The Woman in White (72 page)

"What became of Sir Percival?" I inquired. "Did he stay in the
neighbourhood?"

"Not he, sir. The place was too hot to hold him. He was heard at
high words with Mrs. Catherick the same night when the scandal
broke out, and the next morning he took himself off."

"And Mrs. Catherick? Surely she never remained in the village
among the people who knew of her disgrace?"

"She did, sir. She was hard enough and heartless enough to set
the opinions of all her neighbours at flat defiance. She declared
to everybody, from the clergyman downwards, that she was the
victim of a dreadful mistake, and that all the scandal-mongers in
the place should not drive her out of it, as if she was a guilty
woman. All through my time she lived at Old Welmingham, and after
my time, when the new town was building, and the respectable
neighbours began moving to it, she moved too, as if she was
determined to live among them and scandalise them to the very
last. There she is now, and there she will stop, in defiance of
the best of them, to her dying day."

"But how has she lived through all these years?" I asked. "Was
her husband able and willing to help her?"

"Both able and willing, sir," said Mrs. Clements. "In the second
letter he wrote to my good man, he said she had borne his name,
and lived in his home, and, wicked as she was, she must not starve
like a beggar in the street. He could afford to make her some
small allowance, and she might draw for it quarterly at a place in
London."

"Did she accept the allowance?"

"Not a farthing of it, sir. She said she would never be beholden
to Catherick for bit or drop, if she lived to be a hundred. And
she has kept her word ever since. When my poor dear husband died,
and left all to me, Catherick's letter was put in my possession
with the other things, and I told her to let me know if she was
ever in want. 'I'll let all England know I'm in want,' she said,
'before I tell Catherick, or any friend of Catherick's. Take that
for your answer, and give it to HIM for an answer, if he ever
writes again.' "

"Do you suppose that she had money of her own?"

"Very little, if any, sir. It was said, and said truly, I am
afraid, that her means of living came privately from Sir Percival
Glyde."

After that last reply I waited a little, to reconsider what I had
heard. If I unreservedly accepted the story so far, it was now
plain that no approach, direct or indirect, to the Secret had yet
been revealed to me, and that the pursuit of my object had ended
again in leaving me face to face with the most palpable and the
most disheartening failure.

But there was one point in the narrative which made me doubt the
propriety of accepting it unreservedly, and which suggested the
idea of something hidden below the surface.

I could not account to myself for the circumstance of the clerk's
guilty wife voluntarily living out all her after-existence on the
scene of her disgrace. The woman's own reported statement that
she had taken this strange course as a practical assertion of her
innocence did not satisfy me. It seemed, to my mind, more natural
and more probable to assume that she was not so completely a free
agent in this matter as she had herself asserted. In that case,
who was the likeliest person to possess the power of compelling
her to remain at Welmingham? The person unquestionably from whom
she derived the means of living. She had refused assistance from
her husband, she had no adequate resources of her own, she was a
friendless, degraded woman—from what source should she derive
help but from the source at which report pointed—Sir Percival
Glyde?

Reasoning on these assumptions, and always bearing in mind the one
certain fact to guide me, that Mrs. Catherick was in possession of
the Secret, I easily understood that it was Sir Percival's
interest to keep her at Welmingham, because her character in that
place was certain to isolate her from all communication with
female neighbours, and to allow her no opportunities of talking
incautiously in moments of free intercourse with inquisitive bosom
friends. But what was the mystery to be concealed? Not Sir
Percival's infamous connection with Mrs. Catherick's disgrace, for
the neighbours were the very people who knew of it—not the
suspicion that he was Anne's father, for Welmingham was the place
in which that suspicion must inevitably exist. If I accepted the
guilty appearances described to me as unreservedly as others had
accepted them, if I drew from them the same superficial conclusion
which Mr. Catherick and all his neighbours had drawn, where was
the suggestion, in all that I had heard, of a dangerous secret
between Sir Percival and Mrs. Catherick, which had been kept
hidden from that time to this?

And yet, in those stolen meetings, in those familiar whisperings
between the clerk's wife and "the gentleman in mourning," the clue
to discovery existed beyond a doubt.

Was it possible that appearances in this case had pointed one way
while the truth lay all the while unsuspected in another
direction? Could Mrs. Catherick's assertion, that she was the
victim of a dreadful mistake, by any possibility be true? Or,
assuming it to be false, could the conclusion which associated Sir
Percival with her guilt have been founded in some inconceivable
error? Had Sir Percival, by any chance, courted the suspicion that
was wrong for the sake of diverting from himself some other
suspicion that was right? Here—if I could find it—here was the
approach to the Secret, hidden deep under the surface of the
apparently unpromising story which I had just heard.

My next questions were now directed to the one object of
ascertaining whether Mr. Catherick had or had not arrived truly at
the conviction of his wife's misconduct. The answers I received
from Mrs. Clements left me in no doubt whatever on that point.
Mrs. Catherick had, on the clearest evidence, compromised her
reputation, while a single woman, with some person unknown, and
had married to save her character. It had been positively
ascertained, by calculations of time and place into which I need
not enter particularly, that the daughter who bore her husband's
name was not her husband's child.

The next object of inquiry, whether it was equally certain that
Sir Percival must have been the father of Anne, was beset by far
greater difficulties. I was in no position to try the
probabilities on one side or on the other in this instance by any
better test than the test of personal resemblance.

"I suppose you often saw Sir Percival when he was in your
village?" I said.

"Yes, sir, very often," replied Mrs. Clements.

"Did you ever observe that Anne was like him?"

"She was not at all like him, sir."

"Was she like her mother, then?"

"Not like her mother either, sir. Mrs. Catherick was dark, and
full in the face."

Not like her mother and not like her (supposed) father. I knew
that the test by personal resemblance was not to be implicitly
trusted, but, on the other hand, it was not to be altogether
rejected on that account. Was it possible to strengthen the
evidence by discovering any conclusive facts in relation to the
lives of Mrs. Catherick and Sir Percival before they either of
them appeared at Old Welmingham? When I asked my next questions I
put them with this view.

"When Sir Percival first arrived in your neighbourhood," I said,
"did you hear where he had come from last?"

"No, sir. Some said from Blackwater Park, and some said from
Scotland—but nobody knew."

"Was Mrs. Catherick living in service at Varneck Hall immediately
before her marriage?"

"Yes, sir."

"And had she been long in her place?"

"Three or four years, sir; I am not quite certain which."

"Did you ever hear the name of the gentleman to whom Varneck Hall
belonged at that time?"

"Yes, sir. His name was Major Donthorne."

"Did Mr. Catherick, or did any one else you knew, ever hear that
Sir Percival was a friend of Major Donthorne's, or ever see Sir
Percival in the neighbourhood of Varneck Hall?"

"Catherick never did, sir, that I can remember—nor any one else
either, that I know of."

I noted down Major Donthorne's name and address, on the chance
that he might still be alive, and that it might be useful at some
future time to apply to him. Meanwhile, the impression on my mind
was now decidedly adverse to the opinion that Sir Percival was
Anne's father, and decidedly favourable to the conclusion that the
secret of his stolen interviews with Mrs. Catherick was entirely
unconnected with the disgrace which the woman had inflicted on her
husband's good name. I could think of no further inquiries which
I might make to strengthen this impression—I could only encourage
Mrs. Clements to speak next of Anne's early days, and watch for
any chance-suggestion which might in this way offer itself to me.

"I have not heard yet," I said, "how the poor child, born in all
this sin and misery, came to be trusted, Mrs. Clements, to your
care."

"There was nobody else, sir, to take the little helpless creature
in hand," replied Mrs. Clements. "The wicked mother seemed to
hate it—as if the poor baby was in fault!—from the day it was
born. My heart was heavy for the child, and I made the offer to
bring it up as tenderly as if it was my own."

"Did Anne remain entirely under your care from that time?"

"Not quite entirely, sir. Mrs. Catherick had her whims and
fancies about it at times, and used now and then to lay claim to
the child, as if she wanted to spite me for bringing it up. But
these fits of hers never lasted for long. Poor little Anne was
always returned to me, and was always glad to get back—though she
led but a gloomy life in my house, having no playmates, like other
children, to brighten her up. Our longest separation was when her
mother took her to Limmeridge. Just at that time I lost my
husband, and I felt it was as well, in that miserable affliction,
that Anne should not be in the house. She was between ten and
eleven years old then, slow at her lessons, poor soul, and not so
cheerful as other children—but as pretty a little girl to look at
as you would wish to see. I waited at home till her mother
brought her back, and then I made the offer to take her with me to
London—the truth being, sir, that I could not find it in my heart
to stop at Old Welmingham after my husband's death, the place was
so changed and so dismal to me."

"And did Mrs. Catherick consent to your proposal?"

"No, sir. She came back from the north harder and bitterer than
ever. Folks did say that she had been obliged to ask Sir
Percival's leave to go, to begin with; and that she only went to
nurse her dying sister at Limmeridge because the poor woman was
reported to have saved money—the truth being that she hardly left
enough to bury her. These things may have soured Mrs. Catherick
likely enough, but however that may be, she wouldn't hear of my
taking the child away. She seemed to like distressing us both by
parting us. All I could do was to give Anne my direction, and to
tell her privately, if she was ever in trouble, to come to me.
But years passed before she was free to come. I never saw her
again, poor soul, till the night she escaped from the mad-house."

"You know, Mrs. Clements, why Sir Percival Glyde shut her up?"

"I only know what Anne herself told me, sir. The poor thing used
to ramble and wander about it sadly. She said her mother had got
some secret of Sir Percival's to keep, and had let it out to her
long after I left Hampshire—and when Sir Percival found she knew
it, he shut her up. But she never could say what it was when I
asked her. All she could tell me was, that her mother might be
the ruin and destruction of Sir Percival if she chose. Mrs.
Catherick may have let out just as much as that, and no more. I'm
next to certain I should have heard the whole truth from Anne, if
she had really known it as she pretended to do, and as she very
likely fancied she did, poor soul."

This idea had more than once occurred to my own mind. I had
already told Marian that I doubted whether Laura was really on the
point of making any important discovery when she and Anne
Catherick were disturbed by Count Fosco at the boat-house. It was
perfectly in character with Anne's mental affliction that she
should assume an absolute knowledge of the secret on no better
grounds than vague suspicion, derived from hints which her mother
had incautiously let drop in her presence. Sir Percival's guilty
distrust would, in that case, infallibly inspire him with the
false idea that Anne knew all from her mother, just as it had
afterwards fixed in his mind the equally false suspicion that his
wife knew all from Anne.

The time was passing, the morning was wearing away. It was
doubtful, if I stayed longer, whether I should hear anything more
from Mrs. Clements that would be at all useful to my purpose. I
had already discovered those local and family particulars, in
relation to Mrs. Catherick, of which I had been in search, and I
had arrived at certain conclusions, entirely new to me, which
might immensely assist in directing the course of my future
proceedings. I rose to take my leave, and to thank Mrs. Clements
for the friendly readiness she had shown in affording me
information.

"I am afraid you must have thought me very inquisitive," I said.
"I have troubled you with more questions than many people would
have cared to answer."

"You are heartily welcome, sir, to anything I can tell you,"
answered Mrs. Clements. She stopped and looked at me wistfully.
"But I do wish," said the poor woman, "you could have told me a
little more about Anne, sir. I thought I saw something in your
face when you came in which looked as if you could. You can't
think how hard it is not even to know whether she is living or
dead. I could bear it better if I was only certain. You said you
never expected we should see her alive again. Do you know, sir—
do you know for truth—that it has pleased God to take her?"