The Woman in White

Chapter 13

The main entrance to the church was on the side next to the

burial-ground, and the door was screened by a porch walled in on

either side. After some little hesitation, caused by natural

reluctance to conceal myself, indispensable as that concealment

was to the object in view, I had resolved on entering the porch.

A loophole window was pierced in each of its side walls. Through

one of these windows I could see Mrs. Fairlie's grave. The other

looked towards the stone quarry in which the sexton's cottage was

built. Before me, fronting the porch entrance, was a patch of

bare burial-ground, a line of low stone wall, and a strip of

lonely brown hill, with the sunset clouds sailing heavily over it

before the strong, steady wind. No living creature was visible or

audible--no bird flew by me, no dog barked from the sexton's

cottage. The pauses in the dull beating of the surf were filled

up by the dreary rustling of the dwarf trees near the grave, and

the cold faint bubble of the brook over its stony bed. A dreary

scene and a dreary hour. My spirits sank fast as I counted out

the minutes of the evening in my hiding-place under the church

porch.

It was not twilight yet--the light of the setting sun still

lingered in the heavens, and little more than the first half-hour

of my solitary watch had elapsed--when I heard footsteps and a

voice. The footsteps were approaching from the other side of the

church, and the voice was a woman's.

"Don't you fret, my dear, about the letter," said the voice. "I

gave it to the lad quite safe, and the lad he took it from me

without a word. He went his way and I went mine, and not a living

soul followed me afterwards--that I'll warrant."

These words strung up my attention to a pitch of expectation that

was almost painful. There was a pause of silence, but the

footsteps still advanced. In another moment two persons, both

women, passed within my range of view from the porch window. They

were walking straight towards the grave; and therefore they had

their backs turned towards me.

One of the women was dressed in a bonnet and shawl. The other

wore a long travelling-cloak of a dark-blue colour, with the hood

drawn over her head. A few inches of her gown were visible below

the cloak. My heart beat fast as I noted the colour--it was

white.

After advancing about half-way between the church and the grave

they stopped, and the woman in the cloak turned her head towards

her companion. But her side face, which a bonnet might now have

allowed me to see, was hidden by the heavy, projecting edge of the

hood.

"Mind you keep that comfortable warm cloak on," said the same

voice which I had already heard--the voice of the woman in the

shawl. "Mrs. Todd is right about your looking too particular,

yesterday, all in white. I'll walk about a little while you're

here, churchyards being not at all in my way, whatever they may be

in yours. Finish what you want to do before I come back, and let

us be sure and get home again before night."

With those words she turned about, and retracing her steps,

advanced with her face towards me. It was the face of an elderly

woman, brown, rugged, and healthy, with nothing dishonest or

suspicious in the look of it. Close to the church she stopped to

pull her shawl closer round her.

"Queer," she said to herself, "always queer, with her whims and

her ways, ever since I can remember her. Harmless, though--as

harmless, poor soul, as a little child."

She sighed--looked about the burial-ground nervously--shook her

head, as if the dreary prospect by no means pleased her, and

disappeared round the corner of the church.

I doubted for a moment whether I ought to follow and speak to her

or not. My intense anxiety to find myself face to face with her

companion helped me to decide in the negative. I could ensure

seeing the woman in the shawl by waiting near the churchyard until

she came back--although it seemed more than doubtful whether she

could give me the information of which I was in search. The

person who had delivered the letter was of little consequence.

The person who had written it was the one centre of interest, and

the one source of information, and that person I now felt

convinced was before me in the churchyard.

While these ideas were passing through my mind I saw the woman in

the cloak approach close to the grave, and stand looking at it for

a little while. She then glanced all round her, and taking a

white linen cloth or handkerchief from under her cloak, turned

aside towards the brook. The little stream ran into the

churchyard under a tiny archway in the bottom of the wall, and ran

out again, after a winding course of a few dozen yards, under a

similar opening. She dipped the cloth in the water, and returned

to the grave. I saw her kiss the white cross, then kneel down

before the inscription, and apply her wet cloth to the cleansing

of it.

After considering how I could show myself with the least possible

chance of frightening her, I resolved to cross the wall before me,

to skirt round it outside, and to enter the churchyard again by

the stile near the grave, in order that she might see me as I

approached. She was so absorbed over her employment that she did

not hear me coming until I had stepped over the stile. Then she

looked up, started to her feet with a faint cry, and stood facing

me in speechless and motionless terror.

I stopped while I spoke--then advanced a few steps gently--then

stopped again--and so approached by little and little till I was

close to her. If there had been any doubt still left in my mind,

it must have been now set at rest. There, speaking affrightedly

for itself--there was the same face confronting me over Mrs.

Fairlie's grave which had first looked into mine on the high-road

by night.

"You remember me?" I said. "We met very late, and I helped you to

find the way to London. Surely you have not forgotten that?"

Her features relaxed, and she drew a heavy breath of relief. I

saw the new life of recognition stirring slowly under the death-

like stillness which fear had set on her face.

"Don't attempt to speak to me just yet," I went on. "Take time to

recover yourself--take time to feel quite certain that I am a

friend."

She stopped, and I kept silence on my side. I was not granting

time for composure to her only, I was gaining time also for

myself. Under the wan wild evening light, that woman and I were

met together again, a grave between us, the dead about us, the

lonesome hills closing us round on every side. The time, the

place, the circumstances under which we now stood face to face in

the evening stillness of that dreary valley--the lifelong

interests which might hang suspended on the next chance words that

passed between us--the sense that, for aught I knew to the

contrary, the whole future of Laura Fairlie's life might be

determined, for good or for evil, by my winning or losing the

confidence of the forlorn creature who stood trembling by her

mother's grave--all threatened to shake the steadiness and the

self-control on which every inch of the progress I might yet make

now depended. I tried hard, as I felt this, to possess myself of

all my resources; I did my utmost to turn the few moments for

reflection to the best account.

"Are you calmer now?" I said, as soon as I thought it time to

speak again. "Can you talk to me without feeling frightened, and

without forgetting that I am a friend?"

"Don't you remember my telling you, when we last met, that I was

going to Cumberland? I have been in Cumberland ever since--I have

been staying all the time at Limmeridge House."

"At Limmeridge House!" Her pale face brightened as she repeated

the words, her wandering eyes fixed on me with a sudden interest.

"Ah, how happy you must have been!" she said, looking at me

eagerly, without a shadow of its former distrust left in her

expression.

I took advantage of her newly-aroused confidence in me to observe

her face, with an attention and a curiosity which I had hitherto

restrained myself from showing, for caution's sake. I looked at

her, with my mind full of that other lovely face which had so

ominously recalled her to my memory on the terrace by moonlight.

I had seen Anne Catherick's likeness in Miss Fairlie. I now saw

Miss Fairlie's likeness in Anne Catherick--saw it all the more

clearly because the points of dissimilarity between the two were

presented to me as well as the points of resemblance. In the

general outline of the countenance and general proportion of the

features--in the colour of the hair and in the little nervous

uncertainty about the lips--in the height and size of the figure,

and the carriage of the head and body, the likeness appeared even

more startling than I had ever felt it to be yet. But there the

resemblance ended, and the dissimilarity, in details, began. The

delicate beauty of Miss Fairlie's complexion, the transparent

clearness of her eyes, the smooth purity of her skin, the tender

bloom of colour on her lips, were all missing from the worn weary

face that was now turned towards mine. Although I hated myself

even for thinking such a thing, still, while I looked at the woman

before me, the idea would force itself into my mind that one sad

change, in the future, was all that was wanting to make the

likeness complete, which I now saw to be so imperfect in detail.

If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the

youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie's face, then, and then only, Anne

Catherick and she would be the twin-sisters of chance resemblance,

the living reflections of one another.

I shuddered at the thought. There was something horrible in the

blind unreasoning distrust of the future which the mere passage of

it through my mind seemed to imply. It was a welcome interruption

to be roused by feeling Anne Catherick's hand laid on my shoulder.

The touch was as stealthy and as sudden as that other touch which

had petrified me from head to foot on the night when we first met.

"You are looking at me, and you are thinking of something," she

said, with her strange breathless rapidity of utterance. "What is

it?"

"Where should I go if not here?" she said. "The friend who was

better than a mother to me is the only friend I have to visit at

Limmeridge. Oh, it makes my heart ache to see a stain on her

tomb! It ought to be kept white as snow, for her sake. I was

tempted to begin cleaning it yesterday, and I can't help coming

back to go on with it to-day. Is there anything wrong in that? I

hope not. Surely nothing can be wrong that I do for Mrs.

Fairlie's sake?"

The old grateful sense of her benefactress's kindness was

evidently the ruling idea still in the poor creature's mind--the

narrow mind which had but too plainly opened to no other lasting

impression since that first impression of her younger and happier

days. I saw that my best chance of winning her confidence lay in

encouraging her to proceed with the artless employment which she

had come into the burial-ground to pursue. She resumed it at

once, on my telling her she might do so, touching the hard marble

as tenderly as if it had been a sentient thing, and whispering the

words of the inscription to herself, over and over again, as if

the lost days of her girlhood had returned and she was patiently

learning her lesson once more at Mrs. Fairlie's knees.

"Should you wonder very much," I said, preparing the way as

cautiously as I could for the questions that were to come, "if I

owned that it is a satisfaction to me, as well as a surprise, to

see you here? I felt very uneasy about you after you left me in

the cab."

"A strange thing happened after we parted that night. Two men

overtook me in a chaise. They did not see where I was standing,

but they stopped near me, and spoke to a policeman on the other

side of the way."

She instantly suspended her employment. The hand holding the damp

cloth with which she had been cleaning the inscription dropped to

her side. The other hand grasped the marble cross at the head of

the grave. Her face turned towards me slowly, with the blank look

of terror set rigidly on it once more. I went on at all hazards--

it was too late now to draw back.

"The two men spoke to the policeman," I said, "and asked him if he

had seen you. He had not seen you; and then one of the men spoke

again, and said you had escaped from his Asylum."

"Stop! and hear the end," I cried. "Stop! and you shall know how

I befriended you. A word from me would have told the men which

way you had gone--and I never spoke that word. I helped your

escape--I made it safe and certain. Think, try to think. Try to

understand what I tell you."

My manner seemed to influence her more than my words. She made an

effort to grasp the new idea. Her hands shifted the damp cloth

hesitatingly from one to the other, exactly as they had shifted

the little travelling-bag on the night when I first saw her.

Slowly the purpose of my words seemed to force its way through the

confusion and agitation of her mind. Slowly her features relaxed,

and her eyes looked at me with their expression gaining in

curiosity what it was fast losing in fear.

"Yes, yes, you did help me indeed; you helped me at the hard

part," she went on a little vacantly. "It was easy to escape, or

I should not have got away. They never suspected me as they

suspected the others. I was so quiet, and so obedient, and so

easily frightened. The finding London was the hard part, and

there you helped me. Did I thank you at the time? I thank you now

very kindly."

She mentioned the place--a private Asylum, as its situation

informed me; a private Asylum not very far from the spot where I

had seen her--and then, with evident suspicion of the use to which

I might put her answer, anxiously repeated her former inquiry,

"You don't think I ought to be taken back, do you?"

"Once again, I am glad you escaped--I am glad you prospered well

after you left me," I answered. "You said you had a friend in

London to go to. Did you find the friend?"

"Yes. It was very late, but there was a girl up at needle-work in

the house, and she helped me to rouse Mrs. Clements. Mrs.

Clements is my friend. A good, kind woman, but not like Mrs.

Fairlie. Ah no, nobody is like Mrs. Fairlie!"

"Yes, she was a neighbour of ours once, at home, in Hampshire, and

liked me, and took care of me when I was a little girl. Years

ago, when she went away from us, she wrote down in my Prayer-book

for me where she was going to live in London, and she said, 'If

you are ever in trouble, Anne, come to me. I have no husband

alive to say me nay, and no children to look after, and I will

take care of you.' Kind words, were they not? I suppose I remember

them because they were kind. It's little enough I remember

besides--little enough, little enough!"

A trouble and a fear to each other! At those words the suspicion

crossed my mind, for the first time, that her mother might be the

person who had placed her under restraint.

"Don't ask me about mother," she went on. "I'd rather talk of

Mrs. Clements. Mrs. Clements is like you, she doesn't think that

I ought to be back in the Asylum, and she is as glad as you are

that I escaped from it. She cried over my misfortune, and said it

must be kept secret from everybody."

Her "misfortune." In what sense was she using that word? In a

sense which might explain her motive in writing the anonymous

letter? In a sense which might show it to be the too common and

too customary motive that has led many a woman to interpose

anonymous hindrances to the marriage of the man who has ruined

her? I resolved to attempt the clearing up of this doubt before

more words passed between us on either side.

"The misfortune of my being shut up," she answered, with every

appearance of feeling surprised at my question. "What other

misfortune could there be?"

I determined to persist, as delicately and forbearingly as

possible. It was of very great importance that I should be

absolutely sure of every step in the investigation which I now

gained in advance.

"There is another misfortune," I said, "to which a woman may be

liable, and by which she may suffer lifelong sorrow and shame."

"The misfortune of believing too innocently in her own virtue, and

in the faith and honour of the man she loves," I answered.

She looked up at me with the artless bewilderment of a child. Not

the slightest confusion or change of colour--not the faintest

trace of any secret consciousness of shame struggling to the

surface appeared in her face--that face which betrayed every other

emotion with such transparent clearness. No words that ever were

spoken could have assured me, as her look and manner now assured

me, that the motive which I had assigned for her writing the

letter and sending it to Miss Fairlie was plainly and distinctly

the wrong one. That doubt, at any rate, was now set at rest; but

the very removal of it opened a new prospect of uncertainty. The

letter, as I knew from positive testimony, pointed at Sir Percival

Glyde, though it did not name him. She must have had some strong

motive, originating in some deep sense of injury, for secretly

denouncing him to Miss Fairlie in such terms as she had employed,

and that motive was unquestionably not to be traced to the loss of

her innocence and her character. Whatever wrong he might have

inflicted on her was not of that nature. Of what nature could it

be?

"I don't understand you," she said, after evidently trying hard,

and trying in vain, to discover the meaning of the words I had

last said to her.

"Never mind," I answered. "Let us go on with what we were talking

about. Tell me how long you stayed with Mrs. Clements in London,

and how you came here."

"You are living in the village, then?" I said. "It is strange I

should not have heard of you, though you have only been here two

days."

I remembered the place perfectly--we had often passed by it in our

drives. It was one of the oldest farms in the neighbourhood,

situated in a solitary, sheltered spot, inland at the junction of

two hills.

"They are relations of Mrs. Clements at Todd's Corner," she went

on, "and they had often asked her to go and see them. She said

she would go, and take me with her, for the quiet and the fresh

air. It was very kind, was it not? I would have gone anywhere to

be quiet, and safe, and out of the way. But when I heard that

Todd's Corner was near Limmeridge--oh! I was so happy I would have

walked all the way barefoot to get there, and see the schools and

the village and Limmeridge House again. They are very good people

at Todd's Corner. I hope I shall stay there a long time. There

is only one thing I don't like about them, and don't like about

Mrs. Clements----"

"They will tease me about dressing all in white--they say it looks

so particular. How do they know? Mrs. Fairlie knew best. Mrs.

Fairlie would never have made me wear this ugly blue cloak! Ah!

she was fond of white in her lifetime, and here is white stone

about her grave--and I am making it whiter for her sake. She

often wore white herself, and she always dressed her little

daughter in white. Is Miss Fairlie well and happy? Does she wear

white now, as she used when she was a girl?"

Her voice sank when she put the questions about Miss Fairlie, and

she turned her head farther and farther away from me. I thought I

detected, in the alteration of her manner, an uneasy consciousness

of the risk she had run in sending the anonymous letter, and I

instantly determined so to frame my answer as to surprise her into

owning it.

She murmured a few words, but they were spoken so confusedly, and

in such a low tone, that I could not even guess at what they

meant.

She had been down on her knees for some little time past,

carefully removing the last weather-stains left about the

inscription while we were speaking together. The first sentence

of the words I had just addressed to her made her pause in her

occupation, and turn slowly without rising from her knees, so as

to face me. The second sentence literally petrified her. The

cloth she had been holding dropped from her hands--her lips fell

apart--all the little colour that there was naturally in her face

left it in an instant.

"How do you know?" she said faintly. "Who showed it to you?" The

blood rushed back into her face--rushed overwhelmingly, as the

sense rushed upon her mind that her own words had betrayed her.

She struck her hands together in despair. "I never wrote it," she

gasped affrightedly; "I know nothing about it!"

"Yes," I said, "you wrote it, and you know about it. It was wrong

to send such a letter, it was wrong to frighten Miss Fairlie. If

you had anything to say that it was right and necessary for her to

hear, you should have gone yourself to Limmeridge House--you

should have spoken to the young lady with your own lips."

"Miss Fairlie will be as good and kind to you as her mother was,

if you mean well," I went on. "Miss Fairlie will keep your

secret, and not let you come to any harm. Will you see her to-

morrow at the farm? Will you meet her in the garden at Limmeridge

House?"

"Oh, if I could die, and be hidden and at rest with YOU!" Her lips

murmured the words close on the grave-stone, murmured them in

tones of passionate endearment, to the dead remains beneath. "You

know how I love your child, for your sake! Oh, Mrs. Fairlie! Mrs.

Fairlie! tell me how to save her. Be my darling and my mother

once more, and tell me what to do for the best."

I heard her lips kissing the stone--I saw her hands beating on it

passionately. The sound and the sight deeply affected me. I

stooped down, and took the poor helpless hands tenderly in mine,

and tried to soothe her.

It was useless. She snatched her hands from me, and never moved

her face from the stone. Seeing the urgent necessity of quieting

her at any hazard and by any means, I appealed to the only anxiety

that she appeared to feel, in connection with me and with my

opinion of her--the anxiety to convince me of her fitness to be

mistress of her own actions.

"Come, come," I said gently. "Try to compose yourself, or you

will make me alter my opinion of you. Don't let me think that the

person who put you in the Asylum might have had some excuse----"

The next words died away on my lips. The instant I risked that

chance reference to the person who had put her in the Asylum she

sprang up on her knees. A most extraordinary and startling change

passed over her. Her face, at all ordinary times so touching to

look at, in its nervous sensitiveness, weakness, and uncertainty,

became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense

hatred and fear, which communicated a wild, unnatural force to

every feature. Her eyes dilated in the dim evening light, like

the eyes of a wild animal. She caught up the cloth that had

fallen at her side, as if it had been a living creature that she

could kill, and crushed it in both her hands with such convulsive

strength, that the few drops of moisture left in it trickled down

on the stone beneath her.

Every vestige of the gentler thoughts which had filled her mind

hardly a minute since seemed to be swept from it now. It was

evident that the impression left by Mrs. Fairlie's kindness was

not, as I had supposed, the only strong impression on her memory.

With the grateful remembrance of her school-days at Limmeridge,

there existed the vindictive remembrance of the wrong inflicted on

her by her confinement in the Asylum. Who had done that wrong?

Could it really be her mother?

It was hard to give up pursuing the inquiry to that final point,

but I forced myself to abandon all idea of continuing it. Seeing

her as I saw her now, it would have been cruel to think of

anything but the necessity and the humanity of restoring her

composure.

"You want something," she answered sharply and suspiciously.

"Don't look at me like that. Speak to me--tell me what you want."

"Said?" She paused--twisted the cloth in her hands, back-wards and

forwards, and whispered to herself, "What is it he said?" She

turned again towards me, and shook her head impatiently. "Why

don't you help me?" she asked, with angry suddenness.

"Yes, yes," I said, "I will help you, and you will soon remember.

I ask you to see Miss Fairlie to-morrow and to tell her the truth

about the letter."

"You need have no fear of Miss Fairlie," I continued, "and no fear

of getting into trouble through the letter. She knows so much

about it already, that you will have no difficulty in telling her

all. There can be little necessity for concealment where there is

hardly anything left to conceal. You mention no names in the

letter; but Miss Fairlie knows that the person you write of is Sir

Percival Glyde----"

The instant I pronounced that name she started to her feet, and a

scream burst from her that rang through the churchyard, and made

my heart leap in me with the terror of it. The dark deformity of

the expression which had just left her face lowered on it once

more, with doubled and trebled intensity. The shriek at the name,

the reiterated look of hatred and fear that instantly followed,

told all. Not even a last doubt now remained. Her mother was

guiltless of imprisoning her in the Asylum. A man had shut her

up--and that man was Sir Percival Glyde.

The scream had reached other ears than mine. On one side I heard

the door of the sexton's cottage open; on the other I heard the

voice of her companion, the woman in the shawl, the woman whom she

had spoken of as Mrs. Clements.

"Who are you?" she cried, facing me resolutely as she set her foot

on the stile. "How dare you frighten a poor helpless woman like

that?"

She was at Anne Catherick's side, and had put one arm around her,

before I could answer. "What is it, my dear?" she said. "What

has he done to you?"

"I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I deserved that angry

look," I said. "But I do not deserve it. I have unfortunately

startled her without intending it. This is not the first time she

has seen me. Ask her yourself, and she will tell you that I am

incapable of willingly harming her or any woman."

I spoke distinctly, so that Anne Catherick might hear and

understand me, and I saw that the words and their meaning had

reached her.

"Strange, indeed!" said Mrs. Clements, with a look of perplexity.

"It makes all the difference, though. I'm sorry I spoke so rough

to you, sir; but you must own that appearances looked suspicious

to a stranger. It's more my fault than yours, for humouring her

whims, and letting her be alone in such a place as this. Come, my

dear--come home now."

I thought the good woman looked a little uneasy at the prospect of

the walk back, and I offered to go with them until they were both

within sight of home. Mrs. Clements thanked me civilly, and

declined. She said they were sure to meet some of the farm-

labourers as soon as they got to the moor.

"Try to forgive me," I said, when Anne Catherick took her friend's

arm to go away. Innocent as I had been of any intention to

terrify and agitate her, my heart smote me as I looked at the

poor, pale, frightened face.

She joined her companion again, and they left the burial-ground.

I saw them stop near the church and speak to the sexton's wife,

who had come from the cottage, and had waited, watching us from a

distance. Then they went on again up the path that led to the

moor. I looked after Anne Catherick as she disappeared, till all

trace of her had faded in the twilight--looked as anxiously and

sorrowfully as if that was the last I was to see in this weary

world of the woman in white.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.