The Woman in White (82 page)

Yes! it had come to that. He had deceived me about the risk I ran
in helping him. He had practised on my ignorance, he had tempted
me with his gifts, he had interested me with his story—and the
result of it was that he made me his accomplice. He owned this
coolly, and he ended by telling me, for the first time, what the
frightful punishment really was for his offence, and for any one
who helped him to commit it. In those days the law was not so
tender-hearted as I hear it is now. Murderers were not the only
people liable to be hanged, and women convicts were not treated
like ladies in undeserved distress. I confess he frightened me—
the mean impostor! the cowardly blackguard! Do you understand now
how I hated him? Do you understand why I am taking all this
trouble—thankfully taking it—to gratify the curiosity of the
meritorious young gentleman who hunted him down?

Well, to go on. He was hardly fool enough to drive me to
downright desperation. I was not the sort of woman whom it was
quite safe to hunt into a corner—he knew that, and wisely quieted
me with proposals for the future.

I deserved some reward (he was kind enough to say) for the service
I had done him, and some compensation (he was so obliging as to
add) for what I had suffered. He was quite willing—generous
scoundrel!—to make me a handsome yearly allowance, payable
quarterly, on two conditions. First, I was to hold my tongue—in
my own interests as well as in his. Secondly, I was not to stir
away from Welmingham without first letting him know, and waiting
till I had obtained his permission. In my own neighbourhood, no
virtuous female friends would tempt me into dangerous gossiping at
the tea-table. In my own neighbourhood, he would always know
where to find me. A hard condition, that second one—but I
accepted it.

What else was I to do? I was left helpless, with the prospect of a
coming incumbrance in the shape of a child. What else was I to
do? Cast myself on the mercy of my runaway idiot of a husband who
had raised the scandal against me? I would have died first.
Besides, the allowance WAS a handsome one. I had a better income,
a better house over my head, better carpets on my floors, than
half the women who turned up the whites of their eyes at the sight
of me. The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I
had silk.

So I accepted the conditions he offered me, and made the best of
them, and fought my battle with my respectable neighbours on their
own ground, and won it in course of time—as you saw yourself.
How I kept his Secret (and mine) through all the years that have
passed from that time to this, and whether my late daughter, Anne,
ever really crept into my confidence, and got the keeping of the
Secret too—are questions, I dare say, to which you are curious to
find an answer. Well! my gratitude refuses you nothing. I will
turn to a fresh page and give you the answer immediately. But you
must excuse one thing—you must excuse my beginning, Mr.
Hartright, with an expression of surprise at the interest which
you appear to have felt in my late daughter. It is quite
unaccountable to me. If that interest makes you anxious for any
particulars of her early life, I must refer you to Mrs. Clements,
who knows more of the subject than I do. Pray understand that I
do not profess to have been at all over-fond of my late daughter.
She was a worry to me from first to last, with the additional
disadvantage of being always weak in the head. You like candour,
and I hope this satisfies you.

There is no need to trouble you with many personal particulars
relating to those past times. It will be enough to say that I
observed the terms of the bargain on my side, and that I enjoyed
my comfortable income in return, paid quarterly.

Now and then I got away and changed the scene for a short time,
always asking leave of my lord and master first, and generally
getting it. He was not, as I have already told you, fool enough
to drive me too hard, and he could reasonably rely on my holding
my tongue for my own sake, if not for his. One of my longest
trips away from home was the trip I took to Limmeridge to nurse a
half-sister there, who was dying. She was reported to have saved
money, and I thought it as well (in case any accident happened to
stop my allowance) to look after my own interests in that
direction. As things turned out, however, my pains were all
thrown away, and I got nothing, because nothing was to be had.

I had taken Anne to the north with me, having my whims and
fancies, occasionally, about my child, and getting, at such times,
jealous of Mrs. Clements' influence over her. I never liked Mrs.
Clements. She was a poor, empty-headed, spiritless woman—what
you call a born drudge—and I was now and then not averse to
plaguing her by taking Anne away. Not knowing what else to do
with my girl while I was nursing in Cumberland, I put her to
school at Limmeridge. The lady of the manor, Mrs. Fairlie (a
remarkably plain-looking woman, who had entrapped one of the
handsomest men in England into marrying her), amused me
wonderfully by taking a violent fancy to my girl. The consequence
was, she learnt nothing at school, and was petted and spoilt at
Limmeridge House. Among other whims and fancies which they taught
her there, they put some nonsense into her head about always
wearing white. Hating white and liking colours myself, I
determined to take the nonsense out of her head as soon as we got
home again.

Strange to say, my daughter resolutely resisted me. When she HAD
got a notion once fixed in her mind she was, like other half-
witted people, as obstinate as a mule in keeping it. We
quarrelled finely, and Mrs. Clements, not liking to see it, I
suppose, offered to take Anne away to live in London with her. I
should have said Yes, if Mrs. Clements had not sided with my
daughter about her dressing herself in white. But being
determined she should NOT dress herself in white, and disliking
Mrs. Clements more than ever for taking part against me, I said
No, and meant No, and stuck to No. The consequence was, my
daughter remained with me, and the consequence of that, in its
turn, was the first serious quarrel that happened about the
Secret.

The circumstance took place long after the time I have just been
writing of. I had been settled for years in the new town, and was
steadily living down my bad character and slowly gaining ground
among the respectable inhabitants. It helped me forward greatly
towards this object to have my daughter with me. Her harmlessness
and her fancy for dressing in white excited a certain amount of
sympathy. I left off opposing her favourite whim on that account,
because some of the sympathy was sure, in course of time, to fall
to my share. Some of it did fall. I date my getting a choice of
the two best sittings to let in the church from that time, and I
date the clergyman's first bow from my getting the sittings.

Well, being settled in this way, I received a letter one morning
from that highly born gentleman (now deceased) in answer to one of
mine, warning him, according to agreement, of my wishing to leave
the town for a little change of air and scene.

The ruffianly side of him must have been uppermost, I suppose,
when he got my letter, for he wrote back, refusing me in such
abominably insolent language, that I lost all command over myself,
and abused him, in my daughter's presence, as "a low impostor whom
I could ruin for life if I chose to open my lips and let out his
Secret." I said no more about him than that, being brought to my
senses as soon as those words had escaped me by the sight of my
daughter's face looking eagerly and curiously at mine. I
instantly ordered her out of the room until I had composed myself
again.

My sensations were not pleasant, I can tell you, when I came to
reflect on my own folly. Anne had been more than usually crazy
and queer that year, and when I thought of the chance there might
be of her repeating my words in the town, and mentioning HIS name
in connection with them, if inquisitive people got hold of her, I
was finely terrified at the possible consequences. My worst fears
for myself, my worst dread of what he might do, led me no farther
than this. I was quite unprepared for what really did happen only
the next day.

On that next day, without any warning to me to expect him, he came
to the house.

His first words, and the tone in which he spoke them, surly as it
was, showed me plainly enough that he had repented already of his
insolent answer to my application, and that he had come in a
mighty bad temper to try and set matters right again before it was
too late. Seeing my daughter in the room with me (I had been
afraid to let her out of my sight after what had happened the day
before) he ordered her away. They neither of them liked each
other, and he vented the ill-temper on HER which he was afraid to
show to ME.

"Leave us," he said, looking at her over his shoulder. She looked
back over HER shoulder and waited as if she didn't care to go.
"Do you hear?" he roared out, "leave the room." "Speak to me
civilly," says she, getting red in the face. "Turn the idiot
out," says he, looking my way. She had always had crazy notions
of her own about her dignity, and that word "idiot" upset her in
a moment. Before I could interfere she stepped up to him in a
fine passion. "Beg my pardon, directly," says she, "or I'll make
it the worse for you. I'll let out your Secret. I can ruin you
for life if I choose to open my lips." My own words!—repeated
exactly from what I had said the day before—repeated, in his
presence, as if they had come from herself. He sat speechless, as
white as the paper I am writing on, while I pushed her out of the
room. When he recovered himself—-

No! I am too respectable a woman to mention what he said when he
recovered himself. My pen is the pen of a member of the rector's
congregation, and a subscriber to the "Wednesday Lectures on
Justification by Faith"—how can you expect me to employ it in
writing bad language? Suppose, for yourself, the raging, swearing
frenzy of the lowest ruffian in England, and let us get on
together, as fast as may be, to the way in which it all ended.

It ended, as you probably guess by this time, in his insisting on
securing his own safety by shutting her up.

I tried to set things right. I told him that she had merely
repeated, like a parrot, the words she had heard me say and that
she knew no particulars whatever, because I had mentioned none. I
explained that she had affected, out of crazy spite against him,
to know what she really did NOT know—that she only wanted to
threaten him and aggravate him for speaking to her as he had just
spoken—and that my unlucky words gave her just the chance of
doing mischief of which she was in search. I referred him to
other queer ways of hers, and to his own experience of the
vagaries of half-witted people—it was all to no purpose—he would
not believe me on my oath—he was absolutely certain I had
betrayed the whole Secret. In short, he would hear of nothing but
shutting her up.

Under these circumstances, I did my duty as a mother. "No pauper
Asylum," I said, "I won't have her put in a pauper Asylum. A
Private Establishment, if you please. I have my feelings as a
mother, and my character to preserve in the town, and I will
submit to nothing but a Private Establishment, of the sort which
my genteel neighbours would choose for afflicted relatives of
their own." Those were my words. It is gratifying to me to
reflect that I did my duty. Though never overfond of my late
daughter, I had a proper pride about her. No pauper stain—thanks
to my firmness and resolution—ever rested on MY child.

Having carried my point (which I did the more easily, in
consequence of the facilities offered by private Asylums), I could
not refuse to admit that there were certain advantages gained by
shutting her up. In the first place, she was taken excellent care
of—being treated (as I took care to mention in the town) on the
footing of a lady. In the second place, she was kept away from
Welmingham, where she might have set people suspecting and
inquiring, by repeating my own incautious words.

The only drawback of putting her under restraint was a very slight
one. We merely turned her empty boast about knowing the Secret
into a fixed delusion. Having first spoken in sheer crazy
spitefulness against the man who had offended her, she was cunning
enough to see that she had seriously frightened him, and sharp
enough afterwards to discover that HE was concerned in shutting
her up. The consequence was she flamed out into a perfect frenzy
of passion against him, going to the Asylum, and the first words
she said to the nurses, after they had quieted her, were, that she
was put in confinement for knowing his Secret, and that she meant
to open her lips and ruin him, when the right time came.

She may have said the same thing to you, when you thoughtlessly
assisted her escape. She certainly said it (as I heard last
summer) to the unfortunate woman who married our sweet-tempered,
nameless gentleman lately deceased. If either you, or that
unlucky lady, had questioned my daughter closely, and had insisted
on her explaining what she really meant, you would have found her
lose all her self-importance suddenly, and get vacant, and
restless, and confused—you would have discovered that I am
writing nothing here but the plain truth. She knew that there was
a Secret—she knew who was connected with it—she knew who would
suffer by its being known—and beyond that, whatever airs of
importance she may have given herself, whatever crazy boasting she
may have indulged in with strangers, she never to her dying day
knew more.

Have I satisfied your curiosity? I have taken pains enough to
satisfy it at any rate. There is really nothing else I have to
tell you about myself or my daughter. My worst responsibilities,
so far as she was concerned, were all over when she was secured in
the Asylum. I had a form of letter relating to the circumstances
under which she was shut up, given me to write, in answer to one
Miss Halcombe, who was curious in the matter, and who must have
heard plenty of lies about me from a certain tongue well
accustomed to the telling of the same. And I did what I could
afterwards to trace my runaway daughter, and prevent her from
doing mischief by making inquiries myself in the neighbourhood
where she was falsely reported to have been seen. But these, and
other trifles like them, are of little or no interest to you after
what you have heard already.