Woman in White (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Wilkie Collins

  IX

  I LEFT THE HOUSE, feeling that Mrs. Catherick had helped me a step forward, in spite of herself. Before I had reached the turning which led out of the square, my attention was suddenly aroused by the sound of a closing door behind me.

  I looked round, and saw an undersized man in black, on the door-step of a house, which, as well as I could judge, stood next to Mrs. Catherick’s place of abode—next to it, on the side nearest to me. The man did not hesitate a moment about the direction he should take. He advanced rapidly towards the turning at which I had stopped. I recognised him as the lawyer’s clerk who had preceded me in my visit to Blackwater Park, and who had tried to pick a quarrel with me, when I asked him if I could see the house.

  I waited where I was, to ascertain whether his object was to come to close quarters and speak, on this occasion. To my surprise, he passed on rapidly, without saying a word, without even looking up in my face as he went by. This was such a complete inversion of the course of proceeding which I had every reason to expect on his part, that my curiosity, or rather my suspicion, was aroused, and I determined, on my side, to keep him cautiously in view, and to discover what the business might be on which he was now employed. Without caring whether he saw me or not, I walked after him. He never looked back; and he led me straight through the streets to the railway station.

  The train was on the point of starting, and two or three passengers who were late were clustering round the small opening through which the tickets were issued. I joined them, and distinctly heard the lawyer’s clerk demand a ticket for the Blackwater station. I satisfied myself that he had actually left by the train, before I came away.

  There was only one interpretation that I could place on what I had just seen and heard. I had unquestionably observed the man leaving a house which closely adjoined Mrs. Catherick’s residence. He had been probably placed there, by Sir Percival’s directions, as a lodger, in anticipation of my inquiries leading me, sooner or later, to communicate with Mrs. Catherick. He had doubtless seen me go in and come out; and he had hurried away by the first train to make his report at Blackwater Park—to which place Sir Percival would naturally betake himself (knowing what he evidently knew of my movements), in order to be ready on the spot, if I returned to Hampshire. Before many days were over, there seemed every likelihood, now, that he and I might meet.

  Whatever result events might be destined to produce, I resolved to pursue my own course, straight to the end in view, without stopping or turning aside, for Sir Percival, or for any one. The great responsibility which weighed on me heavily in London—the responsibility of so guiding my slightest actions as to prevent them from leading accidentally to the discovery of Laura’s place of refuge—was removed, now that I was in Hampshire. I could go and come as I pleased, at Welmingham; and if I chanced to fail in observing any necessary precautions, the immediate results, at least, would affect no one but myself.

  When I left the station, the winter evening was beginning to close in. There was little hope of continuing my inquiries after dark to any useful purpose, in a neighbourhood that was strange to me. Accordingly, I made my way to the nearest hotel, and ordered my dinner and my bed. This done, I wrote to Marian, to tell her that I was safe and well, and that I had fair prospects of success. I had directed her, on leaving home, to address the first letter she wrote to me (the letter I expected to receive the next morning) to ‘The Post-office, Welmingham’; and I now begged her to send her second day’s letter to the same address. I could easily receive it, by writing to the post-master, if I happened to be away from the town when it arrived.

  The coffee-room of the hotel, as it grew late in the evening, became a perfect solitude. I was left to reflect on what I had accomplished that afternoon, as uninterruptedly as if the house had been my own. Before I retired to rest, I had attentively thought over my extraordinary interview with Mrs. Catherick, from beginning to end; and had verified, at my leisure, the conclusions which I had hastily drawn in the earlier part of the day.

  The vestry of Old Welmingham church was the starting-point from which my mind slowly worked its way back through all that I had heard Mrs. Catherick say, and through all I had seen Mrs. Catherick do.

  At the time when the neighbourhood of the vestry was first referred to in my presence by Mrs. Clements, I had thought it the strangest and most unaccountable of all places for Sir Percival to select for a clandestine meeting with the clerk’s wife. Influenced by this impression, and by no other, I had mentioned ‘the vestry of the church’, before Mrs. Catherick, on pure speculation—it represented one of the minor peculiarities of the story, which occurred to me while I was speaking. I was prepared for her answering me confusedly, or angrily; but the blank terror that seized her, when I said the words, took me completely by surprise. I had, long before, associated Sir Percival’s Secret with the concealment of a serious crime, which Mrs. Catherick knew of—but I had gone no farther than this. Now, the woman’s paroxysm of terror associated the crime, either directly or indirectly, with the vestry, and convinced me that she had been more than the mere witness of it—she was also the accomplice, beyond a doubt.

  What had been the nature of the crime? Surely there was a contemptible side to it, as well as a dangerous side—or Mrs. Catherick would not have repeated my own words, referring to Sir Percival’s rank and power, with such marked disdain as she had certainly displayed. It was a contemptible crime, then, and a dangerous crime; and she had shared in it, and it was associated with the vestry of the church.

  The next consideration to be disposed of led me a step farther from this point.

  Mrs. Catherick’s undisguised contempt for Sir Percival plainly extended to his mother as well. She had referred, with the bitterest sarcasm, to the great family he had descended from—‘especially by the mother’s side’. What did this mean? There appeared to be only two explanations of it. Either his mother’s birth had been low? Or his mother’s reputation was damaged by some hidden flaw with which Mrs. Catherick and Sir Percival were both privately acquainted? I could only put the first explanation to the test by looking at the register of her marriage, and so ascertaining her maiden name and her parentage, as a preliminary to further inquiries.

  On the other hand, if the second case supposed were the true one, what had been the flaw in her reputation? Remembering the account which Marian had given me of Sir Percival’s father and mother, and of the suspiciously unsocial secluded life they had both led, I now asked myself, whether it might not be possible that his mother had never been married at all. Here, again, the register might, by offering written evidence of the marriage, prove to me, at any rate, that this doubt had no foundation in truth. But where was the register to be found? At this point, I took up the conclusions which I had previously formed; and the same mental process which had discovered the locality of the concealed crime, now lodged the register, also, in the vestry of Old Welmingham church.

  These were the results of my interview with Mrs. Catherick—these were the various considerations, all steadily converging to one point, which decided the course of my proceedings on the next day.

  The morning was cloudy and lowering, but no rain fell. I left my bag at the hotel, to wait there till I called for it; and, after inquiring the way, set forth on foot for Old Welmingham church.

  It was a walk of rather more than two miles, the ground rising slowly all the way.

  On the highest point stood the church—an ancient, weather-beaten building, with heavy buttresses at its sides, and a clumsy square tower in front. The vestry, at the back, was built out from the church, and seemed to be of the same age. Round the building, at intervals, appeared the remains of the village which Mrs. Clements had described to me as her husband’s place of abode in former years, and which the principal inhabitants had long since deserted for the new town. Some of the empty houses had been dismantled to their outer walls; some had been left to decay with time; and some were still inhabited by persons evidently of the poores
t class. It was a dreary scene—and yet, in the worst aspect of its ruin, not so dreary as the modern town that I had just left. Here, there was the brown, breezy sweep of surrounding fields for the eye to repose on; here the trees, leafless as they were, still varied the monotony of the prospect, and helped the mind to look forward to summer-time and shade.

  As I moved away from the back of the church, and passed some of the dismantled cottages in search of a person who might direct me to the clerk, I saw two men saunter out after me, from behind a wall. The tallest of the two—a stout muscular man in the dress of a game-keeper—was a stranger to me. The other was one of the men who had followed me in London, on the day when I left Mr. Kyrle’s office. I had taken particular notice of him at the time; and I felt sure that I was not mistaken in identifying the fellow on this occasion.

  Neither he nor his companion attempted to speak to me, and both kept themselves at a respectful distance—but the motive of their presence in the neighbourhood of the church was plainly apparent. It was exactly as I had supposed—Sir Percival was already prepared for me. My visit to Mrs. Catherick had been reported to him the evening before; and those two men had been placed on the look-out, near the church, in anticipation of my appearance at Old Welmingham. If I had wanted any further proof that my investigations had taken the right direction at last, the plan now adopted for watching me would have supplied it.

  I walked on, away from the church, till I reached one of the inhabited houses, with a patch of kitchen garden attached to it, on which a labourer was at work. He directed me to the clerk’s abode—a cottage, at some little distance off, standing by itself on the outskirts of the forsaken village. The clerk was in-doors, and was just putting on his great-coat.dt He was a cheerful, familiar, loudly-talkative old man, with a very poor opinion (as I soon discovered) of the place in which he lived, and a happy sense of superiority to his neighbours in virtue of the great personal distinction of having once been in London.

  ‘It’s well you came so early, sir,’ said the old man, when I had mentioned the object of my visit. ‘I should have been away in ten minutes more. Parish business, sir—and a goodish long trot before it’s all done, for a man at my age. But, bless you, I’m strong on my legs, still! As long as a man don’t give at his legs, there’s a deal of work left in him. Don’t you think so, yourself, sir?’

  He took his keys down, while he was talking, from a hook behind the fireplace, and locked his cottage door behind us.

  ‘Nobody at home to keep house for me,’ said the clerk, with a cheerful sense of perfect freedom from all family encumbrances. ‘My wife’s in the churchyard, there; and my children are all married. A wretched place this, isn’t it, sir? But the parish is a large one—every man couldn’t get through the business as I do. It’s learning does it; and I’ve had my share, and a little more. I can talk the Queen’s English du (God bless the Queen!)—and that’s more than most of the people about here can do. You’re from London, I suppose, sir? I’ve been in London, a matter of five-and-twenty year ago. What’s the news there, now, if you please?’

  Chattering on in this way, he led me back to the vestry. I looked about, to see if the two spies were still in sight. They were not visible anywhere. After having discovered my application to the clerk, they had probably concealed themselves where they could watch my next proceedings in perfect freedom.

  The vestry door was of stout old oak, studded with strong nails; and the clerk put his large heavy key into the lock, with the air of a man who knew that he had a difficulty to encounter, and who was not quite certain of creditably conquering it.

  ‘I’m obliged to bring you this way, sir,’ he said, ‘because the door from the vestry to the church is bolted on the vestry side. We might have got in through the church, otherwise. This is a perverse lock, if ever there was one yet. It’s big enough for a prison-door; it’s been hampered over and over again; and it ought to be changed for a new one. I’ve mentioned that to the churchwarden fifty times over at least; he’s always saying “I’ll see about it”—and he never does see. Ah, it’s a sort of lost corner, this place. Not like London—is it, sir? Bless you, we are all asleep here! We don’t march with the times.’

  After some twisting and turning of the key, the heavy lock yielded; and he opened the door.

  The vestry was larger than I should have supposed it to be, judgingfrom the outside only. It was a dim, mouldy, melancholy old room, with a low, raftered ceiling. Round two sides of it, the sides nearest to the interior of the church, ran heavy wooden presses,dv worm-eaten and gaping with age. Hooked to the inner corner of one of these presses hung several surplices, all bulging out at their lower ends in an irreverent-looking bundle of limp drapery. Below the surplices, on the floor, stood three packing-cases, with the lids half off, half on, and the straw profusely bursting out of their cracks and crevices in every direction. Behind them, in a corner, was a litter of dusty papers; some large and rolled up, like architects’ plans; some loosely strung together on files, like bills or letters. The room had once been lighted by a small side window; but this had been bricked up, and a lantern skylightdwwas now substituted for it. The atmosphere of the place was heavy and mouldy; being rendered additionally oppressive by the closing of the door which led into the church. This door also was composed of solid oak, and was bolted, at top and bottom, on the vestry side.

  ‘We might be tidier, mightn’t we, sir?’ said the cheerful clerk. ‘But when you’re in a lost corner of a place like this, what are you to do? Why, look here, now—just look at these packing-cases. There they’ve been, for a year or more, ready to go down to London—there they are, littering the place—and there they’ll stop as long as the nails hold them together. I’ll tell you what, sir, as I said before, this is not London. We are all asleep here. Bless you, we don’t march with the times!’

  ‘What is there in the packing-cases?’ I asked.

  ‘Bits of old wood carvings from the pulpit, and panels from the chancel,‡ and images from the organ loft,’ said the clerk. ‘Portraits of the twelve apostles in wood—and not a whole nose among ’em. All broken, and worm-eaten, and crumbling to dust at the edges—as brittle as crockery, sir, and as old as the church, if not older.’

  ‘And why were they going to London? To be repaired?’

  ‘That’s it, sir. To be repaired; and where they were past repair, to be copied in sound wood. But, bless you, the money fell short—and there they are, waiting for new subscriptions, and nobody to subscribe. It was all done a year ago, sir. Six gentlemen dined together about it, at the hotel in the new town. They made speeches, and passed resolutions, and put their names down, and printed off thousands of prospectuses. Beautiful prospectuses, sir, all flourished over with Gothic devicesdx in red ink, saying it was a disgrace not to restore the church and repair the famous carvings, and so on. There are the prospectuses that couldn’t be distributed, and the architect’s plans and estimates, and the whole correspondence which set everybody at loggerheads and ended in a dispute, all down together in that corner, behind the packing-cases. The money dribbled in a little at first—but what can you expect out of London? There was just enough, you know, to pack the broken carvings, and get the estimates, and pay the printer’s bill—and after that, there wasn’t a halfpenny left. There the things are, as I said before. We have nowhere else to put them—nobody in the new town cares about accommodating us—we’re in a lost corner—and this is an untidy vestry—and who’s to help it?—that’s what I want to know.’

  My anxiety to examine the register did not dispose me to offer much encouragement to the old man’s talkativeness. I agreed with him that nobody could help the untidiness of the vestry—and then suggested that we should proceed to our business without more delay.

  ‘Ay, ay, the marriage register, to be sure,’ said the clerk, taking a little bunch of keys from his pocket. ‘How far do you want to look back, sir?’

  Marian had informed me of Sir Percival’s age, at the time when we
had spoken together of his marriage engagement with Laura. She had then described him as being forty-five years old. Calculating back from this, and making due allowance for the year that had passed since I had gained my information, I found that he must have been born in eighteen hundred and four, and that I might safely start on my search through the register from that date.

  ‘I want to begin with the year eighteen hundred and four,’ I said.

  ‘Which way after that, sir?’ asked the clerk. ‘Forwards to our time, or backwards away from us.’

  ‘Backwards from eighteen hundred and four.’

  He opened the door of one of the presses—the press from the side of which the surplices were hanging—and produced a large volume bound in greasy brown leather. I was struck by the insecurity of the place in which the register was kept. The door of the press was warped and cracked with age; and the lock was of the smallest and commonest kind. I could have forced it easily with the walking-stick I carried in my hand.

  ‘Is that considered a sufficiently secure place for the register?’ I inquired. ‘Surely, a book of such importance as this ought to be protected by a better lock, and kept carefully in an iron safe?’

  ‘Well, now, that’s curious!’ said the clerk, shutting up the book again, just after he had opened it, and smacking his hand cheerfully on the cover. ‘Those were the very words my old master was always saying years and years ago, when I was a lad. “Why isn’t the register” (meaning this register here, under my hand)—“why isn’t it kept in an iron safe?” If I’ve heard him say that once, I’ve heard him say it a hundred times. He was the solicitor, in those days, sir, who had the appointment of vestry-clerk to this church. A fine hearty old gentleman—and the most particular man breathing. As long as he lived, he kept a copy of this book, in his office at Knowlesbury, and had it posted up regular, from time to time, to correspond with the fresh entries here. You would hardly think it, but he had his own appointed days, once or twice, in every quarter, for riding over to this church on his old white pony to check the copy, by the register, with his own eyes and hands. “How do I know” (he used to say)—“how do I know that the register in this vestry may not be stolen or destroyed? Why isn’t it kept in an iron safe? Why can’t I make other people as careful as I am myself? Some of these days there will be an accident happen—and when the register’s lost, then the parish will find out the value of my copy.” He used to take his pinch of snuff after that, and look about him as bold as a lord. Ah! the like of him for doing business isn’t easy to find now. You may go to London, and not match him, even there. Which year did you say, sir? Eighteen hundred and what?’