She had dropped on her knees by the side of the sofa. Her face was
flushed and agitated, and her eyes met mine in a wild bewildered
manner. I started the instant I saw her.
“What has happened?” I asked. “What has frightened you?”
She looked round at the half-open door, put her lips close to my ear,
and answered in a whisper—
“Marian!—the figure at the lake—the footsteps last night—I’ve just seen
her! I’ve just spoken to her!”
“Who, for Heaven’s sake?”
“Anne Catherick.”
I was so startled by the disturbance in Laura’s face and manner, and so
dismayed by the first waking impressions of my dream, that I was not
fit to bear the revelation which burst upon me when that name passed
her lips. I could only stand rooted to the floor, looking at her in
breathless silence.
She was too much absorbed by what had happened to notice the effect
which her reply had produced on me. “I have seen Anne Catherick! I have
spoken to Anne Catherick!” she repeated as if I had not heard her. “Oh,
Marian, I have such things to tell you! Come away—we may be interrupted
here—come at once into my room.”
With those eager words she caught me by the hand, and led me through
the library, to the end room on the ground floor, which had been fitted
up for her own especial use. No third person, except her maid, could
have any excuse for surprising us here. She pushed me in before her,
locked the door, and drew the chintz curtains that hung over the inside.
The strange, stunned feeling which had taken possession of me still
remained. But a growing conviction that the complications which had
long threatened to gather about her, and to gather about me, had
suddenly closed fast round us both, was now beginning to penetrate my
mind. I could not express it in words—I could hardly even realise it
dimly in my own thoughts. “Anne Catherick!” I whispered to myself, with
useless, helpless reiteration—“Anne Catherick!”
Laura drew me to the nearest seat, an ottoman in the middle of the
room. “Look!” she said, “look here!”—and pointed to the bosom of her
dress.
I saw, for the first time, that the lost brooch was pinned in its place
again. There was something real in the sight of it, something real in
the touching of it afterwards, which seemed to steady the whirl and
confusion in my thoughts, and to help me to compose myself.
“Where did you find your brooch?” The first words I could say to her
were the words which put that trivial question at that important moment.
“SHE found it, Marian.”
“Where?”
“On the floor of the boat-house. Oh, how shall I begin—how shall I tell
you about it! She talked to me so strangely—she looked so fearfully
ill—she left me so suddenly!”
Her voice rose as the tumult of her recollections pressed upon her
mind. The inveterate distrust which weighs, night and day, on my
spirits in this house, instantly roused me to warn her—just as the
sight of the brooch had roused me to question her, the moment before.
“Speak low,” I said. “The window is open, and the garden path runs
beneath it. Begin at the beginning, Laura. Tell me, word for word, what
passed between that woman and you.”
“Shall I close the window?”
“No, only speak low—only remember that Anne Catherick is a dangerous
subject under your husband’s roof. Where did you first see her?”
“At the boat-house, Marian. I went out, as you know, to find my brooch,
and I walked along the path through the plantation, looking down on
the ground carefully at every step. In that way I got on, after a long
time, to the boat-house, and as soon as I was inside it, I went on my
knees to hunt over the floor. I was still searching with my back to
the doorway, when I heard a soft, strange voice behind me say, ‘Miss
Fairlie.’”
“Miss Fairlie!”
“Yes, my old name—the dear, familiar name that I thought I had parted
from for ever. I started up—not frightened, the voice was too kind and
gentle to frighten anybody—but very much surprised. There, looking at
me from the doorway, stood a woman, whose face I never remembered to
have seen before—”
“How was she dressed?”
“She had a neat, pretty white gown on, and over it a poor worn thin
dark shawl. Her bonnet was of brown straw, as poor and worn as the
shawl. I was struck by the difference between her gown and the rest
of her dress, and she saw that I noticed it. ‘Don’t look at my bonnet
and shawl,’ she said, speaking in a quick, breathless, sudden way;
‘if I mustn’t wear white, I don’t care what I wear. Look at my gown
as much as you please—I’m not ashamed of that.’ Very strange, was
it not? Before I could say anything to soothe her, she held out one
of her hands, and I saw my brooch in it. I was so pleased and so
grateful, that I went quite close to her to say what I really felt.
‘Are you thankful enough to do me one little kindness?’ she asked.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I answered, ‘any kindness in my power I shall be glad
to show you.’ ‘Then let me pin your brooch on for you, now I have
found it.’ Her request was so unexpected, Marian, and she made it with
such extraordinary eagerness, that I drew back a step or two, not well
knowing what to do. ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘your mother would have let me pin
on the brooch.’ There was something in her voice and her look, as well
as in her mentioning my mother in that reproachful manner, which made
me ashamed of my distrust. I took her hand with the brooch in it, and
put it up gently on the bosom of my dress. ‘You knew my mother?’ I
said. ‘Was it very long ago? have I ever seen you before?’ Her hands
were busy fastening the brooch: she stopped and pressed them against my
breast. ‘You don’t remember a fine spring day at Limmeridge,’ she said,
‘and your mother walking down the path that led to the school, with a
little girl on each side of her? I have had nothing else to think of
since, and I remember it. You were one of the little girls, and I was
the other. Pretty, clever Miss Fairlie, and poor dazed Anne Catherick
were nearer to each other then than they are now!’”
“Did you remember her, Laura, when she told you her name?”
“Yes, I remembered your asking me about Anne Catherick at Limmeridge,
and your saying that she had once been considered like me.”
“What reminded you of that, Laura?”
“SHE reminded me. While I was looking at her, while she was very close
to me, it came over my mind suddenly that we were like each other!
Her face was pale and thin and weary—but the sight of it startled me,
as if it had been the sight of my own face in the glass after a long
illness. The discovery—I don’t know why—gave me such a shock, that I
was perfectly incapable of speaking to her for the moment.”
“Did she seem hurt by your silence?”
“I am afraid she was hurt by it. ‘You have not got your mother’s face,’
she said, ‘or your mother’s heart. Your mother’s face was dark, and
your mother’s heart, Miss Fairlie, was the heart of an angel.’ ‘I am
sure I feel kindly towards you,’ I said, ‘though I may not be able to
express it as I ought. Why do you call me Miss Fairlie?——’ ‘Because I
love the name of Fairlie and hate the name of Glyde,’ she broke out
violently. I had seen nothing like madness in her before this, but I
fancied I saw it now in her eyes. ‘I only thought you might not know I
was married,’ I said, remembering the wild letter she wrote to me at
Limmeridge, and trying to quiet her. She sighed bitterly, and turned
away from me. ‘Not know you were married?’ she repeated. ‘I am here
BECAUSE you are married. I am here to make atonement to you, before I
meet your mother in the world beyond the grave.’ She drew farther and
farther away from me, till she was out of the boat-house, and then she
watched and listened for a little while. When she turned round to speak
again, instead of coming back, she stopped where she was, looking in at
me, with a hand on each side of the entrance. ‘Did you see me at the
lake last night?’ she said. ‘Did you hear me following you in the wood?
I have been waiting for days together to speak to you alone—I have left
the only friend I have in the world, anxious and frightened about me—I
have risked being shut up again in the mad-house—and all for your sake,
Miss Fairlie, all for your sake.’ Her words alarmed me, Marian, and yet
there was something in the way she spoke that made me pity her with
all my heart. I am sure my pity must have been sincere, for it made me
bold enough to ask the poor creature to come in, and sit down in the
boat-house, by my side.”
“Did she do so?”
“No. She shook her head, and told me she must stop where she was, to
watch and listen, and see that no third person surprised us. And from
first to last, there she waited at the entrance, with a hand on each
side of it, sometimes bending in suddenly to speak to me, sometimes
drawing back suddenly to look about her. ‘I was here yesterday,’ she
said, ‘before it came dark, and I heard you, and the lady with you,
talking together. I heard you tell her about your husband. I heard you
say you had no influence to make him believe you, and no influence
to keep him silent. Ah! I knew what those words meant—my conscience
told me while I was listening. Why did I ever let you marry him! Oh,
my fear—my mad, miserable, wicked fear!’ She covered up her face in
her poor worn shawl, and moaned and murmured to herself behind it. I
began to be afraid she might break out into some terrible despair which
neither she nor I could master. ‘Try to quiet yourself,’ I said; ‘try
to tell me how you might have prevented my marriage.’ She took the
shawl from her face, and looked at me vacantly. ‘I ought to have had
heart enough to stop at Limmeridge,’ she answered. ‘I ought never to
have let the news of his coming there frighten me away. I ought to have
warned you and saved you before it was too late. Why did I only have
courage enough to write you that letter? Why did I only do harm, when
I wanted and meant to do good? Oh, my fear—my mad, miserable, wicked
fear!’ She repeated those words again, and hid her face again in the
end of her poor worn shawl. It was dreadful to see her, and dreadful to
hear her.”
“Surely, Laura, you asked what the fear was which she dwelt on so
earnestly?”
“Yes, I asked that.”
“And what did she say?”
“She asked me in return, if I should not be afraid of a man who had
shut me up in a mad-house, and who would shut me up again, if he could?
I said, ‘Are you afraid still? Surely you would not be here if you
were afraid now?’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘I am not afraid now.’ I asked why
not. She suddenly bent forward into the boat-house, and said, ‘Can’t
you guess why?’ I shook my head. ‘Look at me,’ she went on. I told
her I was grieved to see that she looked very sorrowful and very ill.
She smiled for the first time. ‘Ill?’ she repeated; ‘I’m dying. You
know why I’m not afraid of him now. Do you think I shall meet your
mother in heaven? Will she forgive me if I do?’ I was so shocked and
so startled, that I could make no reply. ‘I have been thinking of it,’
she went on, ‘all the time I have been in hiding from your husband,
all the time I lay ill. My thoughts have driven me here—I want to make
atonement—I want to undo all I can of the harm I once did.’ I begged
her as earnestly as I could to tell me what she meant. She still looked
at me with fixed vacant eyes. ‘SHALL I undo the harm?’ she said to
herself doubtfully. ‘You have friends to take your part. If YOU know
his Secret, he will be afraid of you, he won’t dare use you as he used
me. He must treat you mercifully for his own sake, if he is afraid of
you and your friends. And if he treats you mercifully, and if I can
say it was my doing——’ I listened eagerly for more, but she stopped at
those words.”
“You tried to make her go on?”
“I tried, but she only drew herself away from me again, and leaned
her face and arms against the side of the boat-house. ‘Oh!’ I heard
her say, with a dreadful, distracted tenderness in her voice, ‘oh! if
I could only be buried with your mother! If I could only wake at her
side, when the angel’s trumpet sounds, and the graves give up their
dead at the resurrection!‘—Marian! I trembled from head to foot—it was
horrible to hear her. ‘But there is no hope of that,’ she said, moving
a little, so as to look at me again, ‘no hope for a poor stranger like
me. I shall not rest under the marble cross that I washed with my own
hands, and made so white and pure for her sake. Oh no! oh no! God’s
mercy, not man’s, will take me to her, where the wicked cease from
troubling and the weary are at rest.’ She spoke those words quietly and
sorrowfully, with a heavy, hopeless sigh, and then waited a little. Her
face was confused and troubled, she seemed to be thinking, or trying
to think. ‘What was it I said just now?’ she asked after a while.
‘When your mother is in my mind, everything else goes out of it. What
was I saying? what was I saying?’ I reminded the poor creature, as
kindly and delicately as I could. ‘Ah, yes, yes,’ she said, still in a
vacant, perplexed manner. ‘You are helpless with your wicked husband.
Yes. And I must do what I have come to do here—I must make it up to
you for having been afraid to speak out at a better time.’ ‘What IS it
you have to tell me?’ I asked. ‘The Secret that your cruel husband is
afraid of,’ she answered. ‘I once threatened him with the Secret, and
frightened him. You shall threaten him with the Secret, and frighten
him too.’ Her face darkened, and a hard, angry stare fixed itself
in her eyes. She began waving her hand at me in a vacant, unmeaning
manner. ‘My mother knows the Secret,’ she said. ‘My mother has wasted
under the Secret half her lifetime. One day, when I was grown up, she
said something to ME. And the next day your husband——’”
“Yes! yes! Go on. What did she tell you about your husband?”
“She stopped again, Marian, at that point——”
“And said no more?”
“And listened eagerly. ‘Hush!’ she whispered, still waving her hand
at me. ‘Hush!’ She moved aside out of the doorway, moved slowly
and stealthily, step by step, till I lost her past the edge of the
boat-house.”
“Surely you followed her?”
“Yes, my anxiety made me bold enough to rise and follow her. Just as
I reached the entrance, she appeared again suddenly, round the side
of the boat-house. ‘The Secret,’ I whispered to her—‘wait and tell me
the Secret!’ She caught hold of my arm, and looked at me with wild
frightened eyes. ‘Not now,’ she said, ‘we are not alone—we are watched.
Come here to-morrow at this time—by yourself—mind—by yourself.’ She
pushed me roughly into the boat-house again, and I saw her no more.”
“Oh, Laura, Laura, another chance lost! If I had only been near you she
should not have escaped us. On which side did you lose sight of her?”
“On the left side, where the ground sinks and the wood is thickest.”
“Did you run out again? did you call after her?”
“How could I? I was too terrified to move or speak.”
“But when you DID move—when you came out?”
“I ran back here, to tell you what had happened.”
“Did you see any one, or hear any one, in the plantation?”
“No, it seemed to be all still and quiet when I passed through it.”
I waited for a moment to consider. Was this third person, supposed to
have been secretly present at the interview, a reality, or the creature
of Anne Catherick’s excited fancy? It was impossible to determine. The
one thing certain was, that we had failed again on the very brink of
discovery—failed utterly and irretrievably, unless Anne Catherick kept
her appointment at the boat-house for the next day.
“Are you quite sure you have told me everything that passed? Every word
that was said?” I inquired.
“I think so,” she answered. “My powers of memory, Marian, are not like
yours. But I was so strongly impressed, so deeply interested, that
nothing of any importance can possibly have escaped me.”
“My dear Laura, the merest trifles are of importance where Anne
Catherick is concerned. Think again. Did no chance reference escape her
as to the place in which she is living at the present time?”
“None that I can remember.”
“Did she not mention a companion and friend—a woman named Mrs.
Clements?”
“Oh yes! yes! I forgot that. She told me Mrs. Clements wanted sadly to
go with her to the lake and take care of her, and begged and prayed
that she would not venture into this neighbourhood alone.”
“Was that all she said about Mrs. Clements?”
“Yes, that was all.”
“She told you nothing about the place in which she took refuge after
leaving Todd’s Corner?”
“Nothing—I am quite sure.”
“Nor where she has lived since? Nor what her illness had been?”
“No, Marian, not a word. Tell me, pray tell me, what you think about
it. I don’t know what to think, or what to do next.”
“You must do this, my love: You must carefully keep the appointment at
the boat-house to-morrow. It is impossible to say what interests may
not depend on your seeing that woman again. You shall not be left to
yourself a second time. I will follow you at a safe distance. Nobody
shall see me, but I will keep within hearing of your voice, if anything
happens. Anne Catherick has escaped Walter Hartright, and has escaped
you. Whatever happens, she shall not escape ME.”
Laura’s eyes read mine attentively.
“You believe,” she said, “in this secret that my husband is afraid of?
Suppose, Marian, it should only exist after all in Anne Catherick’s
fancy? Suppose she only wanted to see me and to speak to me, for the
sake of old remembrances? Her manner was so strange—I almost doubted
her. Would you trust her in other things?”
“I trust nothing, Laura, but my own observation of your husband’s
conduct. I judge Anne Catherick’s words by his actions, and I believe
there is a secret.”
I said no more, and got up to leave the room. Thoughts were troubling
me which I might have told her if we had spoken together longer, and
which it might have been dangerous for her to know. The influence of
the terrible dream from which she had awakened me hung darkly and
heavily over every fresh impression which the progress of her narrative
produced on my mind. I felt the ominous future coming close, chilling
me with an unutterable awe, forcing on me the conviction of an unseen
design in the long series of complications which had now fastened
round us. I thought of Hartright—as I saw him in the body when he said
farewell; as I saw him in the spirit in my dream—and I too began to
doubt now whether we were not advancing blindfold to an appointed and
an inevitable end.
Leaving Laura to go upstairs alone, I went out to look about me in the
walks near the house. The circumstances under which Anne Catherick had
parted from her had made me secretly anxious to know how Count Fosco
was passing the afternoon, and had rendered me secretly distrustful
of the results of that solitary journey from which Sir Percival had
returned but a few hours since.
After looking for them in every direction and discovering nothing, I
returned to the house, and entered the different rooms on the ground
floor one after another. They were all empty. I came out again into
the hall, and went upstairs to return to Laura. Madame Fosco opened
her door as I passed it in my way along the passage, and I stopped to
see if she could inform me of the whereabouts of her husband and Sir
Percival. Yes, she had seen them both from her window more than an hour
since. The Count had looked up with his customary kindness, and had
mentioned with his habitual attention to her in the smallest trifles,
that he and his friend were going out together for a long walk.
For a long walk! They had never yet been in each other’s company
with that object in my experience of them. Sir Percival cared for no
exercise but riding, and the Count (except when he was polite enough to
be my escort) cared for no exercise at all.
When I joined Laura again, I found that she had called to mind in my
absence the impending question of the signature to the deed, which,
in the interest of discussing her interview with Anne Catherick, we
had hitherto overlooked. Her first words when I saw her expressed her
surprise at the absence of the expected summons to attend Sir Percival
in the library.
“You may make your mind easy on that subject,” I said. “For the
present, at least, neither your resolution nor mine will be exposed to
any further trial. Sir Percival has altered his plans—the business of
the signature is put off.”
“Put off?” Laura repeated amazedly. “Who told you so?”
“My authority is Count Fosco. I believe it is to his interference that
we are indebted for your husband’s sudden change of purpose.”
“It seems impossible, Marian. If the object of my signing was, as we
suppose, to obtain money for Sir Percival that he urgently wanted, how
can the matter be put off?”
“I think, Laura, we have the means at hand of setting that doubt at
rest. Have you forgotten the conversation that I heard between Sir
Percival and the lawyer as they were crossing the hall?”
“No, but I don’t remember——”
“I do. There were two alternatives proposed. One was to obtain your
signature to the parchment. The other was to gain time by giving bills
at three months. The last resource is evidently the resource now
adopted, and we may fairly hope to be relieved from our share in Sir
Percival’s embarrassments for some time to come.”
“Oh, Marian, it sounds too good to be true!”
“Does it, my love? You complimented me on my ready memory not long
since, but you seem to doubt it now. I will get my journal, and you
shall see if I am right or wrong.”