On leaving the farm at Todd’s Corner, Mrs. Clements and Anne had
travelled that day as far as Derby, and had remained there a week on
Anne’s account. They had then gone on to London, and had lived in
the lodging occupied by Mrs. Clements at that time for a month or
more, when circumstances connected with the house and the landlord
had obliged them to change their quarters. Anne’s terror of being
discovered in London or its neighbourhood, whenever they ventured to
walk out, had gradually communicated itself to Mrs. Clements, and she
had determined on removing to one of the most out-of-the-way places
in England—to the town of Grimsby in Lincolnshire, where her deceased
husband had passed all his early life. His relatives were respectable
people settled in the town—they had always treated Mrs. Clements with
great kindness, and she thought it impossible to do better than go
there and take the advice of her husband’s friends. Anne would not hear
of returning to her mother at Welmingham, because she had been removed
to the Asylum from that place, and because Sir Percival would be
certain to go back there and find her again. There was serious weight
in this objection, and Mrs. Clements felt that it was not to be easily
removed.
At Grimsby the first serious symptoms of illness had shown themselves
in Anne. They appeared soon after the news of Lady Glyde’s marriage had
been made public in the newspapers, and had reached her through that
medium.
The medical man who was sent for to attend the sick woman discovered
at once that she was suffering from a serious affection of the heart.
The illness lasted long, left her very weak, and returned at intervals,
though with mitigated severity, again and again. They remained at
Grimsby, in consequence, during the first half of the new year, and
there they might probably have stayed much longer, but for the sudden
resolution which Anne took at this time to venture back to Hampshire,
for the purpose of obtaining a private interview with Lady Glyde.
Mrs. Clements did all in her power to oppose the execution of this
hazardous and unaccountable project. No explanation of her motives
was offered by Anne, except that she believed the day of her death
was not far off, and that she had something on her mind which must be
communicated to Lady Glyde, at any risk, in secret. Her resolution
to accomplish this purpose was so firmly settled that she declared
her intention of going to Hampshire by herself if Mrs. Clements felt
any unwillingness to go with her. The doctor, on being consulted,
was of opinion that serious opposition to her wishes would, in all
probability, produce another and perhaps a fatal fit of illness, and
Mrs. Clements, under this advice, yielded to necessity, and once more,
with sad forebodings of trouble and danger to come, allowed Anne
Catherick to have her own way.
On the journey from London to Hampshire Mrs. Clements discovered
that one of their fellow-passengers was well acquainted with the
neighbourhood of Blackwater, and could give her all the information she
needed on the subject of localities. In this way she found out that
the only place they could go to, which was not dangerously near to Sir
Percival’s residence, was a large village called Sandon. The distance
here from Blackwater Park was between three and four miles—and that
distance, and back again, Anne had walked on each occasion when she had
appeared in the neighbourhood of the lake.
For the few days during which they were at Sandon without being
discovered they had lived a little away from the village, in the
cottage of a decent widow-woman who had a bedroom to let, and whose
discreet silence Mrs. Clements had done her best to secure, for the
first week at least. She had also tried hard to induce Anne to be
content with writing to Lady Glyde, in the first instance; but the
failure of the warning contained in the anonymous letter sent to
Limmeridge had made Anne resolute to speak this time, and obstinate in
the determination to go on her errand alone.
Mrs. Clements, nevertheless, followed her privately on each occasion
when she went to the lake, without, however, venturing near enough
to the boat-house to be witness of what took place there. When Anne
returned for the last time from the dangerous neighbourhood, the
fatigue of walking, day after day, distances which were far too great
for her strength, added to the exhausting effect of the agitation from
which she had suffered, produced the result which Mrs. Clements had
dreaded all along. The old pain over the heart and the other symptoms
of the illness at Grimsby returned, and Anne was confined to her bed in
the cottage.
In this emergency the first necessity, as Mrs. Clements knew by
experience, was to endeavour to quiet Anne’s anxiety of mind, and for
this purpose the good woman went herself the next day to the lake, to
try if she could find Lady Glyde (who would be sure, as Anne said, to
take her daily walk to the boat-house), and prevail on her to come back
privately to the cottage near Sandon. On reaching the outskirts of
the plantation Mrs. Clements encountered, not Lady Glyde, but a tall,
stout, elderly gentleman, with a book in his hand—in other words, Count
Fosco.
The Count, after looking at her very attentively for a moment, asked
if she expected to see any one in that place, and added, before she
could reply, that he was waiting there with a message from Lady Glyde,
but that he was not quite certain whether the person then before him
answered the description of the person with whom he was desired to
communicate.
Upon this Mrs. Clements at once confided her errand to him, and
entreated that he would help to allay Anne’s anxiety by trusting his
message to her. The Count most readily and kindly complied with her
request. The message, he said, was a very important one. Lady Glyde
entreated Anne and her good friend to return immediately to London, as
she felt certain that Sir Percival would discover them if they remained
any longer in the neighbourhood of Blackwater. She was herself going to
London in a short time, and if Mrs. Clements and Anne would go there
first, and would let her know what their address was, they should hear
from her and see her in a fortnight or less. The Count added that he
had already attempted to give a friendly warning to Anne herself, but
that she had been too much startled by seeing that he was a stranger to
let him approach and speak to her.
To this Mrs. Clements replied, in the greatest alarm and distress,
that she asked nothing better than to take Anne safely to London, but
that there was no present hope of removing her from the dangerous
neighbourhood, as she lay ill in her bed at that moment. The Count
inquired if Mrs. Clements had sent for medical advice, and hearing
that she had hitherto hesitated to do so, from the fear of making
their position publicly known in the village, informed her that he
was himself a medical man, and that he would go back with her if she
pleased, and see what could be done for Anne. Mrs. Clements (feeling
a natural confidence in the Count, as a person trusted with a secret
message from Lady Glyde) gratefully accepted the offer, and they went
back together to the cottage.
Anne was asleep when they got there. The Count started at the sight of
her (evidently from astonishment at her resemblance to Lady Glyde).
Poor Mrs. Clements supposed that he was only shocked to see how ill
she was. He would not allow her to be awakened—he was contented with
putting questions to Mrs. Clements about her symptoms, with looking at
her, and with lightly touching her pulse. Sandon was a large enough
place to have a grocer’s and druggist’s shop in it, and thither the
Count went to write his prescription and to get the medicine made up.
He brought it back himself, and told Mrs. Clements that the medicine
was a powerful stimulant, and that it would certainly give Anne
strength to get up and bear the fatigue of a journey to London of only
a few hours. The remedy was to be administered at stated times on that
day and on the day after. On the third day she would be well enough
to travel, and he arranged to meet Mrs. Clements at the Blackwater
station, and to see them off by the midday train. If they did not
appear he would assume that Anne was worse, and would proceed at once
to the cottage.
As events turned out, no such emergency as this occurred.
This medicine had an extraordinary effect on Anne, and the good results
of it were helped by the assurance Mrs. Clements could now give her
that she would soon see Lady Glyde in London. At the appointed day
and time (when they had not been quite so long as a week in Hampshire
altogether), they arrived at the station. The Count was waiting there
for them, and was talking to an elderly lady, who appeared to be going
to travel by the train to London also. He most kindly assisted them,
and put them into the carriage himself, begging Mrs. Clements not to
forget to send her address to Lady Glyde. The elderly lady did not
travel in the same compartment, and they did not notice what became of
her on reaching the London terminus. Mrs. Clements secured respectable
lodgings in a quiet neighbourhood, and then wrote, as she had engaged
to do, to inform Lady Glyde of the address.
A little more than a fortnight passed, and no answer came.
At the end of that time a lady (the same elderly lady whom they had
seen at the station) called in a cab, and said that she came from
Lady Glyde, who was then at an hotel in London, and who wished to see
Mrs. Clements, for the purpose of arranging a future interview with
Anne. Mrs. Clements expressed her willingness (Anne being present at
the time, and entreating her to do so) to forward the object in view,
especially as she was not required to be away from the house for more
than half an hour at the most. She and the elderly lady (clearly Madame
Fosco) then left in the cab. The lady stopped the cab, after it had
driven some distance, at a shop before they got to the hotel, and
begged Mrs. Clements to wait for her for a few minutes while she made a
purchase that had been forgotten. She never appeared again.
After waiting some time Mrs. Clements became alarmed, and ordered the
cabman to drive back to her lodgings. When she got there, after an
absence of rather more than half an hour, Anne was gone.
The only information to be obtained from the people of the house was
derived from the servant who waited on the lodgers. She had opened the
door to a boy from the street, who had left a letter for “the young
woman who lived on the second floor” (the part of the house which Mrs.
Clements occupied). The servant had delivered the letter, had then
gone downstairs, and five minutes afterwards had observed Anne open
the front door and go out, dressed in her bonnet and shawl. She had
probably taken the letter with her, for it was not to be found, and it
was therefore impossible to tell what inducement had been offered to
make her leave the house. It must have been a strong one, for she would
never stir out alone in London of her own accord. If Mrs. Clements had
not known this by experience nothing would have induced her to go away
in the cab, even for so short a time as half an hour only.
As soon as she could collect her thoughts, the first idea that
naturally occurred to Mrs. Clements was to go and make inquiries at the
Asylum, to which she dreaded that Anne had been taken back.
She went there the next day, having been informed of the locality in
which the house was situated by Anne herself. The answer she received
(her application having in all probability been made a day or two
before the false Anne Catherick had really been consigned to safe
keeping in the Asylum) was, that no such person had been brought back
there. She had then written to Mrs. Catherick at Welmingham to know if
she had seen or heard anything of her daughter, and had received an
answer in the negative. After that reply had reached her, she was at
the end of her resources, and perfectly ignorant where else to inquire
or what else to do. From that time to this she had remained in total
ignorance of the cause of Anne’s disappearance and of the end of Anne’s
story.