The inquest was hurried for certain local reasons which weighed
with the coroner and the town authorities. It was held on the
afternoon of the next day. I was necessarily one among the
witnesses summoned to assist the objects of the investigation.
My first proceeding in the morning was to go to the post-office,
and inquire for the letter which I expected from Marian. No
change of circumstances, however extraordinary, could affect the
one great anxiety which weighed on my mind while I was away from
London. The morning's letter, which was the only assurance I
could receive that no misfortune had happened in my absence, was
still the absorbing interest with which my day began.
To my relief, the letter from Marian was at the office waiting for
me.
Nothing had happened--they were both as safe and as well as when I
had left them. Laura sent her love, and begged that I would let
her know of my return a day beforehand. Her sister added, in
explanation of this message, that she had saved "nearly a
sovereign" out of her own private purse, and that she had claimed
the privilege of ordering the dinner and giving the dinner which
was to celebrate the day of my return. I read these little
domestic confidences in the bright morning with the terrible
recollection of what had happened the evening before vivid in my
memory. The necessity of sparing Laura any sudden knowledge of
the truth was the first consideration which the letter suggested
to me. I wrote at once to Marian to tell her what I have told in
these pages--presenting the tidings as gradually and gently as I
could, and warning her not to let any such thing as a newspaper
fall in Laura's way while I was absent. In the case of any other
woman, less courageous and less reliable, I might have hesitated
before I ventured on unreservedly disclosing the whole truth. But
I owed it to Marian to be faithful to my past experience of her,
and to trust her as I trusted herself.
My letter was necessarily a long one. It occupied me until the
time came for proceeding to the inquest.
The objects of the legal inquiry were necessarily beset by
peculiar complications and difficulties. Besides the
investigation into the manner in which the deceased had met his
death, there were serious questions to be settled relating to the
cause of the fire, to the abstraction of the keys, and to the
presence of a stranger in the vestry at the time when the flames
broke out. Even the identification of the dead man had not yet
been accomplished. The helpless condition of the servant had made
the police distrustful of his asserted recognition of his master.
They had sent to Knowlesbury over-night to secure the attendance
of witnesses who were well acquainted with the personal appearance
of Sir Percival Glyde, and they had communicated, the first thing
in the morning, with Blackwater Park. These precautions enabled
the coroner and jury to settle the question of identity, and to
confirm the correctness of the servant's assertion; the evidence
offered by competent witnesses, and by the discovery of certain
facts, being subsequently strengthened by an examination of the
dead man's watch. The crest and the name of Sir Percival Glyde
were engraved inside it.
The next inquiries related to the fire.
The servant and I, and the boy who had heard the light struck in
the vestry, were the first witnesses called. The boy gave his
evidence clearly enough, but the servant's mind had not yet
recovered the shock inflicted on it--he was plainly incapable of
assisting the objects of the inquiry, and he was desired to stand
down.
To my own relief, my examination was not a long one. I had not
known the deceased--I had never seen him--I was not aware of his
presence at Old Welmingham--and I had not been in the vestry at
the finding of the body. All I could prove was that I had stopped
at the clerk's cottage to ask my way--that I had heard from him of
the loss of the keys--that I had accompanied him to the church to
render what help I could--that I had seen the fire--that I had
heard some person unknown, inside the vestry, trying vainly to
unlock the door--and that I had done what I could, from motives of
humanity, to save the man. Other witnesses, who had been
acquainted with the deceased, were asked if they could explain the
mystery of his presumed abstraction of the keys, and his presence
in the burning room. But the coroner seemed to take it for
granted, naturally enough, that I, as a total stranger in the
neighbourhood, and a total stranger to Sir Percival Glyde, could
not be in a position to offer any evidence on these two points.
The course that I was myself bound to take, when my formal
examination had closed, seemed clear to me. I did not feel called
on to volunteer any statement of my own private convictions, in
the first place, because my doing so could serve no practical
purpose, now that all proof in support of any surmises of mine was
burnt with the burnt register; in the second place, because I
could not have intelligibly stated my opinion--my unsupported
opinion--without disclosing the whole story of the conspiracy, and
producing beyond a doubt the same unsatisfactory effect an the
mind of the coroner and the jury, which I had already produced on
the mind of Mr. Kyrle.
In these pages, however, and after the time that has now elapsed,
no such cautions and restraints as are here described need fetter
the free expression of my opinion. I will state briefly, before
my pen occupies itself with other events, how my own convictions
lead me to account for the abstraction of the keys, for the
outbreak of the fire, and for the death of the man.
The news of my being free on bail drove Sir Percival, as I
believe, to his last resources. The attempted attack on the road
was one of those resources, and the suppression of all practical
proof of his crime, by destroying the page of the register on
which the forgery had been committed, was the other, and the
surest of the two. If I could produce no extract from the
original book to compare with the certified copy at Knowlesbury, I
could produce no positive evidence, and could threaten him with no
fatal exposure. All that was necessary to the attainment of his
end was, that he should get into the vestry unperceived, that he
should tear out the page in the register, and that he should leave
the vestry again as privately as he had entered it.
On this supposition, it is easy to understand why he waited until
nightfall before he made the attempt, and why he took advantage of
the clerk's absence to possess himself of the keys. Necessity
would oblige him to strike a light to find his way to the right
register, and common caution would suggest his locking the door on
the inside in case of intrusion on the part of any inquisitive
stranger, or on my part, if I happened to be in the neighbourhood
at the time.
I cannot believe that it was any part of his intention to make the
destruction of the register appear to be the result of accident,
by purposely setting the vestry on fire. The bare chance that
prompt assistance might arrive, and that the books might, by the
remotest possibility, be saved, would have been enough, on a
moment's consideration, to dismiss any idea of this sort from his
mind. Remembering the quantity of combustible objects in the
vestry--the straw, the papers, the packing-cases, the dry wood,
the old worm-eaten presses--all the probabilities, in my
estimation, point to the fire as the result of an accident with
his matches or his light.
His first impulse, under these circumstances, was doubtless to try
to extinguish the flames, and failing in that, his second impulse
(ignorant as he was of the state of the lock) had been to attempt
to escape by the door which had given him entrance. When I had
called to him, the flames must have reached across the door
leading into the church, on either side of which the presses
extended, and close to which the other combustible objects were
placed. In all probability, the smoke and flame (confined as they
were to the room) had been too much for him when he tried to
escape by the inner door. He must have dropped in his death-
swoon, he must have sunk in the place where he was found, just as
I got on the roof to break the skylight window. Even if we had
been able, afterwards, to get into the church, and to burst open
the door from that side, the delay must have been fatal. He would
have been past saving, long past saving, by that time. We should
only have given the flames free ingress into the church--the
church, which was now preserved, but which, in that event, would
have shared the fate of the vestry. There is no doubt in my mind,
there can be no doubt in the mind of any one, that he was a dead
man before ever we got to the empty cottage, and worked with might
and main to tear down the beam.
This is the nearest approach that any theory of mine can make
towards accounting for a result which was visible matter of fact.
As I have described them, so events passed to us out-side. As I
have related it, so his body was found.
The inquest was adjourned over one day--no explanation that the
eye of the law could recognise having been discovered thus far to
account for the mysterious circumstances of the case.
It was arranged that more witnesses should be summoned, and that
the London solicitor of the deceased should be invited to attend.
A medical man was also charged with the duty of reporting on the
mental condition of the servant, which appeared at present to
debar him from giving any evidence of the least importance. He
could only declare, in a dazed way, that he had been ordered, on
the night of the fire, to wait in the lane, and that he knew
nothing else, except that the deceased was certainly his master.
My own impression was, that he had been first used (without any
guilty knowledge on his own part) to ascertain the fact of the
clerk's absence from home on the previous day, and that he had
been afterwards ordered to wait near the church (but out of sight
of the vestry) to assist his master, in the event of my escaping
the attack on the road, and of a collision occurring between Sir
Percival and myself. It is necessary to add, that the man's own
testimony was never obtained to confirm this view. The medical
report of him declared that what little mental faculty he
possessed was seriously shaken; nothing satisfactory was extracted
from him at the adjourned inquest, and for aught I know to the
contrary, he may never have recovered to this day.
I returned to the hotel at Welmingham so jaded in body and mind,
so weakened and depressed by all that I had gone through, as to be
quite unfit to endure the local gossip about the inquest, and to
answer the trivial questions that the talkers addressed to me in
the coffee-room. I withdrew from my scanty dinner to my cheap
garret-chamber to secure myself a little quiet, and to think
undisturbed of Laura and Marian.
If I had been a richer man I would have gone back to London, and
would have comforted myself with a sight of the two dear faces
again that night. But I was bound to appear, if called on, at the
adjourned inquest, and doubly bound to answer my bail before the
magistrate at Knowlesbury. Our slender resources had suffered
already, and the doubtful future--more doubtful than ever now--
made me dread decreasing our means unnecessarily by allowing
myself an indulgence even at the small cost of a double railway
journey in the carriages of the second class.
The next day--the day immediately following the inquest--was left
at my own disposal. I began the morning by again applying at the
post-office for my regular report from Marian. It was waiting for
me as before, and it was written throughout in good spirits. I
read the letter thankfully, and then set forth with my mind at
ease for the day to go to Old Welmingham, and to view the scene of
the fire by the morning light.
What changes met me when I got there!
Through all the ways of our unintelligible world the trivial and
the terrible walk hand in hand together. The irony of
circumstances holds no mortal catastrophe in respect. When I
reached the church, the trampled condition of the burial-ground
was the only serious trace left to tell of the fire and the death.
A rough hoarding of boards had been knocked up before the vestry
doorway. Rude caricatures were scrawled on it already, and the
village children were fighting and shouting for the possession of
the best peep-hole to see through. On the spot where I had heard
the cry for help from the burning room, on the spot where the
panic-stricken servant had dropped on his knees, a fussy flock of
poultry was now scrambling for the first choice of worms after the
rain; and on the ground at my feet, where the door and its
dreadful burden had been laid, a workman's dinner was waiting for
him, tied up in a yellow basin, and his faithful cur in charge was
yelping at me for coming near the food. The old clerk, looking
idly at the slow commencement of the repairs, had only one
interest that he could talk about now--the interest of escaping
all blame for his own part on account of the accident that had
happened. One of the village women, whose white wild face I
remembered the picture of terror when we pulled down the beam, was
giggling with another woman, the picture of inanity, over an old
washing-tub. There is nothing serious in mortality! Solomon in
all his glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible
lurking in every fold of his robes and in every corner of his
palace.
As I left the place, my thoughts turned, not for the first time,
to the complete overthrow that all present hope of establishing
Laura's identity had now suffered through Sir Percival's death.
He was gone--and with him the chance was gone which had been the
one object of all my labours and all my hopes.
Could I look at my failure from no truer point of view than this?
Suppose he had lived, would that change of circumstance have
altered the result? Could I have made my discovery a marketable
commodity, even for Laura's sake, after I had found out that
robbery of the rights of others was the essence of Sir Percival's
crime? Could I have offered the price of MY silence for HIS
confession of the conspiracy, when the effect of that silence must
have been to keep the right heir from the estates, and the right
owner from the name? Impossible! If Sir Percival had lived, the
discovery, from which (In my ignorance of the true nature of the
Secret) I had hoped so much, could not have been mine to suppress
or to make public, as I thought best, for the vindication of
Laura's rights. In common honesty and common honour I must have
gone at once to the stranger whose birthright had been usurped--I
must have renounced the victory at the moment when it was mine by
placing my discovery unreservedly in that stranger's hands--and I
must have faced afresh all the difficulties which stood between me
and the one object of my life, exactly as I was resolved in my
heart of hearts to face them now!
I returned to Welmingham with my mind composed, feeling more sure
of myself and my resolution than I had felt yet.
On my way to the hotel I passed the end of the square in which
Mrs. Catherick lived. Should I go back to the house, and make
another attempt to see her. No. That news of Sir Percival's
death, which was the last news she ever expected to hear, must
have reached her hours since. All the proceedings at the inquest
had been reported in the local paper that morning--there was
nothing I could tell her which she did not know already. My
interest in making her speak had slackened. I remembered the
furtive hatred in her face when she said, "There is no news of Sir
Percival that I don't expect--except the news of his death." I
remembered the stealthy interest in her eyes when they settled on
me at parting, after she had spoken those words. Some instinct,
deep in my heart, which I felt to be a true one, made the prospect
of again entering her presence repulsive to me--I turned away from
the square, and went straight back to the hotel.
Some hours later, while I was resting in the coffee-room, a letter
was placed in my hands by the waiter. It was addressed to me by
name, and I found on inquiry that it had been left at the bar by a
woman just as it was near dusk, and just before the gas was
lighted. She had said nothing, and she had gone away again before
there was time to speak to her, or even to notice who she was.
I opened the letter. It was neither dated nor signed, and the
handwriting was palpably disguised. Before I had read the first
sentence, however, I knew who my correspondent was--Mrs.
Catherick.
The letter ran as follows--I copy it exactly, word for word:--
THE STORY CONTINUED BY MRS. CATHERICK
SIR,--You have not come back, as you said you would. No matter--I
know the news, and I write to tell you so. Did you see anything
particular in my face when you left me? I was wondering, in my own
mind, whether the day of his downfall had come at last, and
whether you were the chosen instrument for working it. You were,
and you HAVE worked it.
You were weak enough, as I have heard, to try and save his life.
If you had succeeded, I should have looked upon you as my enemy.
Now you have failed, I hold you as my friend. Your inquiries
frightened him into the vestry by night--your inquiries, without
your privity and against your will, have served the hatred and
wreaked the vengeance of three-and-twenty vears. Thank you, sir,
in spite of yourself.
I owe something to the man who has done this. How can I pay my
debt? If I was a young woman still I might say, "Come, put your
arm round my waist, and kiss me, if you like." I should have been
fond enough of you even to go that length, and you would have
accepted my invitation--you would, sir, twenty years ago! But I am
an old woman now. Well! I can satisfy your curiosity, and pay my
debt in that way. You HAD a great curiosity to know certain
private affairs of mine when you came to see me--private affairs
which all your sharpness could not look into without my help--
private affairs which you have not discovered, even now. You
SHALL discover them--your curiosity shall be satisfied. I will
take any trouble to please you, my estimable young friend!
You were a little boy, I suppose, in the year twenty-seven? I was
a handsome young woman at that time, living at Old Welmingham. I
had a contemptible fool for a husband. I had also the honour of
being acquainted (never mind how) with a certain gentleman (never
mind whom). I shall not call him by his name. Why should I? It
was not his own. He never had a name: you know that, by this
time, as well as I do.
It will be more to the purpose to tell you how he worked himself
into my good graces. I was born with the tastes of a lady, and he
gratified them--in other words, he admired me, and he made me
presents. No woman can resist admiration and presents--especially
presents, provided they happen to be just the thing she wants. He
was sharp enough to know that--most men are. Naturally he wanted
something in return--all men do. And what do you think was the
something? The merest trifle. Nothing but the key of the vestry,
and the key of the press inside it, when my husband's back was
turned. Of course he lied when I asked him why he wished me to
get him the keys in that private way. He might have saved himself
the trouble--I didn't believe him. But I liked my presents, and I
wanted more. So I got him the keys, without my husband's
knowledge, and I watched him, without his own knowledge. Once,
twice, four times I watched him, and the fourth time I found him
out.
I was never over-scrupulous where other people's affairs were
concerned, and I was not over-scrupulous about his adding one to
the marriages in the register on his own account.
Of course I knew it was wrong, but it did no harm to me, which was
one good reason for not making a fuss about it. And I had not got
a gold watch and chain, which was another, still better--and he
had promised me one from London only the day before, which was a
third, best of all. If I had known what the law considered the
crime to be, and how the law punished it, I should have taken
proper care of myself, and have exposed him then and there. But I
knew nothing, and I longed for the gold watch. All the conditions
I insisted on were that he should take me into his confidence and
tell me everything. I was as curious about his affairs then as
you are about mine now. He granted my conditions--why, you will
see presently.
This, put in short, is what I heard from him. He did not
willingly tell me all that I tell you here. I drew some of it
from him by persuasion and some of it by questions. I was
determined to have all the truth, and I believe I got it.
He knew no more than any one else of what the state of things
really was between his father and mother till after his mother's
death. Then his father confessed it, and promised to do what he
could for his son. He died having done nothing--not having even
made a will. The son (who can blame him?) wisely provided for
himself. He came to England at once, and took possession of the
property. There was no one to suspect him, and no one to say him
nay. His father and mother had always lived as man and wife--none
of the few people who were acquainted with them ever supposed them
to be anything else. The right person to claim the property (if
the truth had been known) was a distant relation, who had no idea
of ever getting it, and who was away at sea when his father died.
He had no difficulty so far--he took possession, as a matter of
course. But he could not borrow money on the property as a matter
of course. There were two things wanted of him before he could do
this. One was a certificate of his birth, and the other was a
certificate of his parents' marriage. The certificate of his
birth was easily got--he was born abroad, and the certificate was
there in due form. The other matter was a difficulty, and that
difficulty brought him to Old Welmingham.
But for one consideration he might have gone to Knowlesbury
instead.
His mother had been living there just before she met with his
father--living under her maiden name, the truth being that she was
really a married woman, married in Ireland, where her husband had
ill-used her, and had afterwards gone off with some other person.
I give you this fact on good authority--Sir Felix mentioned it to
his son as the reason why he had not married. You may wonder why
the son, knowing that his parents had met each other at
Knowlesbury, did not play his first tricks with the register of
that church, where it might have been fairly presumed his father
and mother were married. The reason was that the clergyman who
did duty at Knowlesbury church, in the year eighteen hundred and
three (when, according to his birth certificate, his father and
mother OUGHT to have been married), was alive still when he took
possession of the property in the New Year of eighteen hundred and
twenty-seven. This awkward circumstance forced him to extend his
inquiries to our neighbourhood. There no such danger existed, the
former clergyman at our church having been dead for some years.
Old Welmingham suited his purpose as well as Knowlesbury. His
father had removed his mother from Knowlesbury, and had lived with
her at a cottage on the river, a little distance from our village.
People who had known his solitary ways when he was single did not
wonder at his solitary ways when he was supposed to be married.
If he had not been a hideous creature to look at, his retired life
with the lady might have raised suspicions; but, as things were,
his hiding his ugliness and his deformity in the strictest privacy
surprised nobody. He lived in our neighbourhood till he came in
possession of the Park. After three or four and twenty years had
passed, who was to say (the clergyman being dead) that his
marriage had not been as private as the rest of his life, and that
it had not taken place at Old Welmingham church?
So, as I told you, the son found our neighbourhood the surest
place he could choose to set things right secretly in his own
interests. It may surprise you to hear that what he really did to
the marriage register was done on the spur of the moment--done on
second thoughts.
His first notion was only to tear the leaf out (in the right year
and month), to destroy it privately, to go back to London, and to
tell the lawyers to get him the necessary certificate of his
father's marriage, innocently referring them of course to the date
on the leaf that was gone. Nobody could say his father and mother
had NOT been married after that, and whether, under the
circumstances, they would stretch a point or not about lending him
the money (he thought they would), he had his answer ready at all
events, if a question was ever raised about his right to the name
and the estate.
But when he came to look privately at the register for himself, he
found at the bottom of one of the pages for the year eighteen
hundred and three a blank space left, seemingly through there
being no room to make a long entry there, which was made instead
at the top of the next page. The sight of this chance altered all
his plans. It was an opportunity he had never hoped for, or
thought of--and he took it--you know how. The blank space, to
have exactly tallied with his birth certificate, ought to have
occurred in the July part of the register. It occurred in the
September part instead. However, in this case, if suspicious
questions were asked, the answer was not hard to find. He had
only to describe himself as a seven months' child.
I was fool enough, when he told me his story, to feel some
interest and some pity for him--which was just what he calculated
on, as you will see. I thought him hardly used. It was not his
fault that his father and mother were not married, and it was not
his father's and mother's fault either. A more scrupulous woman
than I was--a woman who had not set her heart on a gold watch and
chain--would have found some excuses for him. At all events, I
held my tongue, and helped to screen what he was about.
He was some time getting the ink the right colour (mixing it over
and over again in pots and bottles of mine), and some time
afterwards in practising the handwriting. But he succeeded in the
end, and made an honest woman of his mother after she was dead in
her grave! So far, I don't deny that he behaved honourably enough
to myself. He gave me my watch and chain, and spared no expense
in buying them; both were of superior workmanship, and very
expensive. I have got them still--the watch goes beautifully.
You said the other day that Mrs. Clements had told you everything
she knew. In that case there is no need for me to write about the
trumpery scandal by which I was the sufferer--the innocent
sufferer, I positively assert. You must know as well as I do what
the notion was which my husband took into his head when he found
me and my fine-gentleman acquaintance meeting each other privately
and talking secrets together. But what you don't know is how it
ended between that same gentleman and myself. You shall read and
see how he behaved to me.
The first words I said to him, when I saw the turn things had
taken, were, "Do me justice--clear my character of a stain on it
which you know I don't deserve. I don't want you to make a clean
breast of it to my husband--only tell him, on your word of honour
as a gentleman, that he is wrong, and that I am not to blame in
the way he thinks I am. Do me that justice, at least, after all I
have done for you." He flatly refused, in so many words. He told
me plainly that it was his interest to let my husband and all my
neighbours believe the falsehood--because, as long as they did so
they were quite certain never to suspect the truth. I had a
spirit of my own, and I told him they should know the truth from
my lips. His reply was short, and to the point. If I spoke, I
was a lost woman, as certainly as he was a lost man.
Yes! it had come to that. He had deceived me about the risk I ran
in helping him. He had practised on my ignorance, he had tempted
me with his gifts, he had interested me with his story--and the
result of it was that he made me his accomplice. He owned this
coolly, and he ended by telling me, for the first time, what the
frightful punishment really was for his offence, and for any one
who helped him to commit it. In those days the law was not so
tender-hearted as I hear it is now. Murderers were not the only
people liable to be hanged, and women convicts were not treated
like ladies in undeserved distress. I confess he frightened me--
the mean impostor! the cowardly blackguard! Do you understand now
how I hated him? Do you understand why I am taking all this
trouble--thankfully taking it--to gratify the curiosity of the
meritorious young gentleman who hunted him down?
Well, to go on. He was hardly fool enough to drive me to
downright desperation. I was not the sort of woman whom it was
quite safe to hunt into a corner--he knew that, and wisely quieted
me with proposals for the future.
I deserved some reward (he was kind enough to say) for the service
I had done him, and some compensation (he was so obliging as to
add) for what I had suffered. He was quite willing--generous
scoundrel!--to make me a handsome yearly allowance, payable
quarterly, on two conditions. First, I was to hold my tongue--in
my own interests as well as in his. Secondly, I was not to stir
away from Welmingham without first letting him know, and waiting
till I had obtained his permission. In my own neighbourhood, no
virtuous female friends would tempt me into dangerous gossiping at
the tea-table. In my own neighbourhood, he would always know
where to find me. A hard condition, that second one--but I
accepted it.
What else was I to do? I was left helpless, with the prospect of a
coming incumbrance in the shape of a child. What else was I to
do? Cast myself on the mercy of my runaway idiot of a husband who
had raised the scandal against me? I would have died first.
Besides, the allowance WAS a handsome one. I had a better income,
a better house over my head, better carpets on my floors, than
half the women who turned up the whites of their eyes at the sight
of me. The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I
had silk.
So I accepted the conditions he offered me, and made the best of
them, and fought my battle with my respectable neighbours on their
own ground, and won it in course of time--as you saw yourself.
How I kept his Secret (and mine) through all the years that have
passed from that time to this, and whether my late daughter, Anne,
ever really crept into my confidence, and got the keeping of the
Secret too--are questions, I dare say, to which you are curious to
find an answer. Well! my gratitude refuses you nothing. I will
turn to a fresh page and give you the answer immediately. But you
must excuse one thing--you must excuse my beginning, Mr.
Hartright, with an expression of surprise at the interest which
you appear to have felt in my late daughter. It is quite
unaccountable to me. If that interest makes you anxious for any
particulars of her early life, I must refer you to Mrs. Clements,
who knows more of the subject than I do. Pray understand that I
do not profess to have been at all over-fond of my late daughter.
She was a worry to me from first to last, with the additional
disadvantage of being always weak in the head. You like candour,
and I hope this satisfies you.
There is no need to trouble you with many personal particulars
relating to those past times. It will be enough to say that I
observed the terms of the bargain on my side, and that I enjoyed
my comfortable income in return, paid quarterly.
Now and then I got away and changed the scene for a short time,
always asking leave of my lord and master first, and generally
getting it. He was not, as I have already told you, fool enough
to drive me too hard, and he could reasonably rely on my holding
my tongue for my own sake, if not for his. One of my longest
trips away from home was the trip I took to Limmeridge to nurse a
half-sister there, who was dying. She was reported to have saved
money, and I thought it as well (in case any accident happened to
stop my allowance) to look after my own interests in that
direction. As things turned out, however, my pains were all
thrown away, and I got nothing, because nothing was to be had.
I had taken Anne to the north with me, having my whims and
fancies, occasionally, about my child, and getting, at such times,
jealous of Mrs. Clements' influence over her. I never liked Mrs.
Clements. She was a poor, empty-headed, spiritless woman--what
you call a born drudge--and I was now and then not averse to
plaguing her by taking Anne away. Not knowing what else to do
with my girl while I was nursing in Cumberland, I put her to
school at Limmeridge. The lady of the manor, Mrs. Fairlie (a
remarkably plain-looking woman, who had entrapped one of the
handsomest men in England into marrying her), amused me
wonderfully by taking a violent fancy to my girl. The consequence
was, she learnt nothing at school, and was petted and spoilt at
Limmeridge House. Among other whims and fancies which they taught
her there, they put some nonsense into her head about always
wearing white. Hating white and liking colours myself, I
determined to take the nonsense out of her head as soon as we got
home again.
Strange to say, my daughter resolutely resisted me. When she HAD
got a notion once fixed in her mind she was, like other half-
witted people, as obstinate as a mule in keeping it. We
quarrelled finely, and Mrs. Clements, not liking to see it, I
suppose, offered to take Anne away to live in London with her. I
should have said Yes, if Mrs. Clements had not sided with my
daughter about her dressing herself in white. But being
determined she should NOT dress herself in white, and disliking
Mrs. Clements more than ever for taking part against me, I said
No, and meant No, and stuck to No. The consequence was, my
daughter remained with me, and the consequence of that, in its
turn, was the first serious quarrel that happened about the
Secret.
The circumstance took place long after the time I have just been
writing of. I had been settled for years in the new town, and was
steadily living down my bad character and slowly gaining ground
among the respectable inhabitants. It helped me forward greatly
towards this object to have my daughter with me. Her harmlessness
and her fancy for dressing in white excited a certain amount of
sympathy. I left off opposing her favourite whim on that account,
because some of the sympathy was sure, in course of time, to fall
to my share. Some of it did fall. I date my getting a choice of
the two best sittings to let in the church from that time, and I
date the clergyman's first bow from my getting the sittings.
Well, being settled in this way, I received a letter one morning
from that highly born gentleman (now deceased) in answer to one of
mine, warning him, according to agreement, of my wishing to leave
the town for a little change of air and scene.
The ruffianly side of him must have been uppermost, I suppose,
when he got my letter, for he wrote back, refusing me in such
abominably insolent language, that I lost all command over myself,
and abused him, in my daughter's presence, as "a low impostor whom
I could ruin for life if I chose to open my lips and let out his
Secret." I said no more about him than that, being brought to my
senses as soon as those words had escaped me by the sight of my
daughter's face looking eagerly and curiously at mine. I
instantly ordered her out of the room until I had composed myself
again.
My sensations were not pleasant, I can tell you, when I came to
reflect on my own folly. Anne had been more than usually crazy
and queer that year, and when I thought of the chance there might
be of her repeating my words in the town, and mentioning HIS name
in connection with them, if inquisitive people got hold of her, I
was finely terrified at the possible consequences. My worst fears
for myself, my worst dread of what he might do, led me no farther
than this. I was quite unprepared for what really did happen only
the next day.
On that next day, without any warning to me to expect him, he came
to the house.
His first words, and the tone in which he spoke them, surly as it
was, showed me plainly enough that he had repented already of his
insolent answer to my application, and that he had come in a
mighty bad temper to try and set matters right again before it was
too late. Seeing my daughter in the room with me (I had been
afraid to let her out of my sight after what had happened the day
before) he ordered her away. They neither of them liked each
other, and he vented the ill-temper on HER which he was afraid to
show to ME.
"Leave us," he said, looking at her over his shoulder. She looked
back over HER shoulder and waited as if she didn't care to go.
"Do you hear?" he roared out, "leave the room." "Speak to me
civilly," says she, getting red in the face. "Turn the idiot
out," says he, looking my way. She had always had crazy notions
of her own about her dignity, and that word "idiot" upset her in
a moment. Before I could interfere she stepped up to him in a
fine passion. "Beg my pardon, directly," says she, "or I'll make
it the worse for you. I'll let out your Secret. I can ruin you
for life if I choose to open my lips." My own words!--repeated
exactly from what I had said the day before--repeated, in his
presence, as if they had come from herself. He sat speechless, as
white as the paper I am writing on, while I pushed her out of the
room. When he recovered himself----
No! I am too respectable a woman to mention what he said when he
recovered himself. My pen is the pen of a member of the rector's
congregation, and a subscriber to the "Wednesday Lectures on
Justification by Faith"--how can you expect me to employ it in
writing bad language? Suppose, for yourself, the raging, swearing
frenzy of the lowest ruffian in England, and let us get on
together, as fast as may be, to the way in which it all ended.
It ended, as you probably guess by this time, in his insisting on
securing his own safety by shutting her up.
I tried to set things right. I told him that she had merely
repeated, like a parrot, the words she had heard me say and that
she knew no particulars whatever, because I had mentioned none. I
explained that she had affected, out of crazy spite against him,
to know what she really did NOT know--that she only wanted to
threaten him and aggravate him for speaking to her as he had just
spoken--and that my unlucky words gave her just the chance of
doing mischief of which she was in search. I referred him to
other queer ways of hers, and to his own experience of the
vagaries of half-witted people--it was all to no purpose--he would
not believe me on my oath--he was absolutely certain I had
betrayed the whole Secret. In short, he would hear of nothing but
shutting her up.
Under these circumstances, I did my duty as a mother. "No pauper
Asylum," I said, "I won't have her put in a pauper Asylum. A
Private Establishment, if you please. I have my feelings as a
mother, and my character to preserve in the town, and I will
submit to nothing but a Private Establishment, of the sort which
my genteel neighbours would choose for afflicted relatives of
their own." Those were my words. It is gratifying to me to
reflect that I did my duty. Though never overfond of my late
daughter, I had a proper pride about her. No pauper stain--thanks
to my firmness and resolution--ever rested on MY child.
Having carried my point (which I did the more easily, in
consequence of the facilities offered by private Asylums), I could
not refuse to admit that there were certain advantages gained by
shutting her up. In the first place, she was taken excellent care
of--being treated (as I took care to mention in the town) on the
footing of a lady. In the second place, she was kept away from
Welmingham, where she might have set people suspecting and
inquiring, by repeating my own incautious words.
The only drawback of putting her under restraint was a very slight
one. We merely turned her empty boast about knowing the Secret
into a fixed delusion. Having first spoken in sheer crazy
spitefulness against the man who had offended her, she was cunning
enough to see that she had seriously frightened him, and sharp
enough afterwards to discover that HE was concerned in shutting
her up. The consequence was she flamed out into a perfect frenzy
of passion against him, going to the Asylum, and the first words
she said to the nurses, after they had quieted her, were, that she
was put in confinement for knowing his Secret, and that she meant
to open her lips and ruin him, when the right time came.
She may have said the same thing to you, when you thoughtlessly
assisted her escape. She certainly said it (as I heard last
summer) to the unfortunate woman who married our sweet-tempered,
nameless gentleman lately deceased. If either you, or that
unlucky lady, had questioned my daughter closely, and had insisted
on her explaining what she really meant, you would have found her
lose all her self-importance suddenly, and get vacant, and
restless, and confused--you would have discovered that I am
writing nothing here but the plain truth. She knew that there was
a Secret--she knew who was connected with it--she knew who would
suffer by its being known--and beyond that, whatever airs of
importance she may have given herself, whatever crazy boasting she
may have indulged in with strangers, she never to her dying day
knew more.
Have I satisfied your curiosity? I have taken pains enough to
satisfy it at any rate. There is really nothing else I have to
tell you about myself or my daughter. My worst responsibilities,
so far as she was concerned, were all over when she was secured in
the Asylum. I had a form of letter relating to the circumstances
under which she was shut up, given me to write, in answer to one
Miss Halcombe, who was curious in the matter, and who must have
heard plenty of lies about me from a certain tongue well
accustomed to the telling of the same. And I did what I could
afterwards to trace my runaway daughter, and prevent her from
doing mischief by making inquiries myself in the neighbourhood
where she was falsely reported to have been seen. But these, and
other trifles like them, are of little or no interest to you after
what you have heard already.
So far, I have written in the friendliest possible spirit. But I
cannot close this letter without adding a word here of serious
remonstrance and reproof, addressed to yourself.
In the course of your personal interview with me, you audaciously
referred to my late daughter's parentage on the father's side, as
if that parentage was a matter of doubt. This was highly improper
and very ungentlemanlike on your part! If we see each other again,
remember, if you please, that I will allow no liberties to be
taken with my reputation, and that the moral atmosphere of
Welmingham (to use a favourite expression of my friend the
rector's) must not be tainted by loose conversation of any kind.
If you allow yourself to doubt that my husband was Anne's father,
you personally insult me in the grossest manner. If you have
felt, and if you still continue to feel, an unhallowed curiosity
on this subject, I recommend you, in your own interests, to check
it at once, and for ever. On this side of the grave, Mr.
Hartright, whatever may happen on the other, THAT curiosity will
never be gratified.
Perhaps, after what I have just said, you will see the necessity
of writing me an apology. Do so, and I will willingly receive it.
I will, afterwards, if your wishes point to a second interview
with me, go a step farther, and receive you. My circumstances
only enable me to invite you to tea--not that they are at all
altered for the worse by what has happened. I have always lived,
as I think I told you, well within my income, and I have saved
enough, in the last twenty years, to make me quite comfortable for
the rest of my life. It is not my intention to leave Welmingham.
There are one or two little advantages which I have still to gain
in the town. The clergyman bows to me--as you saw. He is
married, and his wife is not quite so civil. I propose to join
the Dorcas Society, and I mean to make the clergyman's wife bow to
me next.
If you favour me with your company, pray understand that the
conversation must be entirely on general subjects. Any attempted
reference to this letter will be quite useless--I am determined
not to acknowledge having written it. The evidence has been
destroyed in the fire, I know, but I think it desirable to err on
the side of caution, nevertheless.
On this account no names are mentioned here, nor is any signature
attached to these lines: the handwriting is disguised throughout,
and I mean to deliver the letter myself, under circumstances which
will prevent all fear of its being traced to my house. You can
have no possible cause to complain of these precautions, seeing
that they do not affect the information I here communicate, in
consideration of the special indulgence which you have deserved at
my hands. My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered
toast waits for nobody.