The Woman in White
by
Wilkie Collins
Part 4 out of 14
case of your marrying, and let me inform you, in as few words as
possible, what your position is now, and what you may make it, if
you please, in the future."
I explained to her the object of a marriage-settlement, and then
told her exactly what her prospects were--in the first place, on
her coming of age, and in the second place, on the decease of her
uncle--marking the distinction between the property in which she
had a life-interest only, and the property which was left at her
own control. She listened attentively, with the constrained
expression still on her face, and her hands still nervously
clasped together in her lap.
"And now," I said in conclusion, "tell me if you can think of any
condition which, in the case we have supposed, you would wish me
to make for you--subject, of course, to your guardian's approval,
as you are not yet of age."
She moved uneasily in her chair, then looked in my face on a
sudden very earnestly.
"If it does happen," she began faintly, "if I am----"
"If you are married," I added, helping her out.
"Don't let him part me from Marian," she cried, with a sudden
outbreak of energy. "Oh, Mr. Gilmore, pray make it law that
Marian is to live with me!"
Under other circumstances I might, perhaps, have been amused at
this essentially feminine interpretation of my question, and of
the long explanation which had preceded it. But her looks and
tones, when she spoke, were of a kind to make me more than
serious--they distressed me. Her words, few as they were,
betrayed a desperate clinging to the past which boded ill for the
future.
"Your having Marian Halcombe to live with you can easily be
settled by private arrangement," I said. "You hardly understood
my question, I think. It referred to your own property--to the
disposal of your money. Supposing you were to make a will when
you come of age, who would you like the money to go to?"
"Marian has been mother and sister both to me," said the good,
affectionate girl, her pretty blue eyes glistening while she
spoke. "May I leave it to Marian, Mr. Gilmore?"
"Certainly, my love," I answered. "But remember what a large sum
it is. Would you like it all to go to Miss Halcombe?"
She hesitated; her colour came and went, and her hand stole back
again to the little album.
"Not all of it," she said. "There is some one else besides
Marian----"
She stopped; her colour heightened, and the fingers of the hand
that rested upon the album beat gently on the margin of the
drawing, as if her memory had set them going mechanically with the
remembrance of a favourite tune.
"You mean some other member of the family besides Miss Halcombe?"
I suggested, seeing her at a loss to proceed.
The heightening colour spread to her forehead and her neck, and
the nervous fingers suddenly clasped themselves fast round the
edge of the book.
"There is some one else," she said, not noticing my last words,
though she had evidently heard them; "there is some one else who
might like a little keepsake if--if I might leave it. There would
be no harm if I should die first----"
She paused again. The colour that had spread over her cheeks
suddenly, as suddenly left them. The hand on the album resigned
its hold, trembled a little, and moved the book away from her.
She looked at me for an instant--then turned her head aside in the
chair. Her handkerchief fell to the floor as she changed her
position, and she hurriedly hid her face from me in her hands.
Sad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that
ever laughed the day through, and to see her now, in the flower of
her age and her beauty, so broken and so brought down as this!
In the distress that she caused me I forgot the years that had
passed, and the change they had made in our position towards one
another. I moved my chair close to her, and picked up her
handkerchief from the carpet, and drew her hands from her face
gently. "Don't cry, my love," I said, and dried the tears that
were gathering in her eyes with my own hand, as if she had been
the little Laura Fairlie of ten long years ago.
It was the best way I could have taken to compose her. She laid
her head on my shoulder, and smiled faintly through her tears.
"I am very sorry for forgetting myself," she said artlessly. "I
have not been well--I have felt sadly weak and nervous lately, and
I often cry without reason when I am alone. I am better now--I
can answer you as I ought, Mr. Gilmore, I can indeed."
"No, no, my dear," I replied, "we will consider the subject as
done with for the present. You have said enough to sanction my
taking the best possible care of your interests, and we can settle
details at another opportunity. Let us have done with business
now, and talk of something else."
I led her at once into speaking on other topics. In ten minutes'
time she was in better spirits, and I rose to take my leave.
"Come here again," she said earnestly. "I will try to be worthier
of your kind feeling for me and for my interests if you will only
come again."
Still clinging to the past--that past which I represented to her,
in my way, as Miss Halcombe did in hers! It troubled me sorely to
see her looking back, at the beginning of her career, just as I
look back at the end of mine.
"If I do come again, I hope I shall find you better," I said;
"better and happier. God bless you, my dear!"
She only answered by putting up her cheek to me to be kissed.
Even lawyers have hearts, and mine ached a little as I took leave
of her.
The whole interview between us had hardly lasted more than half an
hour--she had not breathed a word, in my presence, to explain the
mystery of her evident distress and dismay at the prospect of her
marriage, and yet she had contrived to win me over to her side of
the question, I neither knew how nor why. I had entered the room,
feeling that Sir Percival Glyde had fair reason to complain of the
manner in which she was treating him. I left it, secretly hoping
that matters might end in her taking him at his word and claiming
her release. A man of my age and experience ought to have known
better than to vacillate in this unreasonable manner. I can make
no excuse for myself; I can only tell the truth, and say--so it
was.
The hour for my departure was now drawing near. I sent to Mr.
Fairlie to say that I would wait on him to take leave if he liked,
but that he must excuse my being rather in a hurry. He sent a
message back, written in pencil on a slip of paper: "Kind love and
best wishes, dear Gilmore. Hurry of any kind is inexpressibly
injurious to me. Pray take care of yourself. Good-bye."
Just before I left I saw Miss Halcombe for a moment alone.
"Have you said all you wanted to Laura?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied. "She is very weak and nervous--I am glad she
has you to take care of her."
Miss Halcombe's sharp eyes studied my face attentively.
"You are altering your opinion about Laura," she said. "You are
readier to make allowances for her than you were yesterday."
No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of
words with a woman. I only answered--
"Let me know what happens. I will do nothing till I hear from
you."
She still looked hard in my face. "I wish it was all over, and
well over, Mr. Gilmore--and so do you." With those words she left
me.
Sir Percival most politely insisted on seeing me to the carriage
door.
"If you are ever in my neighbourhood," he said, "pray don't forget
that I am sincerely anxious to improve our acquaintance. The
tried and trusted old friend of this family will be always a
welcome visitor in any house of mine."
A really irresistible man--courteous, considerate, delightfully
free from pride--a gentleman, every inch of him. As I drove away
to the station I felt as if I could cheerfully do anything to
promote the interests of Sir Percival Glyde--anything in the
world, except drawing the marriage settlement of his wife.
III
A week passed, after my return to London, without the receipt of
any communication from Miss Halcombe.
On the eighth day a letter in her handwriting was placed among the
other letters on my table.
It announced that Sir Percival Glyde had been definitely accepted,
and that the marriage was to take place, as he had originally
desired, before the end of the year. In all probability the
ceremony would be performed during the last fortnight in December.
Miss Fairlie's twenty-first birthday was late in March. She
would, therefore, by this arrangement, become Sir Percival's wife
about three months before she was of age.
I ought not to have been surprised, I ought not to have been
sorry, but I was surprised and sorry, nevertheless. Some little
disappointment, caused by the unsatisfactory shortness of Miss
Halcombe's letter, mingled itself with these feelings, and
contributed its share towards upsetting my serenity for the day.
In six lines my correspondent announced the proposed marriage--in
three more, she told me that Sir Percival had left Cumberland to
return to his house in Hampshire, and in two concluding sentences
she informed me, first, that Laura was sadly in want of change and
cheerful society; secondly, that she had resolved to try the
effect of some such change forthwith, by taking her sister away
with her on a visit to certain old friends in Yorkshire. There
the letter ended, without a word to explain what the circumstances
were which had decided Miss Fairlie to accept Sir Percival Glyde
in one short week from the time when I had last seen her.
At a later period the cause of this sudden determination was fully
explained to me. It is not my business to relate it imperfectly,
on hearsay evidence. The circumstances came within the personal
experience of Miss Halcombe, and when her narrative succeeds mine,
she will describe them in every particular exactly as they
happened. In the meantime, the plain duty for me to perform--
before I, in my turn, lay down my pen and withdraw from the story--
is to relate the one remaining event connected with Miss
Fairlie's proposed marriage in which I was concerned, namely, the
drawing of the settlement.
It is impossible to refer intelligibly to this document without
first entering into certain particulars in relation to the bride's
pecuniary affairs. I will try to make my explanation briefly and
plainly, and to keep it free from professional obscurities and
technicalities. The matter is of the utmost importance. I warn
all readers of these lines that Miss Fairlie's inheritance is a
very serious part of Miss Fairlie's story, and that Mr. Gilmore's
experience, in this particular, must be their experience also, if
they wish to understand the narratives which are yet to come.
Miss Fairlie's expectations, then, were of a twofold kind,
comprising her possible inheritance of real property, or land,
when her uncle died, and her absolute inheritance of personal
property, or money, when she came of age.
Let us take the land first.
In the time of Miss Fairlie's paternal grandfather (whom we will
call Mr. Fairlie, the elder) the entailed succession to the
Limmeridge estate stood thus--
Mr. Fairlie, the elder, died and left three sons, Philip,
Frederick, and Arthur. As eldest son, Philip succeeded to the
estate, If he died without leaving a son, the property went to the
second brother, Frederick; and if Frederick died also without
leaving a son, the property went to the third brother, Arthur.
As events turned out, Mr. Philip Fairlie died leaving an only
daughter, the Laura of this story, and the estate, in consequence,
went, in course of law, to the second brother, Frederick, a single
man. The third brother, Arthur, had died many years before the
decease of Philip, leaving a son and a daughter. The son, at the
age of eighteen, was drowned at Oxford. His death left Laura, the
daughter of Mr. Philip Fairlie, presumptive heiress to the estate,
with every chance of succeeding to it, in the ordinary course of
nature, on her uncle Frederick's death, if the said Frederick died
without leaving male issue.
Except in the event, then, of Mr. Frederick Fairlie's marrying and
leaving an heir (the two very last things in the world that he was
likely to do), his niece, Laura, would have the property on his
death, possessing, it must be remembered, nothing more than a
life-interest in it. If she died single, or died childless, the
estate would revert to her cousin, Magdalen, the daughter of Mr.
Arthur Fairlie. If she married, with a proper settlement--or, in
other words, with the settlement I meant to make for her--the
income from the estate (a good three thousand a year) would,
during her lifetime, be at her own disposal. If she died before
her husband, he would naturally expect to be left in the enjoyment
of the income, for HIS lifetime. If she had a son, that son would
be the heir, to the exclusion of her cousin Magdalen. Thus, Sir
Percival's prospects in marrying Miss Fairlie (so far as his
wife's expectations from real property were concerned) promised
him these two advantages, on Mr. Frederick Fairlie's death: First,
the use of three thousand a year (by his wife's permission, while
she lived, and in his own right, on her death, if he survived
her); and, secondly, the inheritance of Limmeridge for his son, if
he had one.
So much for the landed property, and for the disposal of the
income from it, on the occasion of Miss Fairlie's marriage. Thus
far, no difficulty or difference of opinion on the lady's
settlement was at all likely to arise between Sir Percival's
lawyer and myself.
The personal estate, or, in other words, the money to which Miss
Fairlie would become entitled on reaching the age of twenty-one
years, is the next point to consider.
This part of her inheritance was, in itself, a comfortable little
fortune. It was derived under her father's will, and it amounted
to the sum of twenty thousand pounds. Besides this, she had a
life-interest in ten thousand pounds more, which latter amount was
to go, on her decease, to her aunt Eleanor, her father's only
sister. It will greatly assist in setting the family affairs
before the reader in the clearest possible light, if I stop here
for a moment, to explain why the aunt had been kept waiting for
her legacy until the death of the niece.
Mr. Philip Fairlie had lived on excellent terms with his sister
Eleanor, as long as she remained a single woman. But when her
marriage took place, somewhat late in life, and when that marriage
united her to an Italian gentleman named Fosco, or, rather, to an
Italian nobleman--seeing that he rejoiced in the title of Count--
Mr. Fairlie disapproved of her conduct so strongly that he ceased
to hold any communication with her, and even went the length of
striking her name out of his will. The other members of the
family all thought this serious manifestation of resentment at his
sister's marriage more or less unreasonable. Count Fosco, though
not a rich man, was not a penniless adventurer either. He had a
small but sufficient income of his own. He had lived many years
in England, and he held an excellent position in society. These
recommendations, however, availed nothing with Mr. Fairlie. In
many of his opinions he was an Englishman of the old school, and
he hated a foreigner simply and solely because he was a foreigner.
The utmost that he could be prevailed on to do, in after years--
mainly at Miss Fairlie's intercession--was to restore his sister's
name to its former place in his will, but to keep her waiting for
her legacy by giving the income of the money to his daughter for
life, and the money itself, if her aunt died before her, to her
cousin Magdalen. Considering the relative ages of the two ladies,
the aunt's chance, in the ordinary course of nature, of receiving
the ten thousand pounds, was thus rendered doubtful in the
extreme; and Madame Fosco resented her brother's treatment of her
as unjustly as usual in such cases, by refusing to see her niece,
and declining to believe that Miss Fairlie's intercession had ever
been exerted to restore her name to Mr. Fairlie's will.
Such was the history of the ten thousand pounds. Here again no
difficulty could arise with Sir Percival's legal adviser. The
income would be at the wife's disposal, and the principal would go
to her aunt or her cousin on her death.
All preliminary explanations being now cleared out of the way, I
come at last to the real knot of the case--to the twenty thousand
pounds.
This sum was absolutely Miss Fairlie's own on her completing her
twenty-first year, and the whole future disposition of it
depended, in the first instance, on the conditions I could obtain
for her in her marriage-settlement. The other clauses contained
in that document were of a formal kind, and need not be recited
here. But the clause relating to the money is too important to be
passed over. A few lines will be sufficient to give the necessary
abstract of it.
My stipulation in regard to the twenty thousand pounds was simply
this: The whole amount was to be settled so as to give the income
to the lady for her life--afterwards to Sir Percival for his life--
and the principal to the children of the marriage. In default of
issue, the principal was to be disposed of as the lady might by
her will direct, for which purpose I reserved to her the right of
making a will. The effect of these conditions may be thus summed
up. If Lady Glyde died without leaving children, her half-sister
Miss Halcombe, and any other relatives or friends whom she might
be anxious to benefit, would, on her husband's death, divide among
them such shares of her money as she desired them to have. If, on
the other hand, she died leaving children, then their interest,
naturally and necessarily, superseded all other interests
whatsoever. This was the clause--and no one who reads it can
fail, I think, to agree with me that it meted out equal justice to
all parties.
We shall see how my proposals were met on the husband's side.
At the time when Miss Halcombe's letter reached me I was even more
busily occupied than usual. But I contrived to make leisure for
the settlement. I had drawn it, and had sent it for approval to
Sir Percival's solicitor, in less than a week from the time when
Miss Halcombe had informed me of the proposed marriage.
After a lapse of two days the document was returned to me, with
notes and remarks of the baronet's lawyer. His objections, in
general, proved to be of the most trifling and technical kind,
until he came to the clause relating to the twenty thousand
pounds. Against this there were double lines drawn in red ink,
and the following note was appended to them--
"Not admissible. The PRINCIPAL to go to Sir Percival Glyde, in
the event of his surviving Lady Glyde, and there being no issue."
That is to say, not one farthing of the twenty thousand pounds was
to go to Miss Halcombe, or to any other relative or friend of Lady
Glyde's. The whole sum, if she left no children, was to slip into
the pockets of her husband.
The answer I wrote to this audacious proposal was as short and
sharp as I could make it. "My dear sir. Miss Fairlie's
settlement. I maintain the clause to which you object, exactly as
it stands. Yours truly." The rejoinder came back in a quarter of
an hour. "My dear sir. Miss Fairlie's settlement. I maintain
the red ink to which you object, exactly as it stands. Yours
truly." In the detestable slang of the day, we were now both "at a
deadlock," and nothing was left for it but to refer to our clients
on either side.
As matters stood, my client--Miss Fairlie not having yet completed
her twenty-first year--Mr. Frederick Fairlie, was her guardian. I
wrote by that day's post, and put the case before him exactly as
it stood, not only urging every argument I could think of to
induce him to maintain the clause as I had drawn it, but stating
to him plainly the mercenary motive which was at the bottom of the
opposition to my settlement of the twenty thousand pounds. The
knowledge of Sir Percival's affairs which I had necessarily gained
when the provisions of the deed on HIS side were submitted in due
course to my examination, had but too plainly informed me that the
debts on his estate were enormous, and that his income, though
nominally a large one, was virtually, for a man in his position,
next to nothing. The want of ready money was the practical
necessity of Sir Percival's existence, and his lawyer's note on
the clause in the settlement was nothing but the frankly selfish
expression of it.
Mr. Fairlie's answer reached me by return of post, and proved to
be wandering and irrelevant in the extreme. Turned into plain
English, it practically expressed itself to this effect: "Would
dear Gilmore be so very obliging as not to worry his friend and
client about such a trifle as a remote contingency? Was it likely
that a young woman of twenty-one would die before a man of forty
five, and die without children? On the other hand, in such a
miserable world as this, was it possible to over-estimate the
value of peace and quietness? If those two heavenly blessings were
offered in exchange for such an earthly trifle as a remote chance
of twenty thousand pounds, was it not a fair bargain? Surely, yes.
Then why not make it?"
I threw the letter away in disgust. Just as it had fluttered to
the ground, there was a knock at my door, and Sir Percival s
solicitor, Mr. Merriman, was shown in. There are many varieties
of sharp practitioners in this world, but I think the hardest of
all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise
of inveterate good-humour. A fat, well fed, smiling, friendly man
of business is of all parties to a bargain the most hopeless to
deal with. Mr. Merriman was one of this class.
"And how is good Mr. Gilmore?" he began, all in a glow with the
warmth of his own amiability. "Glad to see you, sir, in such
excellent health. I was passing your door, and I thought I would
look in in case you might have something to say to me. Do--now
pray do let us settle this little difference of ours by word of
mouth, if we can! Have you heard from your client yet?"
"Yes. Have you heard from yours?"
"My dear, good sir! I wish I had heard from him to any purpose--I
wish, with all my heart, the responsibility was off my shoulders;
but he is obstinate--or let me rather say, resolute--and he won't
take it off. 'Merriman, I leave details to you. Do what you
think right for my interests, and consider me as having personally
withdrawn from the business until it is all over.' Those were Sir
Percival's words a fortnight ago, and all I can get him to do now
is to repeat them. I am not a hard man, Mr. Gilmore, as you know.
Personally and privately, I do assure you, I should like to sponge
out that note of mine at this very moment. But if Sir Percival
won't go into the matter, if Sir Percival will blindly leave all
his interests in my sole care, what course can I possibly take
except the course of asserting them? My hands are bound--don't you
see, my dear sir?--my hands are bound."
"You maintain your note on the clause, then, to the letter?" I
said.
"Yes--deuce take it! I have no other alternative." He walked to
the fireplace and warmed himself, humming the fag end of a tune in
a rich convivial bass voice. "What does your side say?" he went
on; "now pray tell me--what does your side say?"
I was ashamed to tell him. I attempted to gain time--nay, I did
worse. My legal instincts got the better of me, and I even tried
to bargain.
"Twenty thousand pounds is rather a large sum to be given up by
the lady's friends at two days' notice," I said.
"Very true," replied Mr. Merriman, looking down thoughtfully at
his boots. "Properly put, sir--most properly put!"
"A compromise, recognising the interests of the lady's family as
well as the interests of the husband, might not perhaps have
frightened my client quite so much," I went on. "Come, come! this
contingency resolves itself into a matter of bargaining after all.
What is the least you will take?"
"The least we will take," said Mr. Merriman, "is nineteen-
thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-pounds-nineteen-shillings-
and-elevenpence-three-farthings. Ha! ha! ha! Excuse me, Mr.
Gilmore. I must have my little joke."
"Little enough," I remarked. "The joke is just worth the odd
farthing it was made for."
Mr. Merriman was delighted. He laughed over my retort till the
room rang again. I was not half so good-humoured on my side; I
came back to business, and closed the interview.
"This is Friday," I said. "Give us till Tuesday next for our
final answer."
"By all means," replied Mr. Merriman. "Longer, my dear sir, if
you like." He took up his hat to go, and then addressed me again.
"By the way," he said, "your clients in Cumberland have not heard
anything more of the woman who wrote the anonymous letter, have
they?"
"Nothing more," I answered. "Have you found no trace of her?"
"Not yet," said my legal friend. "But we don't despair. Sir
Percival has his suspicions that Somebody is keeping her in
hiding, and we are having that Somebody watched."
"You mean the old woman who was with her in Cumberland," I said.
"Quite another party, sir," answered Mr. Merriman. "We don't
happen to have laid hands on the old woman yet. Our Somebody is a
man. We have got him close under our eye here in London, and we
strongly suspect he had something to do with helping her in the
first instance to escape from the Asylum. Sir Percival wanted to
question him at once, but I said, 'No. Questioning him will only
put him on his guard--watch him, and wait.' We shall see what
happens. A dangerous woman to be at large, Mr. Gilmore; nobody
knows what she may do next. I wish you good-morning, sir. On
Tuesday next I shall hope for the pleasure of hearing from you."
He smiled amiably and went out.
My mind had been rather absent during the latter part of the
conversation with my legal friend. I was so anxious about the
matter of the settlement that I had little attention to give to
any other subject, and the moment I was left alone again I began
to think over what my next proceeding ought to be.
In the case of any other client I should have acted on my
instructions, however personally distasteful to me, and have given
up the point about the twenty thousand pounds on the spot. But I
could not act with this business-like indifference towards Miss
Fairlie. I had an honest feeling of affection and admiration for
her--I remembered gratefully that her father had been the kindest
patron and friend to me that ever man had--I had felt towards her
while I was drawing the settlement as I might have felt, if I had
not been an old bachelor, towards a daughter of my own, and I was
determined to spare no personal sacrifice in her service and where
her interests were concerned. Writing a second time to Mr.
Fairlie was not to be thought of--it would only be giving him a
second opportunity of slipping through my fingers. Seeing him and
personally remonstrating with him might possibly be of more use.
The next day was Saturday. I determined to take a return ticket
and jolt my old bones down to Cumberland, on the chance of
persuading him to adopt the just, the independent, and the
honourable course. It was a poor chance enough, no doubt, but
when I had tried it my conscience would be at ease. I should then
have done all that a man in my position could do to serve the
interests of my old friend's only child.
The weather on Saturday was beautiful, a west wind and a bright
sun. Having felt latterly a return of that fulness and oppression
of the head, against which my doctor warned me so seriously more
than two years since, I resolved to take the opportunity of
getting a little extra exercise by sending my bag on before me and
walking to the terminus in Euston Square. As I came out into
Holborn a gentleman walking by rapidly stopped and spoke to me.
It was Mr. Walter Hartright.
If he had not been the first to greet me I should certainly have
passed him. He was so changed that I hardly knew him again. His
face looked pale and haggard--his manner was hurried and
uncertain--and his dress, which I remembered as neat and
gentleman-like when I saw him at Limmeridge, was so slovenly now
that I should really have been ashamed of the appearance of it on
one of my own clerks.
"Have you been long back from Cumberland?" he asked. "I heard
from Miss Halcombe lately. I am aware that Sir Percival Glyde's
explanation has been considered satisfactory. Will the marriage
take place soon? Do you happen to know Mr. Gilmore?"
He spoke so fast, and crowded his questions together so strangely
and confusedly, that I could hardly follow him. However
accidentally intimate he might have been with the family at
Limmeridge, I could not see that he had any right to expect
information on their private affairs, and I determined to drop
him, as easily as might be, on the subject of Miss Fairlie's
marriage.
"Time will show, Mr. Hartright," I said--"time will show. I dare
say if we look out for the marriage in the papers we shall not be
far wrong. Excuse my noticing it, but I am sorry to see you not
looking so well as you were when we last met."
A momentary nervous contraction quivered about his lips and eyes,
and made me half reproach myself for having answered him in such a
significantly guarded manner.
"I had no right to ask about her marriage," he said bitterly. "I
must wait to see it in the newspapers like other people. Yes,"--
he went on before I could make any apologies--"I have not been
well lately. I am going to another country to try a change of
scene and occupation. Miss Halcombe has kindly assisted me with
her influence, and my testimonials have been found satisfactory.
It is a long distance off, but I don't care where I go, what the
climate is, or how long I am away." He looked about him while he
said this at the throng of strangers passing us by on either side,
in a strange, suspicious manner, as if he thought that some of
them might be watching us.
"I wish you well through it, and safe back again," I said, and
then added, so as not to keep him altogether at arm's length on
the subject of the Fairlies, "I am going down to Limmeridge to-day
on business. Miss Halcombe and Miss Fairlie are away just now on
a visit to some friends in Yorkshire."
His eyes brightened, and he seemed about to say something in
answer, but the same momentary nervous spasm crossed his face
again. He took my hand, pressed it hard, and disappeared among
the crowd without saying another word. Though he was little more
than a stranger to me, I waited for a moment, looking after him
almost with a feeling of regret. I had gained in my profession
sufficient experience of young men to know what the outward signs
and tokens were of their beginning to go wrong, and when I resumed
my walk to the railway I am sorry to say I felt more than doubtful
about Mr. Hartright's future.
IV
Leaving by an early train, I got to Limmeridge in time for dinner.
The house was oppressively empty and dull. I had expected that
good Mrs. Vesey would have been company for me in the absence of
the young ladies, but she was confined to her room by a cold. The
servants were so surprised at seeing me that they hurried and
bustled absurdly, and made all sorts of annoying mistakes. Even
the butler, who was old enough to have known better, brought me a
bottle of port that was chilled. The reports of Mr. Fairlie's
health were just as usual, and when I sent up a message to
announce my arrival, I was told that he would be delighted to see
me the next morning but that the sudden news of my appearance had
prostrated him with palpitations for the rest of the evening. The
wind howled dismally all night, and strange cracking and groaning
noises sounded here, there, and everywhere in the empty house. I
slept as wretchedly as possible, and got up in a mighty bad humour
to breakfast by myself the next morning.
At ten o'clock I was conducted to Mr. Fairlie's apartments. He
was in his usual room, his usual chair, and his usual aggravating
state of mind and body. When I went in, his valet was standing
before him, holding up for inspection a heavy volume of etchings,
as long and as broad as my office writing-desk. The miserable
foreigner grinned in the most abject manner, and looked ready to
drop with fatigue, while his master composedly turned over the
etchings, and brought their hidden beauties to light with the help
of a magnifying glass.
"You very best of good old friends," said Mr. Fairlie, leaning
hack lazily before he could look at me, "are you QUITE well? How
nice of you to come here and see me in my solitude. Dear
Gilmore!"
I had expected that the valet would be dismissed when I appeared,
but nothing of the sort happened. There he stood, in front of his
master's chair, trembling under the weight of the etchings, and
there Mr. Fairlie sat, serenely twirling the magnifying glass
between his white fingers and thumbs.
"I have come to speak to you on a very important matter," I said,
"and you will therefore excuse me, if I suggest that we had better
be alone."
The unfortunate valet looked at me gratefully. Mr. Fairlie
faintly repeated my last three words, "better be alone," with
every appearance of the utmost possible astonishment.
I was in no humour for trifling, and I resolved to make him
understand what I meant.
"Oblige me by giving that man permission to withdraw," I said,
pointing to the valet.
Mr. Fairlie arched his eyebrows and pursed up his lips in
sarcastic surprise.
"Man?" he repeated. "You provoking old Gilmore, what can you
possibly mean by calling him a man? He's nothing of the sort. He
might have been a man half an hour ago, before I wanted my
etchings, and he may be a man half an hour hence, when I don't
want them any longer. At present he is simply a portfolio stand.
Why object, Gilmore, to a portfolio stand?"
"I DO object. For the third time, Mr. Fairlie, I beg that we may
be alone."
My tone and manner left him no alternative but to comply with my
request. He looked at the servant, and pointed peevishly to a
chair at his side.
"Put down the etchings and go away," he said. "Don't upset me by
losing my place. Have you, or have you not, lost my place? Are
you sure you have not? And have you put my hand-bell quite within
my reach? Yes? Then why the devil don't you go?"
The valet went out. Mr. Fairlie twisted himself round in his
chair, polished the magnifying glass with his delicate cambric
handkerchief, and indulged himself with a sidelong inspection of
the open volume of etchings. It was not easy to keep my temper
under these circumstances, but I did keep it.
"I have come here at great personal inconvenience," I said, "to
serve the interests of your niece and your family, and I think I
have established some slight claim to be favoured with your
attention in return."
"Don't bully me!" exclaimed Mr. Fairlie, falling back helplessly
in the chair, and closing his eyes. "Please don't bully me. I'm
not strong enough."
I was determined not to let him provoke me, for Laura Fairlie's
sake.
"My object," I went on, "is to entreat you to reconsider your
letter, and not to force me to abandon the just rights of your
niece, and of all who belong to her. Let me state the case to you
once more, and for the last time."
Mr. Fairlie shook his head and sighed piteously.
"This is heartless of you, Gilmore--very heartless," he said.
"Never mind, go on."
I put all the points to him carefully--I set the matter before him
in every conceivable light. He lay back in the chair the whole
time I was speaking with his eyes closed. When I had done he
opened them indolently, took his silver smelling-bottle from the
table, and sniffed at it with an air of gentle relish.
"Good Gilmore!" he said between the sniffs, "how very nice this is
of you! How you reconcile one to human nature!"
"Give me a plain answer to a plain question, Mr. Fairlie. I tell
you again, Sir Percival Glyde has no shadow of a claim to expect
more than the income of the money. The money itself if your niece
has no children, ought to be under her control, and to return to
her family. If you stand firm, Sir Percival must give way--he
must give way, I tell you, or he exposes himself to the base
imputation of marrying Miss Fairlie entirely from mercenary
motives."
Mr. Fairlie shook the silver smelling-bottle at me playfully.
"You dear old Gilmore, how you do hate rank and family, don't you?
How you detest Glyde because he happens to be a baronet. What a
Radical you are--oh, dear me, what a Radical you are!"
A Radical!!! I could put up with a good deal of provocation, but,
after holding the soundest Conservative principles all my life, I
could NOT put up with being called a Radical. My blood boiled at
it--I started out of my chair--I was speechless with Indignation.
"Don't shake the room!" cried Mr. Fairlie--"for Heaven's sake
don't shake the room! Worthiest of all possible Gilmores, I meant
no offence. My own views are so extremely liberal that I think I
am a Radical myself. Yes. We are a pair of Radicals. Please
don't be angry. I can't quarrel--I haven't stamina enough. Shall
we drop the subject? Yes. Come and look at these sweet etchings.
Do let me teach you to understand the heavenly pearliness of these
lines. Do now, there's a good Gilmore!"
While he was maundering on in this way I was, fortunately for my
own self-respect, returning to my senses. When I spoke again I
was composed enough to treat his impertinence with the silent
contempt that it deserved.
"You are entirely wrong, sir," I said, "in supposing that I speak
from any prejudice against Sir Percival Glyde. I may regret that
he has so unreservedly resigned himself in this matter to his
lawyer's direction as to make any appeal to himself impossible,
but I am not prejudiced against him. What I have said would
equally apply to any other man in his situation, high or low. The
principle I maintain is a recognised principle. If you were to
apply at the nearest town here, to the first respectable solicitor
you could find, he would tell you as a stranger what I tell you as
a friend. He would inform you that it is against all rule to
abandon the lady's money entirely to the man she marries. He
would decline, on grounds of common legal caution, to give the
husband, under any circumstances whatever, an interest of twenty
thousand pounds in his wife's death."
"Would he really, Gilmore?" said Mr. Fairlie. "If he said
anything half so horrid, I do assure you I should tinkle my bell
for Louis, and have him sent out of the house immediately."
"You shall not irritate me, Mr. Fairlie--for your niece's sake and
for her father's sake, you shall not irritate me. You shall take
the whole responsibility of this discreditable settlement on your
own shoulders before I leave the room."
"Don't!--now please don't!" said Mr. Fairlie. "Think how precious
your time is, Gilmore, and don't throw it away. I would dispute
with you if I could, but I can't--I haven't stamina enough. You
want to upset me, to upset yourself, to upset Glyde, and to upset
Laura; and--oh, dear me!--all for the sake of the very last thing
in the world that is likely to happen. No, dear friend, in the
interests of peace and quietness, positively No!"
"I am to understand, then, that you hold by the determination
expressed in your letter?"
"Yes, please. So glad we understand each other at last. Sit down
again--do!"
I walked at once to the door, and Mr. Fairlie resignedly "tinkled"
his hand-bell. Before I left the room I turned round and
addressed him for the last time.
"Whatever happens in the future, sir," I said, "remember that my
plain duty of warning you has been performed. As the faithful
friend and servant of your family, I tell you, at parting, that no
daughter of mine should be married to any man alive under such a
settlement as you are forcing me to make for Miss Fairlie."
The door opened behind me, and the valet stood waiting on the
threshold.
"Louis," said Mr. Fairlie, "show Mr. Gilmore out, and then come
back and hold up my etchings for me again. Make them give you a
good lunch downstairs. Do, Gilmore, make my idle beasts of
servants give you a good lunch!"
I was too much disgusted to reply--I turned on my heel, and left
him in silence. There was an up train at two o'clock in the
afternoon, and by that train I returned to London.
On the Tuesday I sent in the altered settlement, which practically
disinherited the very persons whom Miss Fairlie's own lips had
informed me she was most anxious to benefit. I had no choice.
Another lawyer would have drawn up the deed if I had refused to
undertake it.
My task is done. My personal share in the events of the family
story extends no farther than the point which I have just reached.
Other pens than mine will describe the strange circumstances which
are now shortly to follow. Seriously and sorrowfully I close this
brief record. Seriously and sorrowfully I repeat here the parting
words that I spoke at Limmeridge House:--No daughter of mine
should have been married to any man alive under such a settlement
as I was compelled to make for Laura Fairlie.
The End of Mr. Gilmore's Narrative.
THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE
(in Extracts from her Diary)
LIMMERIDGE HOUSE, Nov. 8.[1]
[1] The passages omitted, here and elsewhere, in Miss Halcombe's
Diary are only those which bear no reference to Miss Fairlie or to
any of the persons with whom she is associated in these pages.
This morning Mr. Gilmore left us.
His interview with Laura had evidently grieved and surprised him
more than he liked to confess. I felt afraid, from his look and
manner when we parted, that she might have inadvertently betrayed
to him the real secret of her depression and my anxiety. This
doubt grew on me so, after he had gone, that I declined riding out
with Sir Percival, and went up to Laura's room instead.
I have been sadly distrustful of myself, in this difficult and
lamentable matter, ever since I found out my own ignorance of the
strength of Laura's unhappy attachment. I ought to have known
that the delicacy and forbearance and sense of honour which drew
me to poor Hartright, and made me so sincerely admire and respect
him, were just the qualities to appeal most irresistibly to
Laura's natural sensitiveness and natural generosity of nature.
And yet, until she opened her heart to me of her own accord, I had
no suspicion that this new feeling had taken root so deeply. I
once thought time and care might remove it. I now fear that it
will remain with her and alter her for life. The discovery that I
have committed such an error in judgment as this makes me hesitate
about everything else. I hesitate about Sir Percival, in the face
of the plainest proofs. I hesitate even in speaking to Laura. On
this very morning I doubted, with my hand on the door, whether I
should ask her the questions I had come to put, or not.
When I went into her room I found her walking up and down in great
impatience. She looked flushed and excited, and she came forward
at once, and spoke to me before I could open my lips.
"I wanted you," she said. "Come and sit down on the sofa with me.
Marian! I can bear this no longer--I must and will end it."
There was too much colour in her cheeks, too much energy in her
manner, too much firmness in her voice. The little book of
Hartright's drawings--the fatal book that she will dream over
whenever she is alone--was in one of her hands. I began by gently
and firmly taking it from her, and putting it out of sight on a
side-table.
"Tell me quietly, my darling, what you wish to do," I said. "Has
Mr. Gilmore been advising you?"
She shook her head. "No, not in what I am thinking of now. He
was very kind and good to me, Marian, and I am ashamed to say I
distressed him by crying. I am miserably helpless--I can't
control myself. For my own sake, and for all our sakes, I must
have courage enough to end it."
"Do you mean courage enough to claim your release?" I asked.
"No," she said simply. "Courage, dear, to tell the truth."
She put her arms round my neck, and rested her head quietly on my
bosom. On the opposite wall hung the miniature portrait of her
father. I bent over her, and saw that she was looking at it while
her head lay on my breast.
"I can never claim my release from my engagement," she went on.
"Whatever way it ends it must end wretchedly for me. All I can
do, Marian, is not to add the remembrance that I have broken my
promise and forgotten my father's dying words, to make that
wretchedness worse."
"What is it you propose, then?" I asked.
"To tell Sir Percival Glyde the truth with my own lips," she
answered, "and to let him release me, if he will, not because I
ask him, but because he knows all."
"What do you mean, Laura, by 'all'? Sir Percival will know enough
(he has told me so himself) if he knows that the engagement is
opposed to your own wishes."
"Can I tell him that, when the engagement was made for me by my
father, with my own consent? I should have kept my promise, not
happily, I am afraid, but still contentedly--" she stopped, turned
her face to me, and laid her cheek close against mine--"I should
have kept my engagement, Marian, if another love had not grown up
in my heart, which was not there when I first promised to be Sir
Percival's wife."
"Laura! you will never lower yourself by making a confession to
him?"
"I shall lower myself, indeed, if I gain my release by hiding from
him what he has a right to know."
"He has not the shadow of a right to know it!"
"Wrong, Marian, wrong! I ought to deceive no one--least of all the
man to whom my father gave me, and to whom I gave myself." She put
her lips to mine, and kissed me. "My own love," she said softly,
"you are so much too fond of me, and so much too proud of me, that
you forget, in my case, what you would remember in your own.
Better that Sir Percival should doubt my motives, and misjudge my
conduct if he will, than that I should be first false to him in
thought, and then mean enough to serve my own interests by hiding
the falsehood."
I held her away from me in astonishment. For the first time in
our lives we had changed places--the resolution was all on her
side, the hesitation all on mine. I looked into the pale, quiet,
resigned young face--I saw the pure, innocent heart, in the loving
eyes that looked back at me--and the poor worldly cautions and
objections that rose to my lips dwindled and died away in their
own emptiness. I hung my head in silence. In her place the
despicably small pride which makes so many women deceitful would
have been my pride, and would have made me deceitful too.
"Don't be angry with me, Marian," she said, mistaking my silence.
I only answered by drawing her close to me again. I was afraid of
crying if I spoke. My tears do not flow so easily as they ought--
they come almost like men's tears, with sobs that seem to tear me
in pieces, and that frighten every one about me.
"I have thought of this, love, for many days," she went on,
twining and twisting my hair with that childish restlessness in
her fingers, which poor Mrs. Vesey still tries so patiently and so
vainly to cure her of--"I have thought of it very seriously, and I
can be sure of my courage when my own conscience tells me I am
right. Let me speak to him to-morrow--in your presence, Marian.
I will say nothing that is wrong, nothing that you or I need be
ashamed of--but, oh, it will ease my heart so to end this
miserable concealment! Only let me know and feel that I have no
deception to answer for on my side, and then, when he has heard
what I have to say, let him act towards me as he will."
She sighed, and put her head back in its old position on my bosom.
Sad misgivings about what the end would be weighed upon my mind,
but still distrusting myself, I told her that I would do as she
wished. She thanked me, and we passed gradually into talking of
other things.
At dinner she joined us again, and was more easy and more herself
with Sir Percival than I have seen her yet. In the evening she
went to the piano, choosing new music of the dexterous, tuneless,
florid kind. The lovely old melodies of Mozart, which poor
Hartright was so fond of, she has never played since he left. The
book is no longer in the music-stand. She took the volume away
herself, so that nobody might find it out and ask her to play from
it.
I had no opportunity of discovering whether her purpose of the
morning had changed or not, until she wished Sir Percival good-
night--and then her own words informed me that it was unaltered.
She said, very quietly, that she wished to speak to him after
breakfast, and that he would find her in her sitting-room with me.
He changed colour at those words, and I felt his hand trembling a
little when it came to my turn to take it. The event of the next
morning would decide his future life, and he evidently knew it.
I went in, as usual, through the door between our two bed-rooms,
to bid Laura good-night before she went to sleep. In stooping
over her to kiss her I saw the little book of Hartright's drawings
half hidden under her pillow, just in the place where she used to
hide her favourite toys when she was a child. I could not find it
in my heart to say anything, but I pointed to the book and shook
my head. She reached both hands up to my cheeks, and drew my face
down to hers till our lips met.
"Leave it there to-night," she whispered; "to-morrow may be cruel,
and may make me say good-bye to it for ever."
9th.--The first event of the morning was not of a kind to raise my
spirits--a letter arrived for me from poor Walter Hartright. It
is the answer to mine describing the manner in which Sir Percival
cleared himself of the suspicions raised by Anne Catherick's
letter. He writes shortly and bitterly about Sir Percival's
explanations, only saying that he has no right to offer an opinion
on the conduct of those who are above him. This is sad, but his
occasional references to himself grieve me still more. He says
that the effort to return to his old habits and pursuits grows
harder instead of easier to him every day and he implores me, if I
have any interest, to exert it to get him employment that will
necessitate his absence from England, and take him among new
scenes and new people. I have been made all the readier to comply
with this request by a passage at the end of his letter, which has
almost alarmed me.
After mentioning that he has neither seen nor heard anything of
Anne Catherick, he suddenly breaks off, and hints in the most
abrupt, mysterious manner, that he has been perpetually watched
and followed by strange men ever since he returned to London. He
acknowledges that he cannot prove this extraordinary suspicion by
fixing on any particular persons, but he declares that the
suspicion itself is present to him night and day. This has
frightened me, because it looks as if his one fixed idea about
Laura was becoming too much for his mind. I will write
immediately to some of my mother's influential old friends in
London, and press his claims on their notice. Change of scene and
change of occupation may really be the salvation of him at this
crisis in his life.
Greatly to my relief, Sir Percival sent an apology for not joining
us at breakfast. He had taken an early cup of coffee in his own
room, and he was still engaged there in writing letters. At
eleven o'clock, if that hour was convenient, he would do himself
the honour of waiting on Miss Fairlie and Miss Halcombe.
My eyes were on Laura's face while the message was being
delivered. I had found her unaccountably quiet and composed on
going into her room in the morning, and so she remained all
through breakfast. Even when we were sitting together on the sofa
in her room, waiting for Sir Percival, she still preserved her
self-control.
"Don't be afraid of me, Marian," was all she said; "I may forget
myself with an old friend like Mr. Gilmore, or with a dear sister
like you, but I will not forget myself with Sir Percival Glyde."
I looked at her, and listened to her in silent surprise. Through
all the years of our close intimacy this passive force in her
character had been hidden from me--hidden even from herself, till
love found it, and suffering called it forth.
As the clock on the mantelpiece struck eleven Sir Percival knocked
at the door and came in. There was suppressed anxiety and
agitation in every line of his face. The dry, sharp cough, which
teases him at most times, seemed to be troubling him more
incessantly than ever. He sat down opposite to us at the table,
and Laura remained by me. I looked attentively at them both, and
he was the palest of the two.
He said a few unimportant words, with a visible effort to preserve
his customary ease of manner. But his voice was not to be
steadied, and the restless uneasiness in his eyes was not to be
concealed. He must have felt this himself, for he stopped in the
middle of a sentence, and gave up even the attempt to hide his
embarrassment any longer.
There was just one moment of dead silence before Laura addressed
him.
"I wish to speak to you, Sir Percival," she said, "on a subject
that is very important to us both. My sister is here, because her
presence helps me and gives me confidence. She has not suggested
one word of what I am going to say--I speak from my own thoughts,
not from hers. I am sure you will be kind enough to understand
that before I go any farther?"
Sir Percival bowed. She had proceeded thus far, with perfect
outward tranquillity and perfect propriety of manner. She looked
at him, and he looked at her. They seemed, at the outset, at
least, resolved to understand one another plainly.
"I have heard from Marian," she went on, "that I have only to
claim my release from our engagement to obtain that release from
you. It was forbearing and generous on your part, Sir Percival,
to send me such a message. It is only doing you justice to say
that I am grateful for the offer, and I hope and believe that it
is only doing myself justice to tell you that I decline to accept
it."
His attentive face relaxed a little. But I saw one of his feet,
softly, quietly, incessantly beating on the carpet under the
table, and I felt that he was secretly as anxious as ever.
"I have not forgotten," she said, "that you asked my father's
permission before you honoured me with a proposal of marriage.
Perhaps you have not forgotten either what I said when I consented
to our engagement? I ventured to tell you that my father's
influence and advice had mainly decided me to give you my promise.
I was guided by my father, because I had always found him the
truest of all advisers, the best and fondest of all protectors and
friends. I have lost him now--I have only his memory to love, but
my faith in that dear dead friend has never been shaken. I
believe at this moment, as truly as I ever believed, that he knew
what was best, and that his hopes and wishes ought to be my hopes
and wishes too."
Her voice trembled for the first time. Her restless fingers stole
their way into my lap, and held fast by one of my hands. There
was another moment of silence, and then Sir Percival spoke.
"May I ask," he said, "if I have ever proved myself unworthy of
the trust which it has been hitherto my greatest honour and
greatest happiness to possess?"
"I have found nothing in your conduct to blame," she answered.
"You have always treated me with the same delicacy and the same
forbearance. You have deserved my trust, and, what is of far more
importance in my estimation, you have deserved my father's trust,
out of which mine grew. You have given me no excuse, even if I
had wanted to find one, for asking to be released from my pledge.
What I have said so far has been spoken with the wish to
acknowledge my whole obligation to you. My regard for that
obligation, my regard for my father's memory, and my regard for my
own promise, all forbid me to set the example, on my side, of
withdrawing from our present position. The breaking of our
engagement must be entirely your wish and your act, Sir Percival--
not mine."
The uneasy beating of his foot suddenly stopped, and he leaned
forward eagerly across the table.
"My act?" he said. "What reason can there be on my side for
withdrawing?"
I heard her breath quickening--I felt her hand growing cold. In
spite of what she had said to me when we were alone, I began to be
afraid of her. I was wrong.
"A reason that it is very hard to tell you," she answered. "There
is a change in me, Sir Percival--a change which is serious enough
to justify you, to yourself and to me, in breaking off our
engagement."
His face turned so pale again that even his lips lost their
colour. He raised the arm which lay on the table, turned a little
away in his chair, and supported his head on his hand, so that his
profile only was presented to us.
"What change?" he asked. The tone in which he put the question
jarred on me--there was something painfully suppressed in it.
She sighed heavily, and leaned towards me a little, so as to rest
her shoulder against mine. I felt her trembling, and tried to
spare her by speaking myself. She stopped me by a warning
pressure of her hand, and then addressed Sir Percival one more,
but this time without looking at him.
"I have heard," she said, "and I believe it, that the fondest and
truest of all affections is the affection which a woman ought to
bear to her husband. When our engagement began that affection was
mine to give, if I could, and yours to win, if you could. Will
you pardon me, and spare me, Sir Percival, if I acknowledge that
it is not so any longer?"
A few tears gathered in her eyes, and dropped over her cheeks
slowly as she paused and waited for his answer. He did not utter
a word. At the beginning of her reply he had moved the hand on
which his head rested, so that it hid his face. I saw nothing but
the upper part of his figure at the table. Not a muscle of him
moved. The fingers of the hand which supported his head were
dented deep in his hair. They might have expressed hidden anger
or hidden grief--it was hard to say which--there was no
significant trembling in them. There was nothing, absolutely
nothing, to tell the secret of his thoughts at that moment--the
moment which was the crisis of his life and the crisis of hers.
I was determined to make him declare himself, for Laura's sake.
"Sir Percival!" I interposed sharply, "have you nothing to say
when my sister has said so much? More, in my opinion," I added, my
unlucky temper getting the better of me, "than any man alive, in
your position, has a right to hear from her."
That last rash sentence opened a way for him by which to escape me
if he chose, and he instantly took advantage of it.
"Pardon me, Miss Halcombe," he said, still keeping his hand over
his face, "pardon me if I remind you that I have claimed no such
right."
The few plain words which would have brought him back to the point
from which he had wandered were just on my lips, when Laura
checked me by speaking again.
"I hope I have not made my painful acknowledgment in vain," she
continued. "I hope it has secured me your entire confidence in
what I have still to say?"
"Pray be assured of it." He made that brief reply warmly, dropping
his hand on the table while he spoke, and turning towards us
again. Whatever outward change had passed over him was gone now.
His face was eager and expectant--it expressed nothing but the
most intense anxiety to hear her next words.
"I wish you to understand that I have not spoken from any selfish
motive," she said. "If you leave me, Sir Percival, after what you
have just heard, you do not leave me to marry another man, you
only allow me to remain a single woman for the rest of my life.
My fault towards you has begun and ended in my own thoughts. It
can never go any farther. No word has passed--" She hesitated, in
doubt about the expression she should use next, hesitated in a
momentary confusion which it was very sad and very painful to see.
"No word has passed," she patiently and resolutely resumed,
"between myself and the person to whom I am now referring for the
first and last time in your presence of my feelings towards him,
or of his feelings towards me--no word ever can pass--neither he
nor I are likely, in this world, to meet again. I earnestly beg
you to spare me from saying any more, and to believe me, on my
word, in what I have just told you. It is the truth. Sir
Percival, the truth which I think my promised husband has a claim
to hear, at any sacrifice of my own feelings. I trust to his
generosity to pardon me, and to his honour to keep my secret."
"Both those trusts are sacred to me," he said, "and both shall be
sacredly kept."
After answering in those terms he paused, and looked at her as if
he was waiting to hear more.
I have said all I wish to say," she added quietly--" I have said
more than enough to justify you in withdrawing from your
engagement."
"You have said more than enough," he answered, "to make it the
dearest object of my life to KEEP the engagement." With those
words he rose from his chair, and advanced a few steps towards the
place where she was sitting.
She started violently, and a faint cry of surprise escaped her.
Every word she had spoken had innocently betrayed her purity and
truth to a man who thoroughly understood the priceless value of a
pure and true woman. Her own noble conduct had been the hidden
enemy, throughout, of all the hopes she had trusted to it. I had
dreaded this from the first. I would have prevented it, if she
had allowed me the smallest chance of doing so. I even waited and
watched now, when the harm was done, for a word from Sir Percival
that would give me the opportunity of putting him in the wrong.
"You have left it to ME, Miss Fairlie, to resign you," he
continued. "I am not heartless enough to resign a woman who has
just shown herself to be the noblest of her sex."
He spoke with such warmth and feeling, with such passionate
enthusiasm, and yet with such perfect delicacy, that she raised
her head, flushed up a little, and looked at him with sudden
animation and spirit.
"No!" she said firmly. "The most wretched of her sex, if she must
give herself in marriage when she cannot give her love."
"May she not give it in the future," he asked, "if the one object
of her husband's life is to deserve it?"
"Never!" she answered. "If you still persist in maintaining our
engagement, I may be your true and faithful wife, Sir Percival--
your loving wife, if I know my own heart, never!"
She looked so irresistibly beautiful as she said those brave words
that no man alive could have steeled his heart against her. I
tried hard to feel that Sir Percival was to blame, and to say so,
but my womanhood would pity him, in spite of myself.
"I gratefully accept your faith and truth," he said. "The least
that you can offer is more to me than the utmost that I could hope
for from any other woman in the world."
Her left hand still held mine, but her right hand hung listlessly
at her side. He raised it gently to his lips--touched it with
them, rather than kissed it--bowed to me--and then, with perfect
delicacy and discretion, silently quitted the room.
She neither moved nor said a word when he was gone--she sat by me,
cold and still, with her eyes fixed on the ground. I saw it was
hopeless and useless to speak, and I only put my arm round her,
and held her to me in silence. We remained together so for what
seemed a long and weary time--so long and so weary, that I grew
uneasy and spoke to her softly, in the hope of producing a change.
The sound of my voice seemed to startle her into consciousness.
She suddenly drew herself away from me and rose to her feet.
"I must submit, Marian, as well as I can," she said. "My new life
has its hard duties, and one of them begins to-day."
As she spoke she went to a side-table near the window, on which
her sketching materials were placed, gathered them together
carefully, and put them in a drawer of her cabinet. She locked
the drawer and brought the key to me.
"I must part from everything that reminds me of him," she said.
"Keep the key wherever you please--I shall never want it again."
Before I could say a word she had turned away to her book-case,
and had taken from it the album that contained Walter Hartright's
drawings. She hesitated for a moment, holding the little volume
fondly in her hands--then lifted it to her lips and kissed it.
"Oh, Laura! Laura!" I said, not angrily, not reprovingly--with
nothing but sorrow in my voice, and nothing but sorrow in my
heart.
"It is the last time, Marian," she pleaded. "I am bidding it
good-bye for ever."
She laid the book on the table and drew out the comb that fastened
her hair. It fell, in its matchless beauty, over her back and
shoulders, and dropped round her, far below her waist. She
separated one long, thin lock from the rest, cut it off, and
pinned it carefully, in the form of a circle, on the first blank
page of the album. The moment it was fastened she closed the
volume hurriedly, and placed it in my hands.
"You write to him and he writes to you," she said. "While I am
alive, if he asks after me always tell him I am well, and never
say I am unhappy. Don't distress him, Marian, for my sake, don't
distress him. If I die first, promise you will give him this
little book of his drawings, with my hair in it. There can be no
harm, when I am gone, in telling him that I put it there with my
own hands. And say--oh, Marian, say for me, then, what I can
never say for myself--say I loved him!"
She flung her arms round my neck, and whispered the last words in
my ear with a passionate delight in uttering them which it almost
broke my heart to hear. All the long restraint she had imposed on
herself gave way in that first last outburst of tenderness. She
broke from me with hysterical vehemence, and threw herself on the
sofa in a paroxysm of sobs and tears that shook her from head to
foot.
I tried vainly to soothe her and reason with her--she was past
being soothed, and past being reasoned with. It was the sad,
sudden end for us two of this memorable day. When the fit had
worn itself out she was too exhausted to speak. She slumbered
towards the afternoon, and I put away the book of drawings so that
she might not see it when she woke. My face was calm, whatever my
heart might be, when she opened her eyes again and looked at me.
We said no more to each other about the distressing interview of
the morning. Sir Percival's name was not mentioned. Walter
Hartright was not alluded to again by either of us for the
remainder of the day.
10th.--Finding that she was composed and like herself this
morning, I returned to the painful subject of yesterday, for the
sole purpose of imploring her to let me speak to Sir Percival and
Mr. Fairlie, more plainly and strongly than she could speak to
either of them herself, about this lamentable marriage. She
interposed, gently but firmly, in the middle of my remonstrances.
"I left yesterday to decide," she said; "and yesterday HAS
decided. It is too late to go back."
Sir Percival spoke to me this afternoon about what had passed in
Laura's room. He assured me that the unparalleled trust she had
placed in him had awakened such an answering conviction of her
innocence and integrity in his mind, that he was guiltless of
having felt even a moment's unworthy jealousy, either at the time
when he was in her presence, or afterwards when he had withdrawn
from it. Deeply as he lamented the unfortunate attachment which
had hindered the progress he might otherwise have made in her
esteem and regard, he firmly believed that it had remained
unacknowledged in the past, and that it would remain, under all
changes of circumstance which it was possible to contemplate,
unacknowledged in the future. This was his absolute conviction;
and the strongest proof he could give of it was the assurance,
which he now offered, that he felt no curiosity to know whether
the attachment was of recent date or not, or who had been the
object of it. His implicit confidence in Miss Fairlie made him
satisfied with what she had thought fit to say to him, and he was
honestly innocent of the slightest feeling of anxiety to hear
more.
He waited after saying those words and looked at me. I was so
conscious of my unreasonable prejudice against him--so conscious
of an unworthy suspicion that he might be speculating on my
impulsively answering the very questions which he had just
described himself as resolved not to ask--that I evaded all
reference to this part of the subject with something like a
feeling of confusion on my own part. At the same time I was
resolved not to lose even the smallest opportunity of trying to
plead Laura's cause, and I told him boldly that I regretted his
generosity had not carried him one step farther, and induced him
to withdraw from the engagement altogether.
Here, again, he disarmed me by not attempting to defend himself.
He would merely beg me to remember the difference there was
between his allowing Miss Fairlie to give him up, which was a
matter of submission only, and his forcing himself to give up Miss
Fairlie, which was, in other words, asking him to be the suicide
of his own hopes. Her conduct of the day before had so
strengthened the unchangeable love and admiration of two long
years, that all active contention against those feelings, on his
part, was henceforth entirely out of his power. I must think him
weak, selfish, unfeeling towards the very woman whom he idolised,
and he must bow to my opinion as resignedly as he could--only
putting it to me, at the same time, whether her future as a single
woman, pining under an unhappily placed attachment which she could
never acknowledge, could be said to promise her a much brighter
prospect than her future as the wife of a man who worshipped the
very ground she walked on? In the last case there was hope from
time, however slight it might be--in the first case, on her own
showing, there was no hope at all.
I answered him--more because my tongue is a woman's, and must
answer, than because I had anything convincing to say. It was
only too plain that the course Laura had adopted the day before
had offered him the advantage if he chose to take it--and that he
HAD chosen to take it. I felt this at the time, and I feel it
just as strongly now, while I write these lines, in my own room.
The one hope left is that his motives really spring, as he says
they do, from the irresistible strength of his attachment to
Laura.
Before I close my diary for to-night I must record that I wrote
to-day, in poor Hartright's interest, to two of my mother's old
friends in London--both men of influence and position. If they
can do anything for him, I am quite sure they will. Except Laura,
I never was more anxious about any one than I am now about Walter.
All that has happened since he left us has only increased my
strong regard and sympathy for him. I hope I am doing right in
trying to help him to employment abroad--I hope, most earnestly
and anxiously, that it will end well.
11th.--Sir Percival had an interview with Mr. Fairlie, and I was
sent for to join them.
I found Mr. Fairlie greatly relieved at the prospect of the
"family worry" (as he was pleased to describe his niece's
marriage) being settled at last. So far, I did not feel called on
to say anything to him about my own opinion, but when he
proceeded, in his most aggravatingly languid manner, to suggest
that the time for the marriage had better be settled next, in
accordance with Sir Percival's wishes, I enjoyed the satisfaction
of assailing Mr. Fairlie's nerves with as strong a protest against
hurrying Laura's decision as I could put into words. Sir Percival
immediately assured me that he felt the force of my objection, and
begged me to believe that the proposal had not been made in
consequence of any interference on his part. Mr. Fairlie leaned
back in his chair, closed his eyes, said we both of us did honour
to human nature, and then repeated his suggestion as coolly as if
neither Sir Percival nor I had said a word in opposition to it.
It ended in my flatly declining to mention the subject to Laura,
unless she first approached it of her own accord. I left the room
at once after making that declaration. Sir Percival looked
seriously embarrassed and distressed, Mr. Fairlie stretched out
his lazy legs on his velvet footstool, and said, "Dear Marian! how
I envy you your robust nervous system! Don't bang the door!"
On going to Laura's room I found that she had asked for me, and
that Mrs. Vesey had informed her that I was with Mr. Fairlie. She
inquired at once what I had been wanted for, and I told her all
that had passed, without attempting to conceal the vexation and
annoyance that I really felt. Her answer surprised and distressed
me inexpressibly--it was the very last reply that I should have
expected her to make.
"My uncle is right," she said. "I have caused trouble and anxiety
enough to you, and to all about me. Let me cause no more, Marian--
let Sir Percival decide."
I remonstrated warmly, but nothing that I could say moved her.
"I am held to my engagement," she replied; "I have broken with my
old life. The evil day will not come the less surely because I
put it off. No, Marian! once again my uncle is right. I have
caused trouble enough and anxiety enough, and I will cause no
more."
She used to be pliability itself, but she was now inflexibly
passive in her resignation--I might almost say in her despair.
Dearly as I love her, I should have been less pained if she had
been violently agitated--it was so shockingly unlike her natural
character to see her as cold and insensible as I saw her now.
12th.--Sir Percival put some questions to me at breakfast about
Laura, which left me no choice but to tell him what she had said.
While we were talking she herself came down and joined us. She
was just as unnaturally composed in Sir Percival's presence as she
had been in mine. When breakfast was over he had an opportunity
of saying a few words to her privately, in a recess of one of the
windows. They were not more than two or three minutes together,
and on their separating she left the room with Mrs. Vesey, while
Sir Percival came to me. He said he had entreated her to favour
him by maintaining her privilege of fixing the time for the
marriage at her own will and pleasure. In reply she had merely
expressed her acknowledgments, and had desired him to mention what
his wishes were to Miss Halcombe.
I have no patience to write more. In this instance, as in every
other, Sir Percival has carried his point with the utmost possible
credit to himself, in spite of everything that I can say or do.
His wishes are now, what they were, of course, when he first came
here; and Laura having resigned herself to the one inevitable
sacrifice of the marriage, remains as coldly hopeless and enduring
as ever. In parting with the little occupations and relics that
reminded her of Hartright, she seems to have parted with all her
tenderness and all her impressibility. It is only three o'clock
in the afternoon while I write these lines, and Sir Percival has
left us already, in the happy hurry of a bride-groom, to prepare
for the bride's reception at his house in Hampshire. Unless some
extraordinary event happens to prevent it they will be married
exactly at the time when he wished to be married--before the end
of the year. My very fingers burn as I write it!
13th.--A sleepless night, through uneasiness about Laura. Towards
the morning I came to a resolution to try what change of scene
would do to rouse her. She cannot surely remain in her present
torpor of insensibility, if I take her away from Limmeridge and
surround her with the pleasant faces of old friends? After some
consideration I decided on writing to the Arnolds, in Yorkshire.
They are simple, kind-hearted, hospitable people, and she has
known them from her childhood. When I had put the letter in the
post-bag I told her what I had done. It would have been a relief
to me if she had shown the spirit to resist and object. But no--
she only said, "I will go anywhere with you, Marian. I dare say
you are right--I dare say the change will do me good."
14th.--I wrote to Mr. Gilmore, informing him that there was really
a prospect of this miserable marriage taking place, and also
mentioning my idea of trying what change of scene would do for
Laura. I had no heart to go into particulars. Time enough for
them when we get nearer to the end of the year.
15th.--Three letters for me. The first, from the Arnolds, full of
delight at the prospect of seeing Laura and me. The second, from
one of the gentlemen to whom I wrote on Walter Hartright's behalf,
informing me that he has been fortunate enough to find an
opportunity of complying with my request. The third, from Walter
himself, thanking me, poor fellow, in the warmest terms, for
giving him an opportunity of leaving his home, his country, and
his friends. A private expedition to make excavations among the
ruined cities of Central America is, it seems, about to sail from
Liverpool. The draughtsman who had been already appointed to
accompany it has lost heart, and withdrawn at the eleventh hour,
and Walter is to fill his place. He is to be engaged for six
months certain, from the time of the landing in Honduras, and for
a year afterwards, if the excavations are successful, and if the
funds hold out. His letter ends with a promise to write me a
farewell line when they are all on board ship, and when the pilot
leaves them. I can only hope and pray earnestly that he and I are
both acting in this matter for the best. It seems such a serious
step for him to take, that the mere contemplation of it startles
me. And yet, in his unhappy position, how can I expect him or
wish him to remain at home?
16th.--The carriage is at the door. Laura and I set out on our
visit to the Arnolds to-day.
POLESDEAN LODGE, YORKSHIRE.
23rd.--A week in these new scenes and among these kind-hearted
people has done her some good, though not so much as I had hoped.
I have resolved to prolong our stay for another week at least. It
is useless to go back to Limmeridge till there is an absolute
necessity for our return.
24th.--Sad news by this morning's post. The expedition to Central
America sailed on the twenty-first. We have parted with a true
man--we have lost a faithful friend. Water Hartright has left
England.
25th.--Sad news yesterday--ominous news to-day. Sir Percival
Glyde has written to Mr. Fairlie, and Mr. Fairlie has written to
Laura and me, to recall us to Limmeridge immediately.
What can this mean? Has the day for the marriage been fixed in our
absence?
II
LIMMERIDGE HOUSE.
November 27th.--My forebodings are realised. The marriage is
fixed for the twenty-second of December.
The day after we left for Polesdean Lodge Sir Percival wrote, it
seems, to Mr. Fairlie, to say that the necessary repairs and
alterations in his house in Hampshire would occupy a much longer
time in completion than he had originally anticipated. The proper
estimates were to be submitted to him as soon as possible, and it
would greatly facilitate his entering into definite arrangements
with the workpeople, if he could be informed of the exact period
at which the wedding ceremony might be expected to take place. He
could then make all his calculations in reference to time, besides
writing the necessary apologies to friends who had been engaged to
visit him that winter, and who could not, of course, be received
when the house was in the hands of the workmen.
To this letter Mr. Fairlie had replied by requesting Sir Percival
himself to suggest a day for the marriage, subject to Miss
Fairlie's approval, which her guardian willingly undertook to do
his best to obtain. Sir Percival wrote back by the next post, and
proposed (in accordance with his own views and wishes from the
first? the latter part of December--perhaps the twenty-second, or
twenty-fourth, or any other day that the lady and her guardian
might prefer. The lady not being at hand to speak for herself,
her guardian had decided, in her absence, on the earliest day
mentioned--the twenty-second of December, and had written to
recall us to Limmeridge in consequence.
After explaining these particulars to me at a private interview
yesterday, Mr. Fairlie suggested, in his most amiable manner, that
I should open the necessary negotiations to-day. Feeling that
resistance was useless, unless I could first obtain Laura's
authority to make it, I consented to speak to her, but declared,
at the same time, that I would on no consideration undertake to
gain her consent to Sir Percival's wishes. Mr. Fairlie
complimented me on my "excellent conscience," much as he would
have complimented me, if he had been out walking, on my "excellent
constitution," and seemed perfectly satisfied, so far, with having
simply shifted one more family responsibility from his own
shoulders to mine.
This morning I spoke to Laura as I had promised. The composure--I
may almost say, the insensibility--which she has so strangely and
so resolutely maintained ever since Sir Percival left us, was not
proof against the shock of the news I had to tell her. She turned
pale and trembled violently.
"Not so soon!" she pleaded. "Oh, Marian, not so soon!"
The slightest hint she could give was enough for me. I rose to
leave the room, and fight her battle for her at once with Mr.
Fairlie.
Just as my hand was on the door, she caught fast hold of my dress
and stopped me.
"Let me go!" I said. "My tongue burns to tell your uncle that he
and Sir Percival are not to have it all their own way."
She sighed bitterly, and still held my dress.
"No!" she said faintly. "Too late, Marian, too late!"
"Not a minute too late," I retorted. "The question of time is OUR
question--and trust me, Laura, to take a woman's full advantage of
it."
I unclasped her hand from my gown while I spoke; but she slipped
both her arms round my waist at the same moment, and held me more
effectually than ever.
"It will only involve us in more trouble and more confusion," she
said. "It will set you and my uncle at variance, and bring Sir
Percival here again with fresh causes of complaint--"
"So much the better!" I cried out passionately. "Who cares for
his causes of complaint? Are you to break your heart to set his
mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from
us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our
peace--they drag us away from our parents' love and our sisters'
friendship--they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten
our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel.
And what does the best of them give us in return? Let me go,
Laura--I'm mad when I think of it!"
The tears--miserable, weak, women's tears of vexation and rage--
started to my eyes. She smiled sadly, and put her handkerchief
over my face to hide for me the betrayal of my own weakness--the
weakness of all others which she knew that I most despised.
"Oh, Marian!" she said. "You crying! Think what you would say to
me, if the places were changed, and if those tears were mine. All
your love and courage and devotion will not alter what must
happen, sooner or later. Let my uncle have his way. Let us have
no more troubles and heart-burnings that any sacrifice of mine can
prevent. Say you will live with me, Marian, when I am married--
and say no more."
But I did say more. I forced back the contemptible tears that
were no relief to ME, and that only distressed HER, and reasoned
and pleaded as calmly as I could. It was of no avail. She made
me twice repeat the promise to live with her when she was married,
and then suddenly asked a question which turned my sorrow and my
sympathy for her into a new direction.
"While we were at Polesdean," she said, "you had a letter, Marian----"
Her altered tone--the abrupt manner in which she looked away from
me and hid her face on my shoulder--the hesitation which silenced
her before she had completed her question, all told me, but too
plainly, to whom the half-expressed inquiry pointed.
"I thought, Laura, that you and I were never to refer to him
again," I said gently.
"You had a letter from him?" she persisted.
"Yes," I replied, "if you must know it."
"Do you mean to write to him again?"
I hesitated. I had been afraid to tell her of his absence from
England, or of the manner in which my exertions to serve his new
hopes and projects had connected me with his departure. What
answer could I make? He was gone where no letters could reach him
for months, perhaps for years, to come.
"Suppose I do mean to write to him again," I said at last. "What
then, Laura?"
Her cheek grew burning hot against my neck, and her arms trembled
and tightened round me.
"Don't tell him about THE TWENTY-SECOND," she whispered.
"Promise, Marian--pray promise you will not even mention my name
to him when you write next."
I gave the promise. No words can say how sorrowfully I gave it.
She instantly took her arm from my waist, walked away to the
window, and stood looking out with her back to me. After a moment
she spoke once more, but without turning round, without allowing
me to catch the smallest glimpse of her face.
"Are you going to my uncle's room?" she asked. "Will you say that
I consent to whatever arrangement he may think best? Never mind
leaving me, Marian. I shall be better alone for a little while."
I went out. If, as soon as I got into the passage, I could have
transported Mr. Fairlie and Sir Percival Glyde to the uttermost
ends of the earth by lifting one of my fingers, that finger would
have been raised without an instant's hesitation. For once my
unhappy temper now stood my friend. I should have broken down
altogether and burst into a violent fit of crying, if my tears had
not been all burnt up in the heat of my anger. As it was, I
dashed into Mr. Fairlie's room--called to him as harshly as
possible, "Laura consents to the twenty-second"--and dashed out
again without waiting for a word of answer. I banged the door
after me, and I hope I shattered Mr. Fairlie's nervous system for
the rest of the day.
28th.--This morning I read poor Hartright's farewell letter over
again, a doubt having crossed my mind since yesterday, whether I
am acting wisely in concealing the fact of his departure from
Laura.
On reflection, I still think I am right. The allusions in his
letter to the preparations made for the expedition to Central
America, all show that the leaders of it know it to be dangerous.
If the discovery of this makes me uneasy, what would it make HER?
It is bad enough to feel that his departure has deprived us of the
friend of all others to whose devotion we could trust in the hour
of need, if ever that hour comes and finds us helpless; but it is
far worse to know that he has gone from us to face the perils of a
bad climate, a wild country, and a disturbed population. Surely
it would be a cruel candour to tell Laura this, without a pressing
and a positive necessity for it?
I almost doubt whether I ought not to go a step farther, and burn
the letter at once, for fear of its one day falling into wrong
hands. It not only refers to Laura in terms which ought to remain
a secret for ever between the writer and me, but it reiterates his
suspicion--so obstinate, so unaccountable, and so alarming--that
he has been secretly watched since he left Limmeridge. He
declares that he saw the faces of the two strange men who followed
him about the streets of London, watching him among the crowd
which gathered at Liverpool to see the expedition embark, and he
positively asserts that he heard the name of Anne Catherick
pronounced behind him as he got into the boat. His own words are,
"These events have a meaning, these events must lead to a result.
The mystery of Anne Catherick is NOT cleared up yet. She may
never cross my path again, but if ever she crosses yours, make
better use of the opportunity, Miss Halcombe, than I made of it.
I speak on strong conviction--I entreat you to remember what I
say." These are his own expressions. There is no danger of my
forgetting them--my memory is only too ready to dwell on any words
of Hartright's that refer to Anne Catherick. But there is danger
in my keeping the letter. The merest accident might place it at
the mercy of strangers. I may fall ill--I may die. Better to
burn it at once, and have one anxiety the less.
It is burnt. The ashes of his farewell letter--the last he may
ever write to me--lie in a few black fragments on the hearth. Is
this the sad end to all that sad story? Oh, not the end--surely,
surely not the end already!
29th.--The preparations for the marriage have begun. The
dressmaker has come to receive her orders. Laura is perfectly
impassive, perfectly careless about the question of all others in
which a woman's personal interests are most closely bound up. She
has left it all to the dressmaker and to me. If poor Hartright
had been the baronet, and the husband of her father's choice, how
differently she would have behaved! How anxious and capricious she
would have been, and what a hard task the best of dressmakers
would have found it to please her!
30th.--We hear every day from Sir Percival. The last news is that
the alterations in his house will occupy from four to six months
before they can be properly completed. If painters, paperhangers,
and upholsterers could make happiness as well as splendour, I
should be interested about their proceedings in Laura's future
home. As it is, the only part of Sir Percival's last letter which
does not leave me as it found me, perfectly indifferent to all his
plans and projects, is the part which refers to the wedding tour.
He proposes, as Laura is delicate, and as the winter threatens to
be unusually severe, to take her to Rome, and to remain in Italy
until the early part of next summer. If this plan should not be
approved, he is equally ready, although he has no establishment of
his own in town, to spend the season in London, in the most
suitable furnished house that can be obtained for the purpose.
Putting myself and my own feelings entirely out of the question
(which it is my duty to do, and which I have done), I, for one,
have no doubt of the propriety of adopting the first of these
proposals. In either case a separation between Laura and me is
inevitable. It will be a longer separation, in the event of their
going abroad, than it would be in the event of their remaining in
London--but we must set against this disadvantage the benefit to
Laura, on the other side, of passing the winter in a mild climate,
and more than that, the immense assistance in raising her spirits,
and reconciling her to her new existence, which the mere wonder
and excitement of travelling for the first time in her life in the
most interesting country in the world, must surely afford. She is
not of a disposition to find resources in the conventional
gaieties and excitements of London. They would only make the
first oppression of this lamentable marriage fall the heavier on
her. I dread the beginning of her new life more than words can
tell, but I see some hope for her if she travels--none if she
remains at home.
It is strange to look back at this latest entry in my journal, and
to find that I am writing of the marriage and the parting with
Laura, as people write of a settled thing. It seems so cold and
so unfeeling to be looking at the future already in this cruelly
composed way. But what other way is possible, now that the time
is drawing so near? Before another month is over our heads she
will be HIS Laura instead of mine! HIS Laura! I am as little able
to realise the idea which those two words convey--my mind feels
almost as dulled and stunned by it--as if writing of her marriage
were like writing of her death.
December 1st.--A sad, sad day--a day that I have no heart to
describe at any length. After weakly putting it off last night, I
was obliged to speak to her this morning of Sir Percival's
proposal about the wedding tour.
In the full conviction that I should be with her wherever she
went, the poor child--for a child she is still in many things--was
almost happy at the prospect of seeing the wonders of Florence and
Rome and Naples. It nearly broke my heart to dispel her delusion,
and to bring her face to face with the hard truth. I was obliged
to tell her that no man tolerates a rival--not even a woman rival--
in his wife's affections, when he first marries, whatever he may
do afterwards. I was obliged to warn her that my chance of living
with her permanently under her own roof, depended entirely on my
not arousing Sir Percival's jealousy and distrust by standing
between them at the beginning of their marriage, in the position
of the chosen depositary of his wife's closest secrets. Drop by
drop I poured the profaning bitterness of this world's wisdom into
that pure heart and that innocent mind, while every higher and
better feeling within me recoiled from my miserable task. It is
over now. She has learnt her hard, her inevitable lesson. The
simple illusions of her girlhood are gone, and my hand has
stripped them off. Better mine than his--that is all my
consolation--better mine than his.
So the first proposal is the proposal accepted. They are to go to
Italy, and I am to arrange, with Sir Percival's permission, for
meeting them and staying with them when they return to England.
In other words, I am to ask a personal favour, for the first time
in my life, and to ask it of the man of all others to whom I least
desire to owe a serious obligation of any kind. Well! I think I
could do even more than that, for Laura's sake.
2nd.--On looking back, I find myself always referring to Sir
Percival in disparaging terms. In the turn affairs have now
taken. I must and will root out my prejudice against him, I
cannot think how it first got into my mind. It certainly never
existed in former times.
Is it Laura's reluctance to become his wife that has set me
against him? Have Hartright's perfectly intelligible prejudices
infected me without my suspecting their influence? Does that
letter of Anne Catherick's still leave a lurking distrust in my
mind, in spite of Sir Percival's explanation, and of the proof in
my possession of the truth of it? I cannot account for the state
of my own feelings; the one thing I am certain of is, that it is
my duty--doubly my duty now--not to wrong Sir Percival by unjustly
distrusting him. If it has got to be a habit with me always to
write of him in the same unfavourable manner, I must and will
break myself of this unworthy tendency, even though the effort
should force me to close the pages of my journal till the marriage
is over! I am seriously dissatisfied with myself--I will write no
more to-day.
December 16th.--A whole fortnight has passed, and I have not once
opened these pages. I have been long enough away from my journal
to come back to it with a healthier and better mind, I hope, so
far as Sir Percival is concerned.
There is not much to record of the past two weeks. The dresses
are almost all finished, and the new travelling trunks have been
sent here from London. Poor dear Laura hardly leaves me for a
moment all day, and last night, when neither of us could sleep,
she came and crept into my bed to talk to me there. "I shall lose
you so soon, Marian," she said; "I must make the most of you while
I can."
They are to be married at Limmeridge Church, and thank Heaven, not
one of the neighbours is to be invited to the ceremony. The only
visitor will be our old friend, Mr. Arnold, who is to come from
Polesdean to give Laura away, her uncle being far too delicate to
trust himself outside the door in such inclement weather as we now
have. If I were not determined, from this day forth, to see
nothing but the bright side of our prospects, the melancholy
absence of any male relative of Laura's, at the most important
moment of her life, would make me very gloomy and very distrustful
of the future. But I have done with gloom and distrust--that is
to say, I have done with writing about either the one or the other
in this journal.
Sir Percival is to arrive to-morrow. He offered, in case we
wished to treat him on terms of rigid etiquette, to write and ask
our clergyman to grant him the hospitality of the rectory, during
the short period of his sojourn at Limmeridge, before the
marriage. Under the circumstances, neither Mr. Fairlie nor I
thought it at all necessary for us to trouble ourselves about
attending to trifling forms and ceremonies. In our wild moorland
country, and in this great lonely house, we may well claim to be
beyond the reach of the trivial conventionalities which hamper
people in other places. I wrote to Sir Percival to thank him for
his polite offer, and to beg that he would occupy his old rooms,
just as usual, at Limmeridge House.
17th.--He arrived to-day, looking, as I thought, a little worn and
anxious, but still talking and laughing like a man in the best
possible spirits. He brought with him some really beautiful
presents in jewellery, which Laura received with her best grace,
and, outwardly at least, with perfect self-possession. The only
sign I can detect of the struggle it must cost her to preserve
appearances at this trying time, expresses itself in a sudden
unwillingness, on her part, ever to be left alone. Instead of
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