The Woman in White (75 page)

Her colour was rising, and her hands were at work again smoothing
her gown. I pressed the point farther and farther home, I went on
without allowing her a moment of delay.

"Sir Percival has a high position in the world," I said; "it would
be no wonder if you were afraid of him. Sir Percival is a
powerful man, a baronet, the possessor of a fine estate, the
descendant of a great family—-"

She amazed me beyond expression by suddenly bursting out laughing.

"Yes," she repeated, in tones of the bitterest, steadiest
contempt. "A baronet, the possessor of a fine estate, the
descendant of a great family. Yes, indeed! A great family—
especially by the mother's side."

There was no time to reflect on the words that had just escaped
her, there was only time to feel that they were well worth
thinking over the moment I left the house.

"I am not here to dispute with you about family questions," I
said. "I know nothing of Sir Percival's mother—-"

"And you know as little of Sir Percival himself," she interposed
sharply.

"I advise you not to be too sure of that," I rejoined. "I know
some things about him, and I suspect many more."

"What do you suspect?"

"I'll tell you what I DON'T suspect. I DON'T suspect him of being
Anne's father."

She started to her feet, and came close up to me with a look of
fury.

"How dare you talk to me about Anne's father! How dare you say who
was her father, or who wasn't!" she broke out, her face quivering,
her voice trembling with passion.

"The secret between you and Sir Percival is not THAT secret," I
persisted. "The mystery which darkens Sir Percival's life was not
born with your daughter's birth, and has not died with your
daughter's death."

She drew back a step. "Go!" she said, and pointed sternly to the
door.

"There was no thought of the child in your heart or in his," I
went on, determined to press her back to her last defences.
"There was no bond of guilty love between you and him when you
held those stolen meetings, when your husband found you whispering
together under the vestry of the church."

Her pointing hand instantly dropped to her side, and the deep
flush of anger faded from her face while I spoke. I saw the
change pass over her—I saw that hard, firm, fearless, self-
possessed woman quail under a terror which her utmost resolution
was not strong enough to resist when I said those five last words,
"the vestry of the church."

For a minute or more we stood looking at each other in silence. I
spoke first.

"Do you still refuse to trust me?" I asked.

She could not call the colour that had left it back to her face,
but she had steadied her voice, she had recovered the defiant
self-possession of her manner when she answered me.

"I do refuse," she said.

"Do you still tell me to go?"

"Yes. Go—and never come back."

I walked to the door, waited a moment before I opened it, and
turned round to look at her again.

"I may have news to bring you of Sir Percival which you don't
expect," I said, "and in that case I shall come back."

"There is no news of Sir Percival that I don't expect, except—-"

She stopped, her pale face darkened, and she stole back with a
quiet, stealthy, cat-like step to her chair.

"Except the news of his death," she said, sitting down again, with
the mockery of a smile just hovering on her cruel lips, and the
furtive light of hatred lurking deep in her steady eyes.

As I opened the door of the room to go out, she looked round at me
quickly. The cruel smile slowly widened her lips—she eyed me,
with a strange stealthy interest, from head to foot—an
unutterable expectation showed itself wickedly all over her face.
Was she speculating, in the secrecy of her own heart, on my youth
and strength, on the force of my sense of injury and the limits of
my self-control, and was she considering the lengths to which they
might carry me, if Sir Percival and I ever chanced to meet? The
bare doubt that it might be so drove me from her presence, and
silenced even the common forms of farewell on my lips. Without a
word more, on my side or on hers, I left the room.

As I opened the outer door, I saw the same clergyman who had
already passed the house once, about to pass it again, on his way
back through the square. I waited on the door-step to let him go
by, and looked round, as I did so, at the parlour window.

Mrs. Catherick had heard his footsteps approaching, in the silence
of that lonely place, and she was on her feet at the window again,
waiting for him. Not all the strength of all the terrible
passions I had roused in that woman's heart, could loosen her
desperate hold on the one fragment of social consideration which
years of resolute effort had just dragged within her grasp. There
she was again, not a minute after I had left her, placed purposely
in a position which made it a matter of common courtesy on the
part of the clergyman to bow to her for a second time. He raised
his hat once more. I saw the hard ghastly face behind the window
soften, and light up with gratified pride—I saw the head with the
grim black cap bend ceremoniously in return. The clergyman had
bowed to her, and in my presence, twice in one day!

I Left the house, feeling that Mrs. Catherick had helped me a step
forward, in spite of herself. Before I had reached the turning
which led out of the square, my attention was suddenly aroused by
the sound of a closing door behind me.

I looked round, and saw an undersized man in black on the door-
step of a house, which, as well as I could judge, stood next to
Mrs. Catherick's place of abode—next to it, on the side nearest
to me. The man did not hesitate a moment about the direction he
should take. He advanced rapidly towards the turning at which I
had stopped. I recognised him as the lawyer's clerk, who had
preceded me in my visit to Blackwater Park, and who had tried to
pick a quarrel with me, when I asked him if I could see the house.

I waited where I was, to ascertain whether his object was to come
to close quarters and speak on this occasion. To my surprise he
passed on rapidly, without saying a word, without even looking up
in my face as he went by. This was such a complete inversion of
the course of proceeding which I had every reason to expect on his
part, that my curiosity, or rather my suspicion, was aroused, and
I determined on my side to keep him cautiously in view, and to
discover what the business might be in which he was now employed.
Without caring whether he saw me or not, I walked after him. He
never looked back, and he led me straight through the streets to
the railway station.

The train was on the point of starting, and two or three
passengers who were late were clustering round the small opening
through which the tickets were issued. I joined them, and
distinctly heard the lawyer's clerk demand a ticket for the
Blackwater station I satisfied myself that he had actually left by
the train before I came away.

There was only one interpretation that I could place on what I had
just seen and heard. I had unquestionably observed the man
leaving a house which closely adjoined Mrs. Catherick's residence.
He had been probably placed there, by Sir Percival's directions,
as a lodger, in anticipation of my inquiries leading me, sooner or
later, to communicate with Mrs. Catherick. He had doubtless seen
me go in and come out, and he had hurried away by the first train
to make his report at Blackwater Park, to which place Sir Percival
would naturally betake himself (knowing what he evidently knew of
my movements), in order to be ready on the spot, if I returned to
Hampshire. Before many days were over, there seemed every
likelihood now that he and I might meet.

Whatever result events might be destined to produce, I resolved to
pursue my own course, straight to the end in view, without
stopping or turning aside for Sir Percival or for any one. The
great responsibility which weighed on me heavily in London—the
responsibility of so guiding my slightest actions as to prevent
them from leading accidentally to the discovery of Laura's place
of refuge—was removed, now that I was in Hampshire. I could go
and come as I pleased at Welmingham, and if I chanced to fail in
observing any necessary precautions, the immediate results, at
least, would affect no one but myself.

When I left the station the winter evening was beginning to close
in. There was little hope of continuing my inquiries after dark
to any useful purpose in a neighbourhood that was strange to me.
Accordingly, I made my way to the nearest hotel, and ordered my
dinner and my bed. This done, I wrote to Marian, to tell her that
I was safe and well, and that I had fair prospects of success. I
had directed her, on leaving home, to address the first letter she
wrote to me (the letter I expected to receive the next morning) to
"The Post-Office, Welmingham," and I now begged her to send her
second day's letter to the same address.

I could easily receive it by writing to the postmaster if I
happened to be away from the town when it arrived.

The coffee-room of the hotel, as it grew late in the evening,
became a perfect solitude. I was left to reflect on what I had
accomplished that afternoon as uninterruptedly as if the house had
been my own. Before I retired to rest I had attentively thought
over my extraordinary interview with Mrs. Catherick from beginning
to end, and had verified at my leisure the conclusions which I had
hastily drawn in the earlier part of the day.

The vestry of Old Welmingham church was the starting-point from
which my mind slowly worked its way back through all that I had
heard Mrs. Catherick say, and through all I had seen Mrs.
Catherick do.

At the time when the neighbourhood of the vestry was first
referred to in my presence by Mrs. Clements, I had thought it the
strangest and most unaccountable of all places for Sir Percival to
select for a clandestine meeting with the clerk's wife.
Influenced by this impression, and by no other, I had mentioned
"the vestry of the church" before Mrs. Catherick on pure
speculation—it represented one of the minor peculiarities of the
story which occurred to me while I was speaking. I was prepared
for her answering me confusedly or angrily, but the blank terror
that seized her when I said the words took me completely by
surprise. I had long before associated Sir Percival's Secret with
the concealment of a serious crime which Mrs. Catherick knew of,
but I had gone no further than this. Now the woman's paroxysm of
terror associated the crime, either directly or indirectly, with
the vestry, and convinced me that she had been more than the mere
witness of it—she was also the accomplice, beyond a doubt.

What had been the nature of the crime? Surely there was a
contemptible side to it, as well as a dangerous side, or Mrs.
Catherick would not have repeated my own words, referring to Sir
Percival's rank and power, with such marked disdain as she had
certainly displayed. It was a contemptible crime then and a
dangerous crime, and she had shared in it, and it was associated
with the vestry of the church.

The next consideration to be disposed of led me a step farther
from this point.

Mrs. Catherick's undisguised contempt for Sir Percival plainly
extended to his mother as well. She had referred with the
bitterest sarcasm to the great family he had descended from—
"especially by the mother's side." What did this mean?

There appeared to be only two explanations of it. Either his
mother's birth had been low, or his mother's reputation was
damaged by some hidden flaw with which Mrs. Catherick and Sir
Percival were both privately acquainted? I could only put the
first explanation to the test by looking at the register of her
marriage, and so ascertaining her maiden name and her parentage as
a preliminary to further inquiries.

On the other hand, if the second case supposed were the true one,
what had been the flaw in her reputation? Remembering the account
which Marian had given me of Sir Percival's father and mother, and
of the suspiciously unsocial secluded life they had both led, I
now asked myself whether it might not be possible that his mother
had never been married at all. Here again the register might, by
offering written evidence of the marriage, prove to me, at any
rate, that this doubt had no foundation in truth. But where was
the register to be found? At this point I took up the conclusions
which I had previously formed, and the same mental process which
had discovered the locality of the concealed crime, now lodged the
register also in the vestry of Old Welmingham church.

These were the results of my interview with Mrs. Catherick—these
were the various considerations, all steadily converging to one
point, which decided the course of my proceedings on the next day.

The morning was cloudy and lowering, but no rain fell. I left my
bag at the hotel to wait there till I called for it, and, after
inquiring the way, set forth on foot for Old Welmingham church.

It was a walk of rather more than two miles, the ground rising
slowly all the way.

On the highest point stood the church—an ancient, weather-beaten
building, with heavy buttresses at its sides, and a clumsy square
tower in front. The vestry at the back was built out from the
church, and seemed to be of the same age. Round the building at
intervals appeared the remains of the village which Mrs. Clements
had described to me as her husband's place of abode in former
years, and which the principal inhabitants had long since deserted
for the new town. Some of the empty houses had been dismantled to
their outer walls, some had been left to decay with time, and some
were still inhabited by persons evidently of the poorest class.
It was a dreary scene, and yet, in the worst aspect of its ruin,
not so dreary as the modern town that I had just left. Here there
was the brown, breezy sweep of surrounding fields for the eye to
repose on—here the trees, leafless as they were, still varied the
monotony of the prospect, and helped the mind to look forward to
summer-time and shade.