Woman in White (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Wilkie Collins

  The nurse hesitated, through sheer incredulity and surprise. Miss Halcombe pressed the point on her firmly.

  ‘You will be doing a good action,’ she repeated; ‘you will be helping the most injured and unhappy woman alive. There is your marriage-portion for a reward. Bring her safely to me, here; and I will put these four bank-notes into your hand, before I claim her.’

  ‘Will you give me a letter saying those words, which I can show to my sweetheart, when he asks how I got the money?’ inquired the woman.

  ‘I will bring the letter with me, ready written and signed,’ answered Miss Halcombe.

  ‘Then I’ll risk it,’ said the nurse.

  ‘When?’

  ‘To-morrow.’

  It was hastily agreed between them that Miss Halcombe should return early the next morning, and wait out of sight, among the trees—always, however, keeping near the quiet spot of ground under the north wall. The nurse could fix no time for her appearance; caution requiring that she should wait, and be guided by circumstances. On that understanding, they separated.

  Miss Halcombe was at her place, with the promised letter, and the promised bank-notes, before ten the next morning. She waited more than an hour and a half. At the end of that time, the nurse came quickly round the corner of the wall, holding Lady Glyde by the arm. The moment they met, Miss Halcombe put the bank-notes and the letter into her hand—and the sisters were united again.

  The nurse had dressed Lady Glyde, with excellent forethought, in a bonnet, veil, and shawl of her own. Miss Halcombe only detained her to suggest a means of turning the pursuit in a false direction, when the escape was discovered at the Asylum. She was to go back to the house; to mention in the hearing of the other nurses that Anne Catherick had been inquiring latterly, about the distance from London to Hampshire; to wait till the last moment, before discovery was inevitable; and then to give the alarm that Anne was missing. The supposed inquiries about Hampshire, when communicated to the owner of the Asylum, would lead him to imagine that his patient had returned to Blackwater Park, under the influence of the delusion which made her persist in asserting herself to be Lady Glyde; and the first pursuit would, in all probability, be turned in that direction.

  The nurse consented to follow these suggestions—the more readily, as they offered her the means of securing herself against any worse consequences than the loss of her place, by remaining in the Asylum, and so maintaining the appearance of innocence, at least. She at once returned to the house; and Miss Halcombe lost no time in taking her sister back with her to London. They caught the afternoon train to Carlisle the same afternoon, and arrived at Limmeridge, without accident or difficulty of any kind, that night.

  During the latter part of their journey, they were alone in the carriage, and Miss Halcombe was able to collect such remembrances of the past as her sister’s confused and weakened memory was able to recall. The terrible story of the conspiracy so obtained, was presented in fragments, sadly incoherent in themselves, and widely detached from each other. Imperfect as the revelation was, it must nevertheless be recorded here before this explanatory narrative closes with the events of the next day at Limmeridge House.

  Lady Glyde’s recollection of the events which followed her departure from Blackwater Park began with her arrival at the London terminus of the South Western Railway. She had omitted to make a memorandum beforehand of the day on which she took the journey. All hope of fixing that important date, by any evidence of hers, or of Mrs. Michelson’s, must be given up for lost.

  On the arrival of the train at the platform, Lady Glyde found Count Fosco waiting for her. He was at the carriage door as soon as the porter could open it. The train was unusually crowded, and there was great confusion in getting the luggage. Some person whom Count Fosco brought with him procured the luggage which belonged to Lady Glyde. It was marked with her name. She drove away alone with the Count, in a vehicle which she did not particularly notice at the time.

  Her first question, on leaving the terminus, referred to Miss Halcombe. The Count informed her that Miss Halcombe had not yet gone to Cumberland; after-consideration having caused him to doubt the prudence of her taking so long a journey without some days’ previous rest.

  Lady Glyde next inquired whether her sister was then staying in the Count’s house. Her recollection of the answer was confused, her only distinct impression in relation to it being that the Count declared he was then taking her to see Miss Halcombe. Lady Glyde’s experience of London was so limited, that she could not tell, at the time, through what streets they were driving. But they never left the streets, and they never passed any gardens or trees. When the carriage stopped, it stopped in a small street, behind a square—a square in which there were shops, and public buildings, and many people. From these recollections (of which Lady Glyde was certain) it seems quite clear that Count Fosco did not take her to his own residence in the suburb of St. John’s Wood.

  They entered the house, and went up-stairs to a back room, either on the first or second floor. The luggage was carefully brought in. A female servant opened the door; and a man with a dark beard, apparently a foreigner, met them in the hall, and with great politeness showed them the way up-stairs. In answer to Lady Glyde’s inquiries, the Count assured her that Miss Halcombe was in the house, and that she should be immediately informed of her sister’s arrival. He and the foreigner then went away and left her by herself in the room. It was poorly furnished as a sitting-room, and it looked out on the backs of houses.

  The place was remarkably quiet; no footsteps went up or down the stairs—she only heard in the room beneath her a dull, rumbling sound of men’s voices talking. Before she had been long left alone, the Count returned, to explain that Miss Halcombe was then taking rest, and could not be disturbed for a little while. He was accompanied into the room by a gentleman (an Englishman) whom he begged to present as a friend of his.

  After this singular introduction—in the course of which no names, to the best of Lady Glyde’s recollection, had been mentioned—she was left alone with the stranger. He was perfectly civil; but he startled and confused her by some odd questions about herself, and by looking at her, while he asked them, in a strange manner. After remaining a short time, he went out; and a minute or two afterwards a second stranger—also an Englishman—came in. This person introduced himself as another friend of Count Fosco’s; and he, in his turn, looked at her very oddly, and asked some curious questions—never, as well as she could remember, addressing her by name; and going out again, after a little while, like the first man. By this time, she was so frightened about herself, and so uneasy about her sister, that she had thoughts of venturing down stairs again, and claiming the protection and assistance of the only woman she had seen in the house—the servant who answered the door.

  Just as she had risen from her chair, the Count came back into the room.

  The moment he appeared, she asked anxiously how long the meeting between her sister and herself was to be still delayed. At first, he returned an evasive answer; but, on being pressed, he acknowledged, with great apparent reluctance, that Miss Halcombe was by no means so well as he had hitherto represented her to be. His tone and manner, in making this reply, so alarmed Lady Glyde, or rather so painfully increased the uneasiness which she had felt in the company of the two strangers, that a sudden faintness overcame her, and she was obliged to ask for a glass of water. The Count called from the door for water, and for a bottle of smelling-salts. Both were brought in by the foreign-looking man with the beard. The water, when Lady Glyde attempted to drink it, had so strange a taste that it increased her faintness; and she hastily took the bottle of salts from Count Fosco, and smelt at it. Her head became giddy on the instant. The Count caught the bottle as it dropped out of her hand; and the last impression of which she was conscious was that he held it to her nostrils again.

  From this point, her recollections were found to be confused, fragmentary, and difficult to reconcile with any reasonable pr
obability.

  Her own impression was that she recovered her senses later in the evening; that she then left the house; that she went (as she had previously arranged to go, at Blackwater Park) to Mrs. Vesey’s; that she drank tea there; and that she passed the night under Mrs. Vesey’s roof. She was totally unable to say how, or when, or in what company, she left the house to which Count Fosco had brought her. But she persisted in asserting that she had been to Mrs. Vesey’s; and, still more extraordinary, that she had been helped to undress and get to bed by Mrs. Rubelle! She could not remember what the conversation was at Mrs. Vesey’s, or whom she saw there besides that lady, or why Mrs. Rubelle should have been present in the house to help her.

  Her recollection of what happened to her the next morning was still more vague and unreliable.

  She had some dim idea of driving out (at what hour she could not say) with Count Fosco—and with Mrs. Rubelle, again, for a female attendant. But when, and why, she left Mrs. Vesey she could not tell; neither did she know what direction the carriage drove in, or where it set her down, or whether the Count and Mrs. Rubelle did or did not remain with her all the time she was out. At this point in her sad story there was a total blank. She had no impressions of the faintest kind to communicate—no idea whether one day, or more than one day, had passed—until she came to herself suddenly in a strange place, surrounded by women who were all unknown to her.

  This was the Asylum. Here she first heard herself called by Anne Catherick’s name; and here, as a last remarkable circumstance in the story of the conspiracy, her own eyes informed her that she had Anne Catherick’s clothes on. The nurse, on the first night in the Asylum, had shown her the marks on each article of her underclothing as it was taken off, and had said, not at all irritably or unkindly, ‘Look at your own name on your own clothes, and don’t worry us all any more about being Lady Glyde. She’s dead and buried; and you’re alive and hearty. Do look at your clothes now! There it is, in good marking ink; and there you will find it on all your old things, which we have kept in the house—Anne Catherick, as plain as print!’ And there it was, when Miss Halcombe examined the linen her sister wore, on the night of their arrival at Limmeridge House.

  These were the only recollections—all of them uncertain, and some of them contradictory—which could be extracted from Lady Glyde, by careful questioning, on the journey to Cumberland. Miss Halcombe abstained from pressing her with any inquiries relating to events in the Asylum: her mind being but too evidently unfit to bear the trial of reverting to them. It was known, by the voluntary admission of the owner of the madhouse, that she was received there on the twenty-seventh of July. From that date, until the fifteenth of October (the day of her rescue), she had been under restraint; her identity with Anne Catherick systematically asserted, and her sanity, from first to last, practically denied. Faculties less delicately balanced, constitutions less tenderly organised, must have suffered under such an ordeal as this. No man could have gone through it, and come out of it unchanged.

  Arriving at Limmeridge late on the evening of the fifteenth, Miss Halcombe wisely resolved not to attempt the assertion of Lady Glyde’s identity, until the next day.

  The first thing in the morning, she went to Mr. Fairlie’s room; and, using all possible cautions and preparations beforehand, at last told him, in so many words, what had happened. As soon as his first astonishment and alarm had subsided, he angrily declared that Miss Halcombe had allowed herself to be duped by Anne Catherick. He referred her to Count Fosco’s letter, and to what she had herself told him of the personal resemblance between Anne and his deceased niece; and he positively declined to admit to his presence even for one minute only, a madwoman whom it was an insult and an outrage to have brought into his house at all.

  Miss Halcombe left the room; waited till the first heat of her indignation had passed away; decided, on reflection, that Mr. Fairlie should see his niece in the interests of common humanity, before he closed his doors on her as a stranger; and thereupon, without a word of previous warning, took Lady Glyde with her to his room. The servant was posted at the door to prevent their entrance; but Miss Halcombe insisted on passing him, and made her way into Mr. Fairlie’s presence, leading her sister by the hand.

  The scene that followed, though it only lasted for a few minutes, was too painful to be described—Miss Halcombe herself shrank from referring to it. Let it be enough to say that Mr. Fairlie declared, in the most positive terms, that he did not recognise the woman who had been brought into his room; that he saw nothing in her face and manner to make him doubt for a moment that his niece lay buried in Limmeridge churchyard; and that he would call on the law to protect him if before the day was over she was not removed from the house.

  Taking the very worst view of Mr. Fairlie’s selfishness, indolence, and habitual want of feeling, it was manifestly impossible to suppose that he was capable of such infamy as secretly recognising and openly disowning his brother’s child. Miss Halcombe humanely and sensibly allowed all due force to the influence of prejudice and alarm in preventing him from fairly exercising his perceptions; and accounted for what had happened, in that way. But when she next put the servants to the test, and found that they too were, in every case, uncertain, to say the least of it, whether the lady presented to them was their young mistress, or Anne Catherick, of whose resemblance to her they had all heard, the sad conclusion was inevitable, that the change produced in Lady Glyde’s face and manner by her imprisonment in the Asylum, was far more serious than Miss Halcombe had at first supposed. The vile deception which had asserted her death defied exposure even in the house where she was born, and among the people with whom she had lived.

  In a less critical situation, the effort need not have been given up as hopeless, even yet.

  For example, the maid, Fanny, who happened to be then absent from Limmeridge, was expected back in two days; and there would be a chance of gaining her recognition to start with, seeing that she had been in much more constant communication with her mistress, and had been much more heartily attached to her than the other servants. Again, Lady Glyde might have been privately kept in the house, or in the village, to wait until her health was a little recovered, and her mind was a little steadied again. When her memory could be once more trusted to serve her, she would naturally refer to persons and events, in the past, with a certainty and a familiarity which no impostor could simulate; and so the fact of her identity, which her own appearance had failed to establish, might subsequently be proved, with time to help her, by the surer test of her own words.

  But the circumstances under which she had regained her freedom, rendered all recourse to such means as these simply impracticable. The pursuit from the Asylum, diverted to Hampshire for the time only, would infallibly next take the direction of Cumberland. The persons appointed to seek the fugitive, might arrive at Limmeridge House at a few hours’ notice; and in Mr. Fairlie’s present temper of mind, they might count on the immediate exertion of his local influence and authority to assist them. The commonest consideration for Lady Glyde’s safety, forced on Miss Halcombe the necessity of resigning the struggle to do her justice, and of removing her at once from the place of all others that was now most dangerous to her—the neighbourhood of her own home.

  An immediate return to London was the first and wisest measure of security which suggested itself In the great city all traces of them might be most speedily and most surely effaced. There were no preparations to make—no farewell words of kindness to exchange with any one. On the afternoon of that memorable day of the sixteenth, Miss Halcombe roused her sister to a last exertion of courage; and, without a living soul to wish them well at parting, the two took their way into the world alone, and turned their backs for ever on Limmeridge House.

  They had passed the hill above the churchyard, when Lady Glyde insisted on turning back to look her last at her mother’s grave. Miss Halcombe tried to shake her resolution; but, in this one instance, tried in vain. She was immovable. Her
dim eyes lit with a sudden fire, and flashed through the veil that hung over them; her wasted fingers strengthened, moment by moment, round the friendly arm by which they had held so listlessly till this time. I believe in my soul that the Hand of God was pointing their way back to them; and that the most innocent and the most afflicted of His creatures was chosen, in that dread moment, to see it.

  They retraced their steps to the burial-ground; and by that act sealed the future of our three lives.

  III

  THIS WAS THE STORY of the past—the story, so far as we knew it then.

  Two obvious conclusions presented themselves to my mind, after hearing it. In the first place, I saw darkly what the nature of the conspiracy had been; how chances had been watched, and how circumstances had been handled to ensure impunity to a daring and an intricate crime. While all details were still a mystery to me, the vile manner in which the personal resemblance between the woman in white and Lady Glyde had been turned to account, was clear beyond a doubt. It was plain that Anne Catherick had been introduced into Count Fosco’s house as Lady Glyde; it was plain that Lady Glyde had taken the dead woman’s place in the Asylum—the substitution having been so managed as to make innocent people (the doctor and the two servants certainly; and the owner of the madhouse in all probability) accomplices in the crime.

  The second conclusion came as the necessary consequence of the first. We three had no mercy to expect from Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde. The success of the conspiracy had brought with it a clear gain to those two men of thirty thousand pounds—twenty thousand to one: ten thousand to the other, through his wife. They had that interest, as well as other interests, in ensuring their impunity from exposure; and they would leave no stone unturned, no sacrifice unattempted, no treachery untried, to discover the place in which their victim was concealed, and to part her from the only friends she had in the world—Marian Halcombe and myself