“‘You will be tired, my dear Philip, of hearing perpetually about my
schools and my scholars. Lay the blame, pray, on the dull uniformity of
life at Limmeridge, and not on me. Besides, this time I have something
really interesting to tell you about a new scholar.
“‘You know old Mrs. Kempe at the village shop. Well, after years of
ailing, the doctor has at last given her up, and she is dying slowly
day by day. Her only living relation, a sister, arrived last week to
take care of her. This sister comes all the way from Hampshire—her name
is Mrs. Catherick. Four days ago Mrs. Catherick came here to see me,
and brought her only child with her, a sweet little girl about a year
older than our darling Laura——’”
As the last sentence fell from the reader’s lips, Miss Fairlie passed
us on the terrace once more. She was softly singing to herself one of
the melodies which she had been playing earlier in the evening. Miss
Halcombe waited till she had passed out of sight again, and then went
on with the letter—
“‘Mrs. Catherick is a decent, well-behaved, respectable woman;
middle-aged, and with the remains of having been moderately, only
moderately, nice-looking. There is something in her manner and in her
appearance, however, which I can’t make out. She is reserved about
herself to the point of downright secrecy, and there is a look in her
face—I can’t describe it—which suggests to me that she has something on
her mind. She is altogether what you would call a walking mystery. Her
errand at Limmeridge House, however, was simple enough. When she left
Hampshire to nurse her sister, Mrs. Kempe, through her last illness,
she had been obliged to bring her daughter with her, through having no
one at home to take care of the little girl. Mrs. Kempe may die in a
week’s time, or may linger on for months; and Mrs. Catherick’s object
was to ask me to let her daughter, Anne, have the benefit of attending
my school, subject to the condition of her being removed from it to go
home again with her mother, after Mrs. Kempe’s death. I consented at
once, and when Laura and I went out for our walk, we took the little
girl (who is just eleven years old) to the school that very day.’”
Once more Miss Fairlie’s figure, bright and soft in its snowy muslin
dress—her face prettily framed by the white folds of the handkerchief
which she had tied under her chin—passed by us in the moonlight. Once
more Miss Halcombe waited till she was out of sight, and then went on—
“‘I have taken a violent fancy, Philip, to my new scholar, for a reason
which I mean to keep till the last for the sake of surprising you.
Her mother having told me as little about the child as she told me of
herself, I was left to discover (which I did on the first day when we
tried her at lessons) that the poor little thing’s intellect is not
developed as it ought to be at her age. Seeing this I had her up to the
house the next day, and privately arranged with the doctor to come and
watch her and question her, and tell me what he thought. His opinion is
that she will grow out of it. But he says her careful bringing-up at
school is a matter of great importance just now, because her unusual
slowness in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping
them, when they are once received into her mind. Now, my love, you must
not imagine, in your off-hand way, that I have been attaching myself
to an idiot. This poor little Anne Catherick is a sweet, affectionate,
grateful girl, and says the quaintest, prettiest things (as you
shall judge by an instance), in the most oddly sudden, surprised,
half-frightened way. Although she is dressed very neatly, her clothes
show a sad want of taste in colour and pattern. So I arranged,
yesterday, that some of our darling Laura’s old white frocks and white
hats should be altered for Anne Catherick, explaining to her that
little girls of her complexion looked neater and better all in white
than in anything else. She hesitated and seemed puzzled for a minute,
then flushed up, and appeared to understand. Her little hand clasped
mine suddenly. She kissed it, Philip, and said (oh, so earnestly!), “I
will always wear white as long as I live. It will help me to remember
you, ma’am, and to think that I am pleasing you still, when I go away
and see you no more.” This is only one specimen of the quaint things
she says so prettily. Poor little soul! She shall have a stock of white
frocks, made with good deep tucks, to let out for her as she grows——’”
Miss Halcombe paused, and looked at me across the piano.
“Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high-road seem young?” she
asked. “Young enough to be two- or three-and-twenty?”
“Yes, Miss Halcombe, as young as that.”
“And she was strangely dressed, from head to foot, all in white?”
“All in white.”
While the answer was passing my lips Miss Fairlie glided into view on
the terrace for the third time. Instead of proceeding on her walk,
she stopped, with her back turned towards us, and, leaning on the
balustrade of the terrace, looked down into the garden beyond. My eyes
fixed upon the white gleam of her muslin gown and head-dress in the
moonlight, and a sensation, for which I can find no name—a sensation
that quickened my pulse, and raised a fluttering at my heart—began to
steal over me.
“All in white?” Miss Halcombe repeated. “The most important sentences
in the letter, Mr. Hartright, are those at the end, which I will
read to you immediately. But I can’t help dwelling a little upon the
coincidence of the white costume of the woman you met, and the white
frocks which produced that strange answer from my mother’s little
scholar. The doctor may have been wrong when he discovered the child’s
defects of intellect, and predicted that she would ‘grow out of them.’
She may never have grown out of them, and the old grateful fancy about
dressing in white, which was a serious feeling to the girl, may be a
serious feeling to the woman still.”
I said a few words in answer—I hardly know what. All my attention was
concentrated on the white gleam of Miss Fairlie’s muslin dress.
“Listen to the last sentences of the letter,” said Miss Halcombe. “I
think they will surprise you.”
As she raised the letter to the light of the candle, Miss Fairlie
turned from the balustrade, looked doubtfully up and down the terrace,
advanced a step towards the glass doors, and then stopped, facing us.
Meanwhile Miss Halcombe read me the last sentences to which she had
referred—
“‘And now, my love, seeing that I am at the end of my paper, now for
the real reason, the surprising reason, for my fondness for little Anne
Catherick. My dear Philip, although she is not half so pretty, she is,
nevertheless, by one of those extraordinary caprices of accidental
resemblance which one sometimes sees, the living likeness, in her hair,
her complexion, the colour of her eyes, and the shape of her face——’”
I started up from the ottoman before Miss Halcombe could pronounce the
next words. A thrill of the same feeling which ran through me when the
touch was laid upon my shoulder on the lonely high-road chilled me
again.
There stood Miss Fairlie, a white figure, alone in the moonlight;
in her attitude, in the turn of her head, in her complexion, in the
shape of her face, the living image, at that distance and under those
circumstances, of the woman in white! The doubt which had troubled my
mind for hours and hours past flashed into conviction in an instant.
That “something wanting” was my own recognition of the ominous likeness
between the fugitive from the asylum and my pupil at Limmeridge House.
“You see it!” said Miss Halcombe. She dropped the useless letter, and
her eyes flashed as they met mine. “You see it now, as my mother saw it
eleven years since!”
“I see it—more unwillingly than I can say. To associate that forlorn,
friendless, lost woman, even by an accidental likeness only, with
Miss Fairlie, seems like casting a shadow on the future of the bright
creature who stands looking at us now. Let me lose the impression again
as soon as possible. Call her in, out of the dreary moonlight—pray call
her in!”
“Mr. Hartright, you surprise me. Whatever women may be, I thought that
men, in the nineteenth century, were above superstition.”
“Pray call her in!”
“Hush, hush! She is coming of her own accord. Say nothing in her
presence. Let this discovery of the likeness be kept a secret between
you and me. Come in, Laura, come in, and wake Mrs. Vesey with the
piano. Mr. Hartright is petitioning for some more music, and he wants
it, this time, of the lightest and liveliest kind.”