Half an hour later I was back at the house, and was informing Miss
Halcombe of all that had happened.
She listened to me from beginning to end with a steady, silent
attention, which, in a woman of her temperament and disposition, was
the strongest proof that could be offered of the serious manner in
which my narrative affected her.
“My mind misgives me,” was all she said when I had done. “My mind
misgives me sadly about the future.”
“The future may depend,” I suggested, “on the use we make of the
present. It is not improbable that Anne Catherick may speak more
readily and unreservedly to a woman than she has spoken to me. If Miss
Fairlie——”
“Not to be thought of for a moment,” interposed Miss Halcombe, in her
most decided manner.
“Let me suggest, then,” I continued, “that you should see Anne
Catherick yourself, and do all you can to win her confidence. For my
own part, I shrink from the idea of alarming the poor creature a second
time, as I have most unhappily alarmed her already. Do you see any
objection to accompanying me to the farmhouse to-morrow?”
“None whatever. I will go anywhere and do anything to serve Laura’s
interests. What did you say the place was called?”
“You must know it well. It is called Todd’s Corner.”
“Certainly. Todd’s Corner is one of Mr. Fairlie’s farms. Our dairymaid
here is the farmer’s second daughter. She goes backwards and forwards
constantly between this house and her father’s farm, and she may have
heard or seen something which it may be useful to us to know. Shall I
ascertain, at once, if the girl is downstairs?”
She rang the bell, and sent the servant with his message. He returned,
and announced that the dairymaid was then at the farm. She had not been
there for the last three days, and the housekeeper had given her leave
to go home for an hour or two that evening.
“I can speak to her to-morrow,” said Miss Halcombe, when the servant
had left the room again. “In the meantime, let me thoroughly understand
the object to be gained by my interview with Anne Catherick. Is there
no doubt in your mind that the person who confined her in the Asylum
was Sir Percival Glyde?”
“There is not the shadow of a doubt. The only mystery that remains is
the mystery of his MOTIVE. Looking to the great difference between his
station in life and hers, which seems to preclude all idea of the most
distant relationship between them, it is of the last importance—even
assuming that she really required to be placed under restraint—to know
why HE should have been the person to assume the serious responsibility
of shutting her up——”
“In a private Asylum, I think you said?”
“Yes, in a private Asylum, where a sum of money, which no poor person
could afford to give, must have been paid for her maintenance as a
patient.”
“I see where the doubt lies, Mr. Hartright, and I promise you that
it shall be set at rest, whether Anne Catherick assists us to-morrow
or not. Sir Percival Glyde shall not be long in this house without
satisfying Mr. Gilmore, and satisfying me. My sister’s future is my
dearest care in life, and I have influence enough over her to give me
some power, where her marriage is concerned, in the disposal of it.”
We parted for the night.
After breakfast the next morning, an obstacle, which the events of the
evening before had put out of my memory, interposed to prevent our
proceeding immediately to the farm. This was my last day at Limmeridge
House, and it was necessary, as soon as the post came in, to follow
Miss Halcombe’s advice, and to ask Mr. Fairlie’s permission to shorten
my engagement by a month, in consideration of an unforeseen necessity
for my return to London.
Fortunately for the probability of this excuse, so far as appearances
were concerned, the post brought me two letters from London friends
that morning. I took them away at once to my own room, and sent the
servant with a message to Mr. Fairlie, requesting to know when I could
see him on a matter of business.
I awaited the man’s return, free from the slightest feeling of anxiety
about the manner in which his master might receive my application.
With Mr. Fairlie’s leave or without it, I must go. The consciousness
of having now taken the first step on the dreary journey which was
henceforth to separate my life from Miss Fairlie’s seemed to have
blunted my sensibility to every consideration connected with myself. I
had done with my poor man’s touchy pride—I had done with all my little
artist vanities. No insolence of Mr. Fairlie’s, if he chose to be
insolent, could wound me now.
The servant returned with a message for which I was not unprepared.
Mr. Fairlie regretted that the state of his health, on that particular
morning, was such as to preclude all hope of his having the pleasure of
receiving me. He begged, therefore, that I would accept his apologies,
and kindly communicate what I had to say in the form of a letter.
Similar messages to this had reached me, at various intervals, during
my three months’ residence in the house. Throughout the whole of that
period Mr. Fairlie had been rejoiced to “possess” me, but had never
been well enough to see me for a second time. The servant took every
fresh batch of drawings that I mounted and restored back to his master
with my “respects,” and returned empty-handed with Mr. Fairlie’s “kind
compliments,” “best thanks,” and “sincere regrets” that the state of
his health still obliged him to remain a solitary prisoner in his
own room. A more satisfactory arrangement to both sides could not
possibly have been adopted. It would be hard to say which of us, under
the circumstances, felt the most grateful sense of obligation to Mr.
Fairlie’s accommodating nerves.
I sat down at once to write the letter, expressing myself in it as
civilly, as clearly, and as briefly as possible. Mr. Fairlie did not
hurry his reply. Nearly an hour elapsed before the answer was placed
in my hands. It was written with beautiful regularity and neatness of
character, in violet-coloured ink, on note-paper as smooth as ivory and
almost as thick as cardboard, and it addressed me in these terms—
“Mr. Fairlie’s compliments to Mr. Hartright. Mr. Fairlie is more
surprised and disappointed than he can say (in the present state of
his health) by Mr. Hartright’s application. Mr. Fairlie is not a
man of business, but he has consulted his steward, who is, and that
person confirms Mr. Fairlie’s opinion that Mr. Hartright’s request
to be allowed to break his engagement cannot be justified by any
necessity whatever, excepting perhaps a case of life and death. If the
highly-appreciative feeling towards Art and its professors, which it is
the consolation and happiness of Mr. Fairlie’s suffering existence to
cultivate, could be easily shaken, Mr. Hartright’s present proceeding
would have shaken it. It has not done so—except in the instance of Mr.
Hartright himself.
“Having stated his opinion—so far, that is to say, as acute nervous
suffering will allow him to state anything—Mr. Fairlie has nothing to
add but the expression of his decision, in reference to the highly
irregular application that has been made to him. Perfect repose of body
and mind being to the last degree important in his case, Mr. Fairlie
will not suffer Mr. Hartright to disturb that repose by remaining in
the house under circumstances of an essentially irritating nature to
both sides. Accordingly, Mr. Fairlie waives his right of refusal,
purely with a view to the preservation of his own tranquillity—and
informs Mr. Hartright that he may go.”
I folded the letter up, and put it away with my other papers. The time
had been when I should have resented it as an insult—I accepted it now
as a written release from my engagement. It was off my mind, it was
almost out of my memory, when I went downstairs to the breakfast-room,
and informed Miss Halcombe that I was ready to walk with her to the
farm.
“Has Mr. Fairlie given you a satisfactory answer?” she asked as we left
the house.
“He has allowed me to go, Miss Halcombe.”
She looked up at me quickly, and then, for the first time since I had
known her, took my arm of her own accord. No words could have expressed
so delicately that she understood how the permission to leave my
employment had been granted, and that she gave me her sympathy, not
as my superior, but as my friend. I had not felt the man’s insolent
letter, but I felt deeply the woman’s atoning kindness.
On our way to the farm we arranged that Miss Halcombe was to enter the
house alone, and that I was to wait outside, within call. We adopted
this mode of proceeding from an apprehension that my presence, after
what had happened in the churchyard the evening before, might have the
effect of renewing Anne Catherick’s nervous dread, and of rendering her
additionally distrustful of the advances of a lady who was a stranger
to her. Miss Halcombe left me, with the intention of speaking, in the
first instance, to the farmer’s wife (of whose friendly readiness to
help her in any way she was well assured), while I waited for her in
the near neighbourhood of the house.
I had fully expected to be left alone for some time. To my surprise,
however, little more than five minutes had elapsed before Miss Halcombe
returned.
“Does Anne Catherick refuse to see you?” I asked in astonishment.
“Anne Catherick is gone,” replied Miss Halcombe.
“Gone?”
“Gone with Mrs. Clements. They both left the farm at eight o’clock this
morning.”
I could say nothing—I could only feel that our last chance of discovery
had gone with them.
“All that Mrs. Todd knows about her guests, I know,” Miss Halcombe
went on, “and it leaves me, as it leaves her, in the dark. They both
came back safe last night, after they left you, and they passed the
first part of the evening with Mr. Todd’s family as usual. Just before
supper-time, however, Anne Catherick startled them all by being
suddenly seized with faintness. She had had a similar attack, of a less
alarming kind, on the day she arrived at the farm; and Mrs. Todd had
connected it, on that occasion, with something she was reading at the
time in our local newspaper, which lay on the farm table, and which she
had taken up only a minute or two before.”
“Does Mrs. Todd know what particular passage in the newspaper affected
her in that way?” I inquired.
“No,” replied Miss Halcombe. “She had looked it over, and had seen
nothing in it to agitate any one. I asked leave, however, to look it
over in my turn, and at the very first page I opened I found that the
editor had enriched his small stock of news by drawing upon our family
affairs, and had published my sister’s marriage engagement, among his
other announcements, copied from the London papers, of Marriages in
High Life. I concluded at once that this was the paragraph which had so
strangely affected Anne Catherick, and I thought I saw in it, also, the
origin of the letter which she sent to our house the next day.”
“There can be no doubt in either case. But what did you hear about her
second attack of faintness yesterday evening?”
“Nothing. The cause of it is a complete mystery. There was no stranger
in the room. The only visitor was our dairymaid, who, as I told you, is
one of Mr. Todd’s daughters, and the only conversation was the usual
gossip about local affairs. They heard her cry out, and saw her turn
deadly pale, without the slightest apparent reason. Mrs. Todd and Mrs.
Clements took her upstairs, and Mrs. Clements remained with her. They
were heard talking together until long after the usual bedtime, and
early this morning Mrs. Clements took Mrs. Todd aside, and amazed her
beyond all power of expression by saying that they must go. The only
explanation Mrs. Todd could extract from her guest was, that something
had happened, which was not the fault of any one at the farmhouse,
but which was serious enough to make Anne Catherick resolve to leave
Limmeridge immediately. It was quite useless to press Mrs. Clements
to be more explicit. She only shook her head, and said that, for
Anne’s sake, she must beg and pray that no one would question her. All
she could repeat, with every appearance of being seriously agitated
herself, was that Anne must go, that she must go with her, and that
the destination to which they might both betake themselves must be
kept a secret from everybody. I spare you the recital of Mrs. Todd’s
hospitable remonstrances and refusals. It ended in her driving them
both to the nearest station, more than three hours since. She tried
hard on the way to get them to speak more plainly, but without success;
and she set them down outside the station-door, so hurt and offended by
the unceremonious abruptness of their departure and their unfriendly
reluctance to place the least confidence in her, that she drove away
in anger, without so much as stopping to bid them good-bye. That is
exactly what has taken place. Search your own memory, Mr. Hartright,
and tell me if anything happened in the burial-ground yesterday evening
which can at all account for the extraordinary departure of those two
women this morning.”
“I should like to account first, Miss Halcombe, for the sudden change
in Anne Catherick which alarmed them at the farmhouse, hours after she
and I had parted, and when time enough had elapsed to quiet any violent
agitation that I might have been unfortunate enough to cause. Did you
inquire particularly about the gossip which was going on in the room
when she turned faint?”
“Yes. But Mrs. Todd’s household affairs seem to have divided her
attention that evening with the talk in the farmhouse parlour. She
could only tell me that it was ‘just the news,’—meaning, I suppose,
that they all talked as usual about each other.”
“The dairymaid’s memory may be better than her mother’s,” I said. “It
may be as well for you to speak to the girl, Miss Halcombe, as soon as
we get back.”
My suggestion was acted on the moment we returned to the house. Miss
Halcombe led me round to the servants’ offices, and we found the girl
in the dairy, with her sleeves tucked up to her shoulders, cleaning a
large milk-pan and singing blithely over her work.
“I have brought this gentleman to see your dairy, Hannah,” said Miss
Halcombe. “It is one of the sights of the house, and it always does you
credit.”
The girl blushed and curtseyed, and said shyly that she hoped she
always did her best to keep things neat and clean.
“We have just come from your father’s,” Miss Halcombe continued. “You
were there yesterday evening, I hear, and you found visitors at the
house?”
“Yes, miss.”
“One of them was taken faint and ill, I am told. I suppose nothing was
said or done to frighten her? You were not talking of anything very
terrible, were you?”
“Oh no, miss!” said the girl, laughing. “We were only talking of the
news.”
“Your sisters told you the news at Todd’s Corner, I suppose?”
“Yes, miss.”
“And you told them the news at Limmeridge House?”
“Yes, miss. And I’m quite sure nothing was said to frighten the poor
thing, for I was talking when she was taken ill. It gave me quite a
turn, miss, to see it, never having been taken faint myself.”
Before any more questions could be put to her, she was called away to
receive a basket of eggs at the dairy door. As she left us I whispered
to Miss Halcombe—
“Ask her if she happened to mention, last night, that visitors were
expected at Limmeridge House.”
Miss Halcombe showed me, by a look, that she understood, and put the
question as soon as the dairymaid returned to us.
“Oh yes, miss, I mentioned that,” said the girl simply. “The company
coming, and the accident to the brindled cow, was all the news I had to
take to the farm.”
“Did you mention names? Did you tell them that Sir Percival Glyde was
expected on Monday?”
“Yes, miss—I told them Sir Percival Glyde was coming. I hope there was
no harm in it—I hope I didn’t do wrong.”
“Oh no, no harm. Come, Mr. Hartright, Hannah will begin to think us in
the way, if we interrupt her any longer over her work.”
We stopped and looked at one another the moment we were alone again.
“Is there any doubt in your mind, NOW, Miss Halcombe?”
“Sir Percival Glyde shall remove that doubt, Mr. Hartright—or Laura
Fairlie shall never be his wife.”