The Woman in White
Secret. I can ruin you for life if I choose to open my lips.” My own
words!—repeated exactly from what I had said the day before—repeated,
in his presence, as if they had come from herself. He sat speechless,
as white as the paper I am writing on, while I pushed her out of the
room. When he recovered himself——
No! I am too respectable a woman to mention what he said when he
recovered himself. My pen is the pen of a member of the rector’s
congregation, and a subscriber to the “Wednesday Lectures on
Justification by Faith”—how can you expect me to employ it in writing
bad language? Suppose, for yourself, the raging, swearing frenzy of the
lowest ruffian in England, and let us get on together, as fast as may
be, to the way in which it all ended.
It ended, as you probably guess by this time, in his insisting on
securing his own safety by shutting her up.
I tried to set things right. I told him that she had merely repeated,
like a parrot, the words she had heard me say and that she knew no
particulars whatever, because I had mentioned none. I explained that
she had affected, out of crazy spite against him, to know what she
really did NOT know—that she only wanted to threaten him and aggravate
him for speaking to her as he had just spoken—and that my unlucky words
gave her just the chance of doing mischief of which she was in search.
I referred him to other queer ways of hers, and to his own experience
of the vagaries of half-witted people—it was all to no purpose—he would
not believe me on my oath—he was absolutely certain I had betrayed the
whole Secret. In short, he would hear of nothing but shutting her up.
Under these circumstances, I did my duty as a mother. “No pauper
Asylum,” I said, “I won’t have her put in a pauper Asylum. A Private
Establishment, if you please. I have my feelings as a mother, and my
character to preserve in the town, and I will submit to nothing but a
Private Establishment, of the sort which my genteel neighbours would
choose for afflicted relatives of their own.” Those were my words.
It is gratifying to me to reflect that I did my duty. Though never
overfond of my late daughter, I had a proper pride about her. No pauper
stain—thanks to my firmness and resolution—ever rested on MY child.
Having carried my point (which I did the more easily, in consequence of
the facilities offered by private Asylums), I could not refuse to admit
that there were certain advantages gained by shutting her up. In the
first place, she was taken excellent care of—being treated (as I took
care to mention in the town) on the footing of a lady. In the second
place, she was kept away from Welmingham, where she might have set
people suspecting and inquiring, by repeating my own incautious words.
The only drawback of putting her under restraint was a very slight one.
We merely turned her empty boast about knowing the Secret into a fixed
delusion. Having first spoken in sheer crazy spitefulness against the
man who had offended her, she was cunning enough to see that she had
seriously frightened him, and sharp enough afterwards to discover that
HE was concerned in shutting her up. The consequence was she flamed out
into a perfect frenzy of passion against him, going to the Asylum, and
the first words she said to the nurses, after they had quieted her,
were, that she was put in confinement for knowing his Secret, and that
she meant to open her lips and ruin him, when the right time came.
She may have said the same thing to you, when you thoughtlessly
assisted her escape. She certainly said it (as I heard last summer)
to the unfortunate woman who married our sweet-tempered, nameless
gentleman lately deceased. If either you, or that unlucky lady, had
questioned my daughter closely, and had insisted on her explaining what
she really meant, you would have found her lose all her self-importance
suddenly, and get vacant, and restless, and confused—you would have
discovered that I am writing nothing here but the plain truth. She knew
that there was a Secret—she knew who was connected with it—she knew
who would suffer by its being known—and beyond that, whatever airs of
importance she may have given herself, whatever crazy boasting she may
have indulged in with strangers, she never to her dying day knew more.
Have I satisfied your curiosity? I have taken pains enough to satisfy
it at any rate. There is really nothing else I have to tell you about
myself or my daughter. My worst responsibilities, so far as she was
concerned, were all over when she was secured in the Asylum. I had a
form of letter relating to the circumstances under which she was shut
up, given me to write, in answer to one Miss Halcombe, who was curious
in the matter, and who must have heard plenty of lies about me from a
certain tongue well accustomed to the telling of the same. And I did
what I could afterwards to trace my runaway daughter, and prevent her
from doing mischief by making inquiries myself in the neighbourhood
where she was falsely reported to have been seen. But these, and other
trifles like them, are of little or no interest to you after what you
have heard already.
So far, I have written in the friendliest possible spirit. But I cannot
close this letter without adding a word here of serious remonstrance
and reproof, addressed to yourself.
In the course of your personal interview with me, you audaciously
referred to my late daughter’s parentage on the father’s side, as
if that parentage was a matter of doubt. This was highly improper
and very ungentlemanlike on your part! If we see each other again,
remember, if you please, that I will allow no liberties to be taken
with my reputation, and that the moral atmosphere of Welmingham (to
use a favourite expression of my friend the rector’s) must not be
tainted by loose conversation of any kind. If you allow yourself to
doubt that my husband was Anne’s father, you personally insult me in
the grossest manner. If you have felt, and if you still continue to
feel, an unhallowed curiosity on this subject, I recommend you, in your
own interests, to check it at once, and for ever. On this side of the
grave, Mr. Hartright, whatever may happen on the other, THAT curiosity
will never be gratified.
Perhaps, after what I have just said, you will see the necessity of
writing me an apology. Do so, and I will willingly receive it. I will,
afterwards, if your wishes point to a second interview with me, go
a step farther, and receive you. My circumstances only enable me to
invite you to tea—not that they are at all altered for the worse by
what has happened. I have always lived, as I think I told you, well
within my income, and I have saved enough, in the last twenty years,
to make me quite comfortable for the rest of my life. It is not my
intention to leave Welmingham. There are one or two little advantages
which I have still to gain in the town. The clergyman bows to me—as you
saw. He is married, and his wife is not quite so civil. I propose to
join the Dorcas Society, and I mean to make the clergyman’s wife bow to
me next.
If you favour me with your company, pray understand that the
conversation must be entirely on general subjects. Any attempted
reference to this letter will be quite useless—I am determined not to
acknowledge having written it. The evidence has been destroyed in the
fire, I know, but I think it desirable to err on the side of caution,
nevertheless.
On this account no names are mentioned here, nor is any signature
attached to these lines: the handwriting is disguised throughout, and
I mean to deliver the letter myself, under circumstances which will
prevent all fear of its being traced to my house. You can have no
possible cause to complain of these precautions, seeing that they do
not affect the information I here communicate, in consideration of the
special indulgence which you have deserved at my hands. My hour for tea
is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.
THE STORY CONTINUED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT
I
My first impulse, after reading Mrs. Catherick’s extraordinary
narrative, was to destroy it. The hardened shameless depravity of the
whole composition, from beginning to end—the atrocious perversity of
mind which persistently associated me with a calamity for which I was
in no sense answerable, and with a death which I had risked my life in
trying to avert—so disgusted me, that I was on the point of tearing the
letter, when a consideration suggested itself which warned me to wait a
little before I destroyed it.
This consideration was entirely unconnected with Sir Percival. The
information communicated to me, so far as it concerned him, did little
more than confirm the conclusions at which I had already arrived.
He had committed his offence, as I had supposed him to have committed
it, and the absence of all reference, on Mrs. Catherick’s part, to
the duplicate register at Knowlesbury, strengthened my previous
conviction that the existence of the book, and the risk of detection
which it implied, must have been necessarily unknown to Sir Percival.
My interest in the question of the forgery was now at an end, and my
only object in keeping the letter was to make it of some future service
in clearing up the last mystery that still remained to baffle me—the
parentage of Anne Catherick on the father’s side. There were one or two
sentences dropped in her mother’s narrative, which it might be useful
to refer to again, when matters of more immediate importance allowed me
leisure to search for the missing evidence. I did not despair of still
finding that evidence, and I had lost none of my anxiety to discover
it, for I had lost none of my interest in tracing the father of the
poor creature who now lay at rest in Mrs. Fairlie’s grave.
Accordingly, I sealed up the letter and put it away carefully in my
pocket-book, to be referred to again when the time came.
The next day was my last in Hampshire. When I had appeared again before
the magistrate at Knowlesbury, and when I had attended at the adjourned
inquest, I should be free to return to London by the afternoon or the
evening train.
My first errand in the morning was, as usual, to the post-office. The
letter from Marian was there, but I thought when it was handed to me
that it felt unusually light. I anxiously opened the envelope. There
was nothing inside but a small strip of paper folded in two. The few
blotted hurriedly-written lines which were traced on it contained these
words:
“Come back as soon as you can. I have been obliged to move. Come to
Gower’s Walk, Fulham (number five). I will be on the look-out for
you. Don’t be alarmed about us, we are both safe and well. But come
back.—Marian.”
The news which those lines contained—news which I instantly associated
with some attempted treachery on the part of Count Fosco—fairly
overwhelmed me. I stood breathless with the paper crumpled up in my
hand. What had happened? What subtle wickedness had the Count planned
and executed in my absence? A night had passed since Marian’s note was
written—hours must elapse still before I could get back to them—some
new disaster might have happened already of which I was ignorant. And
here, miles and miles away from them, here I must remain—held, doubly
held, at the disposal of the law!
I hardly know to what forgetfulness of my obligations anxiety and
alarm might not have tempted me, but for the quieting influence of
my faith in Marian. My absolute reliance on her was the one earthly
consideration which helped me to restrain myself, and gave me courage
to wait. The inquest was the first of the impediments in the way of
my freedom of action. I attended it at the appointed time, the legal
formalities requiring my presence in the room, but as it turned out,