The Woman in White

Chapter 10

It was on a Thursday in the week, and nearly at the end of the

third month of my sojourn in Cumberland.

In the morning, when I went down into the breakfast-room at the

usual hour, Miss Halcombe, for the first time since I had known

her, was absent from her customary place at the table.

Miss Fairlie was out on the lawn. She bowed to me, but did not

come in. Not a word had dropped from my lips, or from hers, that

could unsettle either of us--and yet the same unacknowledged sense

of embarrassment made us shrink alike from meeting one another

alone. She waited on the lawn, and I waited in the breakfast-

room, till Mrs. Vesey or Miss Halcombe came in. How quickly I

should have joined her: how readily we should have shaken hands,

and glided into our customary talk, only a fortnight ago.

In a few minutes Miss Halcombe entered. She had a preoccupied

look, and she made her apologies for being late rather absently.

"I have been detained," she said, "by a consultation with Mr.

Fairlie on a domestic matter which he wished to speak to me

about."

Miss Fairlie came in from the garden, and the usual morning

greeting passed between us. Her hand struck colder to mine than

ever. She did not look at me, and she was very pale. Even Mrs.

Vesey noticed it when she entered the room a moment after.

"I suppose it is the change in the wind," said the old lady. "The

winter is coming--ah, my love, the winter is coming soon!"

In her heart and in mine it had come already!

Our morning meal--once so full of pleasant good-humoured

discussion of the plans for the day--was short and silent. Miss

Fairlie seemed to feel the oppression of the long pauses in the

conversation, and looked appealingly to her sister to fill them

up. Miss Halcombe, after once or twice hesitating and checking

herself, in a most uncharacteristic manner, spoke at last.

"I have seen your uncle this morning, Laura," she said. "He

thinks the purple room is the one that ought to be got ready, and

he confirms what I told you. Monday is the day--not Tuesday."

While these words were being spoken Miss Fairlie looked down at

the table beneath her. Her fingers moved nervously among the

crumbs that were scattered on the cloth. The paleness on her

cheeks spread to her lips, and the lips themselves trembled

visibly. I was not the only person present who noticed this.

Miss Halcombe saw it, too, and at once set us the example of

rising from table.

Mrs. Vesey and Miss Fairlie left the room together. The kind

sorrowful blue eyes looked at me, for a moment, with the prescient

sadness of a coming and a long farewell. I felt the answering

pang in my own heart--the pang that told me I must lose her soon,

and love her the more unchangeably for the loss.

I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her. Miss

Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her shawl over

her arm, by the large window that led out to the lawn, and was

looking at me attentively.

"Have you any leisure time to spare," she asked, "before you begin

to work in your own room?"

"Certainly, Miss Halcombe. I have always time at your service."

"I want to say a word to you in private, Mr. Hartright. Get your

hat and come out into the garden. We are not likely to be

disturbed there at this hour in the morning."

As we stepped out on to the lawn, one of the under-gardeners--a

mere lad--passed us on his way to the house, with a letter in his

hand. Miss Halcombe stopped him.

"Is that letter for me?" she asked.

"Nay, miss; it's just said to be for Miss Fairlie," answered the

lad, holding out the letter as he spoke.

Miss Halcombe took it from him and looked at the address.

"A strange handwriting," she said to herself. "Who can Laura's

correspondent be? Where did you get this?" she continued,

addressing the gardener.

"Well, miss," said the lad, "I just got it from a woman."

"What woman?"

"A woman well stricken in age."

"Oh, an old woman. Any one you knew?"

"I canna' tak' it on mysel' to say that she was other than a

stranger to me."

"Which way did she go?"

"That gate," said the under-gardener, turning with great

deliberation towards the south, and embracing the whole of that

part of England with one comprehensive sweep of his arm.

"Curious," said Miss Halcombe; "I suppose it must be a begging-

letter. There," she added, handing the letter back to the lad,

"take it to the house, and give it to one of the servants. And

now, Mr. Hartright, if you have no objection, let us walk this

way."

She led me across the lawn, along the same path by which I had

followed her on the day after my arrival at Limmeridge.

At the little summer-house, in which Laura Fairlie and I had first

seen each other, she stopped, and broke the silence which she had

steadily maintained while we were walking together.

"What I have to say to you I can say here."

With those words she entered the summer-house, took one of the

chairs at the little round table inside, and signed to me to take

the other. I suspected what was coming when she spoke to me in

the breakfast-room; I felt certain of it now.

"Mr. Hartright," she said, "I am going to begin by making a frank

avowal to you. I am going to say--without phrase-making, which I

detest, or paying compliments, which I heartily despise--that I

have come, in the course of your residence with us, to feel a

strong friendly regard for you. I was predisposed in your favour

when you first told me of your conduct towards that unhappy woman

whom you met under such remarkable circumstances. Your management

of the affair might not have been prudent, but it showed the self-

control, the delicacy, and the compassion of a man who was

naturally a gentleman. It made me expect good things from you,

and you have not disappointed my expectations."

She paused--but held up her hand at the same time, as a sign that

she awaited no answer from me before she proceeded. When I

entered the summer-house, no thought was in me of the woman in

white. But now, Miss Halcombe's own words had put the memory of

my adventure back in my mind. It remained there throughout the

interview--remained, and not without a result.

"As your friend," she proceeded, "I am going to tell you, at once,

in my own plain, blunt, downright language, that I have discovered

your secret--without help or hint, mind, from any one else. Mr.

Hartright, you have thoughtlessly allowed your-self to form an

attachment--a serious and devoted attachment I am afraid--to my

sister Laura. I don't put you to the pain of confessing it in so

many words, because I see and know that you are too honest to deny

it. I don't even blame you--I pity you for opening your heart to

a hopeless affection. You have not attempted to take any

underhand advantage--you have not spoken to my sister in secret.

You are guilty of weakness and want of attention to your own best

interests, but of nothing worse. If you had acted, in any single

respect, less delicately and less modestly, I should have told you

to leave the house without an instant's notice, or an instant's

consultation of anybody. As it is, I blame the misfortune of your

years and your position--I don't blame YOU. Shake hands--I have

given you pain; I am going to give you more, but there is no help

for it--shake hands with your friend, Marian Halcombe, first."

The sudden kindness--the warm, high-minded, fearless sympathy

which met me on such mercifully equal terms, which appealed with

such delicate and generous abruptness straight to my heart, my

honour, and my courage, overcame me in an instant. I tried to

look at her when she took my hand, but my eves were dim. I tried

to thank her, but my voice failed me.

"Listen to me," she said, considerately avoiding all notice of my

loss of self-control. "Listen to me, and let us get it over at

once. It is a real true relief to me that I am not obliged, in

what I have now to say, to enter into the question--the hard and

cruel question as I think it--of social inequalities.

Circumstances which will try you to the quick, spare me the

ungracious necessity of paining a man who has lived in friendly

intimacy under the same roof with myself by any humiliating

reference to matters of rank and station. You must leave

Limmeridge House, Mr. Hartright, before more harm is done. It is

my duty to say that to you; and it would be equally my duty to say

it, under precisely the same serious necessity, if you were the

representative of the oldest and wealthiest family in England.

You must leave us, not because you are a teacher of drawing----"

She waited a moment, turned her face full on me, and reaching

across the table, laid her hand firmly on my arm.

"Not because you are a teacher of drawing," she repeated, "but

because Laura Fairlie is engaged to be married."

The last word went like a bullet to my heart. My arm lost all

sensation of the hand that grasped it. I never moved and never

spoke. The sharp autumn breeze that scattered the dead leaves at

our feet came as cold to me, on a sudden, as if my own mad hopes

were dead leaves too, whirled away by the wind like the rest.

Hopes! Betrothed, or not betrothed, she was equally far from me.

Would other men have remembered that in my place? Not if they had

loved her as I did.

The pang passed, and nothing but the dull numbing pain of it

remained. I felt Miss Halcombe's hand again, tightening its hold

on my arm--I raised my head and looked at her. Her large black

eyes were rooted on me, watching the white change on my face,

which I felt, and which she saw.

"Crush it!" she said. "Here, where you first saw her, crush it!

Don't shrink under it like a woman. Tear it out; trample it under

foot like a man!"

The suppressed vehemence with which she spoke, the strength which

her will--concentrated in the look she fixed on me, and in the

hold on my arm that she had not yet relinquished--communicated to

mine, steadied me. We both waited for a minute in silence. At

the end of that time I had justified her generous faith in my

manhood--I had, outwardly at least, recovered my self-control.

"Are you yourself again?"

"Enough myself, Miss Halcombe, to ask your pardon and hers.

Enough myself to be guided by your advice, and to prove my

gratitude in that way, if I can prove it in no other."

"You have proved it already," she answered, "by those words. Mr.

Hartright, concealment is at an end between us. I cannot affect

to hide from you what my sister has unconsciously shown to me.

You must leave us for her sake, as well as for your own. Your

presence here, your necessary intimacy with us, harmless as it has

been, God knows, in all other respects, has unsteadied her and

made her wretched. I, who love her better than my own life--I,

who have learnt to believe in that pure, noble, innocent nature as

I believe in my religion--know but too well the secret misery of

self-reproach that she has been suffering since the first shadow

of a feeling disloyal to her marriage engagement entered her heart

in spite of her. I don't say--it would be useless to attempt to

say it after what has happened--that her engagement has ever had a

strong hold on her affections. It is an engagement of honour, not

of love; her father sanctioned it on his deathbed, two years

since; she herself neither welcomed it nor shrank from it--she was

content to make it. Till you came here she was in the position of

hundreds of other women, who marry men without being greatly

attracted to them or greatly repelled by them, and who learn to

love them (when they don't learn to hate!) after marriage, instead

of before. I hope more earnestly than words can say--and you

should have the self-sacrificing courage to hope too--that the new

thoughts and feelings which have disturbed the old calmness and

the old content have not taken root too deeply to be ever removed.

Your absence (if I had less belief in your honour, and your

courage, and your sense, I should not trust to them as I am

trusting now) your absence will help my efforts, and time will

help us all three. It is something to know that my first

confidence in you was not all misplaced. It is something to know

that you will not be less honest, less manly, less considerate

towards the pupil whose relation to yourself you have had the

misfortune to forget, than towards the stranger and the outcast

whose appeal to you was not made in vain."

Again the chance reference to the woman in white! Was there no

possibility of speaking of Miss Fairlie and of me without raising

the memory of Anne Catherick, and setting her between us like a

fatality that it was hopeless to avoid?

"Tell me what apology I can make to Mr. Fairlie for breaking my

engagement," I said. "Tell me when to go after that apology is

accepted. I promise implicit obedience to you and to your

advice."

"Time is every way of importance," she answered. "You heard me

refer this morning to Monday next, and to the necessity of setting

the purple room in order. The visitor whom we expect on Monday----"

I could not wait for her to be more explicit. Knowing what I knew

now, the memory of Miss Fairlie's look and manner at the

breakfast-table told me that the expected visitor at Limmeridge

House was her future husband. I tried to force it back; but

something rose within me at that moment stronger than my own will,

and I interrupted Miss Halcombe.

"Let me go to-day," I said bitterly. "The sooner the better."

"No, not to-day," she replied. "The only reason you can assign to

Mr. Fairlie for your departure, before the end of your engagement,

must be that an unforeseen necessity compels you to ask his

permission to return at once to London. You must wait till to-

morrow to tell him that, at the time when the post comes in,

because he will then understand the sudden change in your plans,

by associating it with the arrival of a letter from London. It is

miserable and sickening to descend to deceit, even of the most

harmless kind--but I know Mr. Fairlie, and if you once excite his

suspicions that you are trifling with him, he will refuse to

release you. Speak to him on Friday morning: occupy yourself

afterwards (for the sake of your own interests with your employer)

in leaving your unfinished work in as little confusion as

possible, and quit this place on Saturday. It will be time enough

then, Mr. Hartright, for you, and for all of us."

Before I could assure her that she might depend on my acting in

the strictest accordance with her wishes, we were both startled by

advancing footsteps in the shrubbery. Some one was coming from

the house to seek for us! I felt the blood rush into my cheeks and

then leave them again. Could the third person who was fast

approaching us, at such a time and under such circumstances, be

Miss Fairlie?

It was a relief--so sadly, so hopelessly was my position towards

her changed already--it was absolutely a relief to me, when the

person who had disturbed us appeared at the entrance of the

summer-house, and proved to be only Miss Fairlie's maid.

"Could I speak to you for a moment, miss?" said the girl, in

rather a flurried, unsettled manner.

Miss Halcombe descended the steps into the shrubbery, and walked

aside a few paces with the maid.

Left by myself, my mind reverted, with a sense of forlorn

wretchedness which it is not in any words that I can find to

describe, to my approaching return to the solitude and the despair

of my lonely London home. Thoughts of my kind old mother, and of

my sister, who had rejoiced with her so innocently over my

prospects in Cumberland--thoughts whose long banishment from my

heart it was now my shame and my reproach to realise for the first

time--came back to me with the loving mournfulness of old,

neglected friends. My mother and my sister, what would they feel

when I returned to them from my broken engagement, with the

confession of my miserable secret--they who had parted from me so

hopefully on that last happy night in the Hampstead cottage!

Anne Catherick again! Even the memory of the farewell evening with

my mother and my sister could not return to me now unconnected

with that other memory of the moonlight walk back to London. What

did it mean? Were that woman and I to meet once more? It was

possible, at the least. Did she know that I lived in London? Yes;

I had told her so, either before or after that strange question of

hers, when she had asked me so distrustfully if I knew many men of

the rank of Baronet. Either before or after--my mind was not calm

enough, then, to remember which.

A few minutes elapsed before Miss Halcombe dismissed the maid and

came back to me. She, too, looked flurried and unsettled now.

"We have arranged all that is necessary, Mr. Hartright," she said.

"We have understood each other, as friends should, and we may go

back at once to the house. To tell you the truth, I am uneasy

about Laura. She has sent to say she wants to see me directly,

and the maid reports that her mistress is apparently very much

agitated by a letter that she has received this morning--the same

letter, no doubt, which I sent on to the house before we came

here."

We retraced our steps together hastily along the shrubbery path.

Although Miss Halcombe had ended all that she thought it necessary

to say on her side, I had not ended all that I wanted to say on

mine. From the moment when I had discovered that the expected

visitor at Limmeridge was Miss Fairlie's future husband, I had

felt a bitter curiosity, a burning envious eagerness, to know who

he was. It was possible that a future opportunity of putting the

question might not easily offer, so I risked asking it on our way

back to the house.

"Now that you are kind enough to tell me we have understood each

other, Miss Halcombe," I said, "now that you are sure of my

gratitude for your forbearance and my obedience to your wishes,

may I venture to ask who"--(I hesitated--I had forced myself to

think of him, but it was harder still to speak of him, as her

promised husband)--"who the gentleman engaged to Miss Fairlie is?"

Her mind was evidently occupied with the message she had received

from her sister. She answered in a hasty, absent way--

"A gentleman of large property in Hampshire."

Hampshire! Anne Catherick's native place. Again, and yet again,

the woman in white. There WAS a fatality in it.

"And his name?" I said, as quietly and indifferently as I could.

"Sir Percival Glyde."

SIR--Sir Percival! Anne Catherick's question--that suspicious

question about the men of the rank of Baronet whom I might happen

to know--had hardly been dismissed from my mind by Miss Halcombe's

return to me in the summer-house, before it was recalled again by

her own answer. I stopped suddenly, and looked at her.

"Sir Percival Glyde," she repeated, imagining that I had not heard

her former reply.

"Knight, or Baronet?" I asked, with an agitation that I could hide

no longer.

She paused for a moment, and then answered, rather coldly--

"Baronet, of course."