The Woman in White
some pity for him—which was just what he calculated on, as you will
see. I thought him hardly used. It was not his fault that his father
and mother were not married, and it was not his father’s and mother’s
fault either. A more scrupulous woman than I was—a woman who had not
set her heart on a gold watch and chain—would have found some excuses
for him. At all events, I held my tongue, and helped to screen what he
was about.
He was some time getting the ink the right colour (mixing it over and
over again in pots and bottles of mine), and some time afterwards in
practising the handwriting. But he succeeded in the end, and made an
honest woman of his mother after she was dead in her grave! So far, I
don’t deny that he behaved honourably enough to myself. He gave me my
watch and chain, and spared no expense in buying them; both were of
superior workmanship, and very expensive. I have got them still—the
watch goes beautifully.
You said the other day that Mrs. Clements had told you everything she
knew. In that case there is no need for me to write about the trumpery
scandal by which I was the sufferer—the innocent sufferer, I positively
assert. You must know as well as I do what the notion was which my
husband took into his head when he found me and my fine-gentleman
acquaintance meeting each other privately and talking secrets together.
But what you don’t know is how it ended between that same gentleman and
myself. You shall read and see how he behaved to me.
The first words I said to him, when I saw the turn things had taken,
were, “Do me justice—clear my character of a stain on it which you
know I don’t deserve. I don’t want you to make a clean breast of it to
my husband—only tell him, on your word of honour as a gentleman, that
he is wrong, and that I am not to blame in the way he thinks I am. Do
me that justice, at least, after all I have done for you.” He flatly
refused, in so many words. He told me plainly that it was his interest
to let my husband and all my neighbours believe the falsehood—because,
as long as they did so they were quite certain never to suspect the
truth. I had a spirit of my own, and I told him they should know the
truth from my lips. His reply was short, and to the point. If I spoke,
I was a lost woman, as certainly as he was a lost man.
Yes! it had come to that. He had deceived me about the risk I ran
in helping him. He had practised on my ignorance, he had tempted me
with his gifts, he had interested me with his story—and the result of
it was that he made me his accomplice. He owned this coolly, and he
ended by telling me, for the first time, what the frightful punishment
really was for his offence, and for any one who helped him to commit
it. In those days the law was not so tender-hearted as I hear it is
now. Murderers were not the only people liable to be hanged, and women
convicts were not treated like ladies in undeserved distress. I confess
he frightened me—the mean impostor! the cowardly blackguard! Do you
understand now how I hated him? Do you understand why I am taking all
this trouble—thankfully taking it—to gratify the curiosity of the
meritorious young gentleman who hunted him down?
Well, to go on. He was hardly fool enough to drive me to downright
desperation. I was not the sort of woman whom it was quite safe to hunt
into a corner—he knew that, and wisely quieted me with proposals for
the future.
I deserved some reward (he was kind enough to say) for the service I
had done him, and some compensation (he was so obliging as to add) for
what I had suffered. He was quite willing—generous scoundrel!—to make
me a handsome yearly allowance, payable quarterly, on two conditions.
First, I was to hold my tongue—in my own interests as well as in his.
Secondly, I was not to stir away from Welmingham without first letting
him know, and waiting till I had obtained his permission. In my own
neighbourhood, no virtuous female friends would tempt me into dangerous
gossiping at the tea-table. In my own neighbourhood, he would always
know where to find me. A hard condition, that second one—but I accepted
it.
What else was I to do? I was left helpless, with the prospect of a
coming incumbrance in the shape of a child. What else was I to do? Cast
myself on the mercy of my runaway idiot of a husband who had raised the
scandal against me? I would have died first. Besides, the allowance WAS
a handsome one. I had a better income, a better house over my head,
better carpets on my floors, than half the women who turned up the
whites of their eyes at the sight of me. The dress of Virtue, in our
parts, was cotton print. I had silk.
So I accepted the conditions he offered me, and made the best of
them, and fought my battle with my respectable neighbours on their
own ground, and won it in course of time—as you saw yourself. How I
kept his Secret (and mine) through all the years that have passed from
that time to this, and whether my late daughter, Anne, ever really
crept into my confidence, and got the keeping of the Secret too—are
questions, I dare say, to which you are curious to find an answer.
Well! my gratitude refuses you nothing. I will turn to a fresh page
and give you the answer immediately. But you must excuse one thing—you
must excuse my beginning, Mr. Hartright, with an expression of surprise
at the interest which you appear to have felt in my late daughter. It
is quite unaccountable to me. If that interest makes you anxious for
any particulars of her early life, I must refer you to Mrs. Clements,
who knows more of the subject than I do. Pray understand that I do
not profess to have been at all overfond of my late daughter. She was
a worry to me from first to last, with the additional disadvantage
of being always weak in the head. You like candour, and I hope this
satisfies you.
There is no need to trouble you with many personal particulars relating
to those past times. It will be enough to say that I observed the terms
of the bargain on my side, and that I enjoyed my comfortable income in
return, paid quarterly.
Now and then I got away and changed the scene for a short time, always
asking leave of my lord and master first, and generally getting it. He
was not, as I have already told you, fool enough to drive me too hard,
and he could reasonably rely on my holding my tongue for my own sake,
if not for his. One of my longest trips away from home was the trip I
took to Limmeridge to nurse a half-sister there, who was dying. She was
reported to have saved money, and I thought it as well (in case any
accident happened to stop my allowance) to look after my own interests
in that direction. As things turned out, however, my pains were all
thrown away, and I got nothing, because nothing was to be had.
I had taken Anne to the north with me, having my whims and fancies,
occasionally, about my child, and getting, at such times, jealous of
Mrs. Clements’ influence over her. I never liked Mrs. Clements. She was
a poor, empty-headed, spiritless woman—what you call a born drudge—and
I was now and then not averse to plaguing her by taking Anne away. Not
knowing what else to do with my girl while I was nursing in Cumberland,
I put her to school at Limmeridge. The lady of the manor, Mrs. Fairlie
(a remarkably plain-looking woman, who had entrapped one of the
handsomest men in England into marrying her), amused me wonderfully
by taking a violent fancy to my girl. The consequence was, she learnt
nothing at school, and was petted and spoilt at Limmeridge House. Among
other whims and fancies which they taught her there, they put some
nonsense into her head about always wearing white. Hating white and
liking colours myself, I determined to take the nonsense out of her
head as soon as we got home again.
Strange to say, my daughter resolutely resisted me. When she HAD got a
notion once fixed in her mind she was, like other half-witted people,
as obstinate as a mule in keeping it. We quarrelled finely, and Mrs.
Clements, not liking to see it, I suppose, offered to take Anne away
to live in London with her. I should have said Yes, if Mrs. Clements
had not sided with my daughter about her dressing herself in white. But
being determined she should NOT dress herself in white, and disliking
Mrs. Clements more than ever for taking part against me, I said No, and
meant No, and stuck to No. The consequence was, my daughter remained
with me, and the consequence of that, in its turn, was the first
serious quarrel that happened about the Secret.
The circumstance took place long after the time I have just been
writing of. I had been settled for years in the new town, and was
steadily living down my bad character and slowly gaining ground among
the respectable inhabitants. It helped me forward greatly towards this
object to have my daughter with me. Her harmlessness and her fancy
for dressing in white excited a certain amount of sympathy. I left
off opposing her favourite whim on that account, because some of the
sympathy was sure, in course of time, to fall to my share. Some of it
did fall. I date my getting a choice of the two best sittings to let in
the church from that time, and I date the clergyman’s first bow from my
getting the sittings.
Well, being settled in this way, I received a letter one morning from
that highly born gentleman (now deceased) in answer to one of mine,
warning him, according to agreement, of my wishing to leave the town
for a little change of air and scene.
The ruffianly side of him must have been uppermost, I suppose, when
he got my letter, for he wrote back, refusing me in such abominably
insolent language, that I lost all command over myself, and abused him,
in my daughter’s presence, as “a low impostor whom I could ruin for
life if I chose to open my lips and let out his Secret.” I said no more
about him than that, being brought to my senses as soon as those words
had escaped me by the sight of my daughter’s face looking eagerly and
curiously at mine. I instantly ordered her out of the room until I had
composed myself again.
My sensations were not pleasant, I can tell you, when I came to reflect
on my own folly. Anne had been more than usually crazy and queer that
year, and when I thought of the chance there might be of her repeating
my words in the town, and mentioning HIS name in connection with them,
if inquisitive people got hold of her, I was finely terrified at the
possible consequences. My worst fears for myself, my worst dread of
what he might do, led me no farther than this. I was quite unprepared
for what really did happen only the next day.
On that next day, without any warning to me to expect him, he came to
the house.
His first words, and the tone in which he spoke them, surly as it was,
showed me plainly enough that he had repented already of his insolent
answer to my application, and that he had come in a mighty bad temper
to try and set matters right again before it was too late. Seeing my
daughter in the room with me (I had been afraid to let her out of my
sight after what had happened the day before) he ordered her away. They
neither of them liked each other, and he vented the ill-temper on HER
which he was afraid to show to ME.
“Leave us,” he said, looking at her over his shoulder. She looked back
over HER shoulder and waited as if she didn’t care to go. “Do you
hear?” he roared out, “leave the room.” “Speak to me civilly,” says
she, getting red in the face. “Turn the idiot out,” says he, looking
my way. She had always had crazy notions of her own about her dignity,
and that word “idiot” upset her in a moment. Before I could interfere
she stepped up to him in a fine passion. “Beg my pardon, directly,”
says she, “or I’ll make it the worse for you. I’ll let out your