, and he made me presents. No woman
can resist admiration and presents—especially presents, provided they
happen to be just the thing she wants. He was sharp enough to know
that—most men are. Naturally he wanted something in return—all men do.
And what do you think was the something? The merest trifle. Nothing
but the key of the vestry, and the key of the press inside it, when my
husband’s back was turned. Of course he lied when I asked him why he
wished me to get him the keys in that private way. He might have saved
himself the trouble—I didn’t believe him. But I liked my presents, and
I wanted more. So I got him the keys, without my husband’s knowledge,
and I watched him, without his own knowledge. Once, twice, four times I
watched him, and the fourth time I found him out.
I was never over-scrupulous where other people’s affairs were
concerned, and I was not over-scrupulous about his adding one to the
marriages in the register on his own account.
Of course I knew it was wrong, but it did no harm to me, which was one
good reason for not making a fuss about it. And I had not got a gold
watch and chain, which was another, still better—and he had promised
me one from London only the day before, which was a third, best of
all. If I had known what the law considered the crime to be, and how
the law punished it, I should have taken proper care of myself, and
have exposed him then and there. But I knew nothing, and I longed for
the gold watch. All the conditions I insisted on were that he should
take me into his confidence and tell me everything. I was as curious
about his affairs then as you are about mine now. He granted my
conditions—why, you will see presently.
This, put in short, is what I heard from him. He did not willingly tell
me all that I tell you here. I drew some of it from him by persuasion
and some of it by questions. I was determined to have all the truth,
and I believe I got it.
He knew no more than any one else of what the state of things really
was between his father and mother till after his mother’s death. Then
his father confessed it, and promised to do what he could for his son.
He died having done nothing—not having even made a will. The son (who
can blame him?) wisely provided for himself. He came to England at
once, and took possession of the property. There was no one to suspect
him, and no one to say him nay. His father and mother had always lived
as man and wife—none of the few people who were acquainted with them
ever supposed them to be anything else. The right person to claim the
property (if the truth had been known) was a distant relation, who had
no idea of ever getting it, and who was away at sea when his father
died. He had no difficulty so far—he took possession, as a matter of
course. But he could not borrow money on the property as a matter of
course. There were two things wanted of him before he could do this.
One was a certificate of his birth, and the other was a certificate
of his parents’ marriage. The certificate of his birth was easily
got—he was born abroad, and the certificate was there in due form. The
other matter was a difficulty, and that difficulty brought him to Old
Welmingham.
But for one consideration he might have gone to Knowlesbury instead.
His mother had been living there just before she met with his
father—living under her maiden name, the truth being that she was
really a married woman, married in Ireland, where her husband had
ill-used her, and had afterwards gone off with some other person. I
give you this fact on good authority—Sir Felix mentioned it to his
son as the reason why he had not married. You may wonder why the
son, knowing that his parents had met each other at Knowlesbury, did
not play his first tricks with the register of that church, where it
might have been fairly presumed his father and mother were married.
The reason was that the clergyman who did duty at Knowlesbury church,
in the year eighteen hundred and three (when, according to his birth
certificate, his father and mother OUGHT to have been married), was
alive still when he took possession of the property in the New Year of
eighteen hundred and twenty-seven. This awkward circumstance forced
him to extend his inquiries to our neighbourhood. There no such danger
existed, the former clergyman at our church having been dead for some
years.
Old Welmingham suited his purpose as well as Knowlesbury. His father
had removed his mother from Knowlesbury, and had lived with her at a
cottage on the river, a little distance from our village. People who
had known his solitary ways when he was single did not wonder at his
solitary ways when he was supposed to be married. If he had not been a
hideous creature to look at, his retired life with the lady might have
raised suspicions; but, as things were, his hiding his ugliness and his
deformity in the strictest privacy surprised nobody. He lived in our
neighbourhood till he came in possession of the Park. After three or
four and twenty years had passed, who was to say (the clergyman being
dead) that his marriage had not been as private as the rest of his
life, and that it had not taken place at Old Welmingham church?
So, as I told you, the son found our neighbourhood the surest place he
could choose to set things right secretly in his own interests. It may
surprise you to hear that what he really did to the marriage register
was done on the spur of the moment—done on second thoughts.
His first notion was only to tear the leaf out (in the right year and
month), to destroy it privately, to go back to London, and to tell the
lawyers to get him the necessary certificate of his father’s marriage,
innocently referring them of course to the date on the leaf that was
gone. Nobody could say his father and mother had NOT been married after
that, and whether, under the circumstances, they would stretch a point
or not about lending him the money (he thought they would), he had his
answer ready at all events, if a question was ever raised about his
right to the name and the estate.
But when he came to look privately at the register for himself, he
found at the bottom of one of the pages for the year eighteen hundred
and three a blank space left, seemingly through there being no room
to make a long entry there, which was made instead at the top of the
next page. The sight of this chance altered all his plans. It was an
opportunity he had never hoped for, or thought of—and he took it—you
know how. The blank space, to have exactly tallied with his birth
certificate, ought to have occurred in the July part of the register.
It occurred in the September part instead. However, in this case, if
suspicious questions were asked, the answer was not hard to find. He
had only to describe himself as a seven months’ child.
I was fool enough, when he told me his story, to feel some interest and