The Solitary House (200 page)

“No, no; not in the village. Three miles away at a farm. Do you know the farm? They call it Todd’s Corner.”

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——”

“What is it?”

“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 in 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.

“Miss Fairlie is not very well or very happy this morning,” I said.

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.

“Did you ask me why Miss Fairlie was neither well nor happy this morning?” I continued.

“No,” she said, quickly and eagerly—“oh, no, I never asked that.”

“I will tell you without your asking,” I went on. “Miss Fairlie has received your letter.”

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.”

She crouched down over the flat stone of the grave, till her face was hidden on it; and made no reply.

“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 had appeared to feel, in connexion 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.

“Talk of something else,” she said, whispering through her teeth. “I shall lose myself if you talk of that.”

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 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.

“I will talk of nothing to distress you,” I said soothingly.

“You want something,” she answered, sharply and suspiciously. “Don’t look at me, like that. Speak to me; tell me what you want.”

“I only want you to quiet yourself, and, when you are calmer, to think over what I have said.”

“Said?” She paused; twisted the cloth in her hands, backwards 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 asked you to see Miss Fairlie to-morrow, and to tell her the truth about the letter.”

“Ah! Miss Fairlie—Fairlie—Fairlie——”

The mere utterance of the loved, familiar name seemed to quiet her. Her face softened and grew like itself again.

“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 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.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” cried the voice, from behind the clump of dwarf trees.

In a moment more, Mrs. Clements hurried into view.

“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 round her, before I could answer. “What is it, my dear?” she said. “What has he done to you?”

“Nothing,” the poor creature answered. “Nothing. I’m only frightened.”

Mrs. Clements turned on me with a fearless indignation, for which I respected her.

“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.

“Yes, yes,” she said; “he was good to me once; he helped me——” She whispered the rest into her friend’s ear.

“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.

“I will try,” she answered. “But you know too much; I’m afraid you will always frighten me now.”

Mrs. Clements glanced at me, and shook her head pityingly.

“Good night, sir,” she said. “You couldn’t help it, I know; but I wish it was me you had frightened, and not her.”

They moved away a few steps. I thought they had left
me; but Anne suddenly stopped, and separated herself from her friend.

“Wait a little,” she said. “I must say good-by.”

She returned to the grave, rested both hands tenderly on the marble cross, and kissed it.

“I’m better, now,” she sighed, looking up at me quietly. “I forgive you.”

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.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HARTRIGHT’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

XIII

H
alf an hour later, I was back at the house, and was informing Miss Halcombe of all that had happened.

She listened to me from beginning to end, with a steady, silent attention, which, in a woman of her temperament and disposition, was the strongest proof that could be offered of the serious manner in which my narrative affected her.

“My mind misgives me,” was all she said when I had done. “My mind misgives me sadly about the future.”

“The future may depend,” I suggested, “on the use we make of the present. It was not improbable that Anne Catherick may speak more readily and unreservedly to a woman than she has spoken to me. If Miss Fairlie——”

“Not to be thought of for a moment,” interposed Miss Halcombe, in her most decided manner.

“Let me suggest, then,” I continued, “that you should see Anne Catherick yourself, and do all you can to win her confidence. For my own part, I shrink from the idea of alarming the poor creature a second time, as I have most unhappily alarmed her already. Do you see any objection to accompanying me to the farm-house to-morrow?”

“None whatever. I will go anywhere and do anything to serve Laura’s interests. What did you say the place was called?”

“You must know it well. It is called Todd’s Corner.”

“Certainly. Todd’s Corner is one of Mr. Fairlie’s farms. Our dairymaid here is the farmer’s second daughter. She goes backwards and forwards constantly, between this house and her father’s farm; and she may have heard or seen something which it may be useful to us to know. Shall I ascertain, at once, if the girl is down stairs?”

She rang the bell, and sent the servant with his message. He returned, and announced that the dairymaid was then at the farm. She had not been there for the last three days; and the housekeeper had given her leave to go home, for an hour or two, that evening.

“I can speak to her to-morrow,” said Miss Halcombe, when the servant had left the room again. “In the mean time, let me thoroughly understand the object to be gained by my interview with Anne Catherick. Is there no doubt in
your own mind that the person who confined her in the Asylum was Sir Percival Glyde?”

“There is not the shadow of a doubt. The only mystery that remains, is the mystery of his
motive
. Looking to the great difference between his station in life and hers, which seems to preclude all idea of the most distant relationship between them, it is of the last importance—even assuming that she really required to be placed under restraint—to know why
he
should have been the person to assume the serious responsibility of shutting her up——”