The Woman in White (14 page)

I walked up to her, and entered into conversation about the church
and burial-ground. She was ready enough to talk, and almost the
first words she said informed me that her husband filled the two
offices of clerk and sexton. I said a few words next in praise of
Mrs. Fairlie's monument. The old woman shook her head, and told
me I had not seen it at its best. It was her husband's business
to look after it, but he had been so ailing and weak for months
and months past, that he had hardly been able to crawl into church
on Sundays to do his duty, and the monument had been neglected in
consequence. He was getting a little better now, and in a week or
ten days' time he hoped to be strong enough to set to work and
clean it.

This information—extracted from a long rambling answer in the
broadest Cumberland dialect—told me all that I most wanted to
know. I gave the poor woman a trifle, and returned at once to
Limmeridge House.

The partial cleansing of the monument had evidently been
accomplished by a strange hand. Connecting what I had discovered,
thus far, with what I had suspected after hearing the story of the
ghost seen at twilight, I wanted nothing more to confirm my
resolution to watch Mrs. Fairlie's grave, in secret, that evening,
returning to it at sunset, and waiting within sight of it till the
night fell. The work of cleansing the monument had been left
unfinished, and the person by whom it had been begun might return
to complete it.

On getting back to the house I informed Miss Halcombe of what I
intended to do. She looked surprised and uneasy while I was
explaining my purpose, but she made no positive objection to the
execution of it. She only said, "I hope it may end well."

Just as she was leaving me again, I stopped her to inquire, as
calmly as I could, after Miss Fairlie's health. She was in better
spirits, and Miss Halcombe hoped she might be induced to take a
little walking exercise while the afternoon sun lasted.

I returned to my own room to resume setting the drawings in order.
It was necessary to do this, and doubly necessary to keep my mind
employed on anything that would help to distract my attention from
myself, and from the hopeless future that lay before me. From
time to time I paused in my work to look out of window and watch
the sky as the sun sank nearer and nearer to the horizon. On one
of those occasions I saw a figure on the broad gravel walk under
my window. It was Miss Fairlie.

I had not seen her since the morning, and I had hardly spoken to
her then. Another day at Limmeridge was all that remained to me,
and after that day my eyes might never look on her again. This
thought was enough to hold me at the window. I had sufficient
consideration for her to arrange the blind so that she might not
see me if she looked up, but I had no strength to resist the
temptation of letting my eyes, at least, follow her as far as they
could on her walk.

She was dressed in a brown cloak, with a plain black silk gown
under it. On her head was the same simple straw hat which she had
worn on the morning when we first met. A veil was attached to it
now which hid her face from me. By her side trotted a little
Italian greyhound, the pet companion of all her walks, smartly
dressed in a scarlet cloth wrapper, to keep the sharp air from his
delicate skin. She did not seem to notice the dog. She walked
straight forward, with her head drooping a little, and her arms
folded in her cloak. The dead leaves, which had whirled in the
wind before me when I had heard of her marriage engagement in the
morning, whirled in the wind before her, and rose and fell and
scattered themselves at her feet as she walked on in the pale
waning sunlight. The dog shivered and trembled, and pressed
against her dress impatiently for notice and encouragement. But
she never heeded him. She walked on, farther and farther away
from me, with the dead leaves whirling about her on the path—
walked on, till my aching eyes could see her no more, and I was
left alone again with my own heavy heart.

In another hour's time I had done my work, and the sunset was at
hand. I got my hat and coat in the hall, and slipped out of the
house without meeting any one.

The clouds were wild in the western heaven, and the wind blew
chill from the sea. Far as the shore was, the sound of the surf
swept over the intervening moorland, and beat drearily in my ears
when I entered the churchyard. Not a living creature was in
sight. The place looked lonelier than ever as I chose my
position, and waited and watched, with my eyes on the white cross
that rose over Mrs. Fairlie's grave.

The exposed situation of the churchyard had obliged me to be
cautious in choosing the position that I was to occupy.

The main entrance to the church was on the side next to the
burial-ground, and the door was screened by a porch walled in on
either side. After some little hesitation, caused by natural
reluctance to conceal myself, indispensable as that concealment
was to the object in view, I had resolved on entering the porch.
A loophole window was pierced in each of its side walls. Through
one of these windows I could see Mrs. Fairlie's grave. The other
looked towards the stone quarry in which the sexton's cottage was
built. Before me, fronting the porch entrance, was a patch of
bare burial-ground, a line of low stone wall, and a strip of
lonely brown hill, with the sunset clouds sailing heavily over it
before the strong, steady wind. No living creature was visible or
audible—no bird flew by me, no dog barked from the sexton's
cottage. The pauses in the dull beating of the surf were filled
up by the dreary rustling of the dwarf trees near the grave, and
the cold faint bubble of the brook over its stony bed. A dreary
scene and a dreary hour. My spirits sank fast as I counted out
the minutes of the evening in my hiding-place under the church
porch.

It was not twilight yet—the light of the setting sun still
lingered in the heavens, and little more than the first half-hour
of my solitary watch had elapsed—when I heard footsteps and a
voice. The footsteps were approaching from the other side of the
church, and the voice was a woman's.

"Don't you fret, my dear, about the letter," said the voice. "I
gave it to the lad quite safe, and the lad he took it from me
without a word. He went his way and I went mine, and not a living
soul followed me afterwards—that I'll warrant."

These words strung up my attention to a pitch of expectation that
was almost painful. There was a pause of silence, but the
footsteps still advanced. In another moment two persons, both
women, passed within my range of view from the porch window. They
were walking straight towards the grave; and therefore they had
their backs turned towards me.

One of the women was dressed in a bonnet and shawl. The other
wore a long travelling-cloak of a dark-blue colour, with the hood
drawn over her head. A few inches of her gown were visible below
the cloak. My heart beat fast as I noted the colour—it was
white.

After advancing about half-way between the church and the grave
they stopped, and the woman in the cloak turned her head towards
her companion. But her side face, which a bonnet might now have
allowed me to see, was hidden by the heavy, projecting edge of the
hood.

"Mind you keep that comfortable warm cloak on," said the same
voice which I had already heard—the voice of the woman in the
shawl. "Mrs. Todd is right about your looking too particular,
yesterday, all in white. I'll walk about a little while you're
here, churchyards being not at all in my way, whatever they may be
in yours. Finish what you want to do before I come back, and let
us be sure and get home again before night."

With those words she turned about, and retracing her steps,
advanced with her face towards me. It was the face of an elderly
woman, brown, rugged, and healthy, with nothing dishonest or
suspicious in the look of it. Close to the church she stopped to
pull her shawl closer round her.

"Queer," she said to herself, "always queer, with her whims and
her ways, ever since I can remember her. Harmless, though—as
harmless, poor soul, as a little child."

She sighed—looked about the burial-ground nervously—shook her
head, as if the dreary prospect by no means pleased her, and
disappeared round the corner of the church.

I doubted for a moment whether I ought to follow and speak to her
or not. My intense anxiety to find myself face to face with her
companion helped me to decide in the negative. I could ensure
seeing the woman in the shawl by waiting near the churchyard until
she came back—although it seemed more than doubtful whether she
could give me the information of which I was in search. The
person who had delivered the letter was of little consequence.
The person who had written it was the one centre of interest, and
the one source of information, and that person I now felt
convinced was before me in the churchyard.

While these ideas were passing through my mind I saw the woman in
the cloak approach close to the grave, and stand looking at it for
a little while. She then glanced all round her, and taking a
white linen cloth or handkerchief from under her cloak, turned
aside towards the brook. The little stream ran into the
churchyard under a tiny archway in the bottom of the wall, and ran
out again, after a winding course of a few dozen yards, under a
similar opening. She dipped the cloth in the water, and returned
to the grave. I saw her kiss the white cross, then kneel down
before the inscription, and apply her wet cloth to the cleansing
of it.

After considering how I could show myself with the least possible
chance of frightening her, I resolved to cross the wall before me,
to skirt round it outside, and to enter the churchyard again by
the stile near the grave, in order that she might see me as I
approached. She was so absorbed over her employment that she did
not hear me coming until I had stepped over the stile. Then she
looked up, started to her feet with a faint cry, and stood facing
me in speechless and motionless terror.

"Don't be frightened," I said. "Surely you remember me?"

I stopped while I spoke—then advanced a few steps gently—then
stopped again—and so approached by little and little till I was
close to her. If there had been any doubt still left in my mind,
it must have been now set at rest. There, speaking affrightedly
for itself—there was the same face confronting me over Mrs.
Fairlie's grave which had first looked into mine on the high-road
by night.

"You remember me?" I said. "We met very late, and I helped you to
find the way to London. Surely you have not forgotten that?"

Her features relaxed, and she drew a heavy breath of relief. I
saw the new life of recognition stirring slowly under the death-
like stillness which fear had set on her face.

"Don't attempt to speak to me just yet," I went on. "Take time to
recover yourself—take time to feel quite certain that I am a
friend."

"You are very kind to me," she murmured. "As kind now as you were
then."

She stopped, and I kept silence on my side. I was not granting
time for composure to her only, I was gaining time also for
myself. Under the wan wild evening light, that woman and I were
met together again, a grave between us, the dead about us, the
lonesome hills closing us round on every side. The time, the
place, the circumstances under which we now stood face to face in
the evening stillness of that dreary valley—the lifelong
interests which might hang suspended on the next chance words that
passed between us—the sense that, for aught I knew to the
contrary, the whole future of Laura Fairlie's life might be
determined, for good or for evil, by my winning or losing the
confidence of the forlorn creature who stood trembling by her
mother's grave—all threatened to shake the steadiness and the
self-control on which every inch of the progress I might yet make
now depended. I tried hard, as I felt this, to possess myself of
all my resources; I did my utmost to turn the few moments for
reflection to the best account.

"Are you calmer now?" I said, as soon as I thought it time to
speak again. "Can you talk to me without feeling frightened, and
without forgetting that I am a friend?"

"How did you come here?" she asked, without noticing what I had
just said to her.

"Don't you remember my telling you, when we last met, that I was
going to Cumberland? I have been in Cumberland ever since—I have
been staying all the time at Limmeridge House."

"At Limmeridge House!" Her pale face brightened as she repeated
the words, her wandering eyes fixed on me with a sudden interest.
"Ah, how happy you must have been!" she said, looking at me
eagerly, without a shadow of its former distrust left in her
expression.

I took advantage of her newly-aroused confidence in me to observe
her face, with an attention and a curiosity which I had hitherto
restrained myself from showing, for caution's sake. I looked at
her, with my mind full of that other lovely face which had so
ominously recalled her to my memory on the terrace by moonlight.
I had seen Anne Catherick's likeness in Miss Fairlie. I now saw
Miss Fairlie's likeness in Anne Catherick—saw it all the more
clearly because the points of dissimilarity between the two were
presented to me as well as the points of resemblance. In the
general outline of the countenance and general proportion of the
features—in the colour of the hair and in the little nervous
uncertainty about the lips—in the height and size of the figure,
and the carriage of the head and body, the likeness appeared even
more startling than I had ever felt it to be yet. But there the
resemblance ended, and the dissimilarity, in details, began. The
delicate beauty of Miss Fairlie's complexion, the transparent
clearness of her eyes, the smooth purity of her skin, the tender
bloom of colour on her lips, were all missing from the worn weary
face that was now turned towards mine. Although I hated myself
even for thinking such a thing, still, while I looked at the woman
before me, the idea would force itself into my mind that one sad
change, in the future, was all that was wanting to make the
likeness complete, which I now saw to be so imperfect in detail.
If ever sorrow and suffering set their profaning marks on the
youth and beauty of Miss Fairlie's face, then, and then only, Anne
Catherick and she would be the twin-sisters of chance resemblance,
the living reflections of one another.