The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  There, crouched up in the farthest corner, lay the forlorn cause of my terror, in the shape of a poor little dog—a black and white spaniel. The creature moaned feebly when I looked at it and called to it, but never stirred. I moved away the seat and looked closer. The poor little dog’s eyes were glazing fast, and there were spots of blood on its glossy white side. The misery of a weak, helpless, dumb creature is surely one of the saddest of all the mournful sights which this world can show. I lifted the poor dog in my arms as gently as I could, and contrived a sort of makeshift hammock for him to lie in, by gathering up the front of my dress all round him. In this way, I took the creature, as painlessly as possible, and as fast as possible, back to the house.

  Finding no one in the hall, I went up at once to my own sitting-room, made a bed for the dog with one of my old shawls, and rang the bell. The largest and fattest of all possible housemaids answered it, in a state of cheerful stupidity which would have provoked the patience of a saint. The girl’s fat, shapeless face actually stretched into a broad grin, at the sight of the wounded creature on the floor.

  “What do you see there to laugh at?” I asked, as angrily as if she had been a servant of my own. “Do you know whose dog it is?”

  “No, miss, that I certainly don’t.” She stopped, and looked down at the spaniel’s injured side—brightened suddenly with the irradiation of a new idea—and, pointing to the wound with a chuckle of satisfaction, said, “That’s Baxter’s doings, that is.”

  I was so exasperated that I could have boxed her ears. “Baxter?” I said. “Who is the brute you call Baxter?”

  The girl grinned again, more cheerfully than ever. “Bless you, miss! Baxter’s the keeper; and when he finds strange dogs hunting about he takes and shoots ’em. It’s keeper’s dooty, miss. I think that dog will die. Here’s where he’s been shot, ain’t it? That’s Baxter’s doings, that is. Baxter’s doings, miss, and Baxter’s dooty.”

  I was almost wicked enough to wish that Baxter had shot the housemaid instead of the dog. Seeing that it was quite useless to expect this densely impenetrable personage to give me any help in relieving the suffering creature at our feet, I told her to request the housekeeper’s attendance, with my compliments. She went out exactly as she had come in, grinning from ear to ear. As the door closed on her, she said to herself, softly, “It’s Baxter’s doings and Baxter’s dooty—that’s what it is.”

  The housekeeper, a person of some education and intelligence, thoughtfully brought up-stairs with her some milk and some warm water. The instant she saw the dog on the floor, she started and changed colour.

  “Why, Lord bless me,” cried the housekeeper, “that must be Mrs. Catherick’s dog!”

  “Whose?” I asked, in the utmost astonishment.

  “Mrs. Catherick’s. You seem to know Mrs. Catherick, Miss Halcombe?”

  “Not personally. But I have heard of her. Does she live here? Has she had any news of her daughter?”

  “No, Miss Halcombe. She came here to ask for news.”

  “When?”

  “Only yesterday. She said some one had reported that a stranger answering to the description of her daughter had been seen in our neighbourhood. No such report has reached us here; and no such report was known in the village, when I sent to make inquiries there on Mrs. Catherick’s account. She certainly brought this poor little dog with her when she came; and I saw it trot out after her when she went away. I suppose the creature strayed into the plantations, and got shot. Where did you find it, Miss Halcombe?”

  “In the old shed that looks out on the lake.”

  “Ah, yes, that is the plantation side, and the poor thing dragged itself, I suppose, to the nearest shelter, as dogs will, to die. If you can moisten its lips with the milk, Miss Halcombe, I will wash the clotted hair from the wound. I am very much afraid it is too late to do any good. However, we can but try.”

  Mrs. Catherick! The name still rang in my ears, as if the housekeeper had only that moment surprised me by uttering it. While we were attending to the dog, the words of Walter Hartright’s caution to me returned to my memory. “If ever Anne Catherick crosses your path, make better use of the opportunity, Miss Halcombe, than I made of it.” The finding of the wounded spaniel had led me already to the discovery of Mrs. Catherick’s visit to Blackwater Park; and that event might lead, in its turn, to something more. I determined to make the most of the chance which was now offered me, and to gain as much information as I could.

  “Did you say that Mrs. Catherick lived anywhere in this neighbourhood?” I asked.

  “Oh, dear, no,” said the housekeeper. “She lives at Welmingham; quite at the other end of the county—five-and-twenty miles off at least.”

  “I suppose you have known Mrs. Catherick for some years?”

  “On the contrary, Miss Halcombe; I never saw her before she came here, yesterday. I had heard of her, of course, because I had heard of Sir Percival’s kindness in putting her daughter under medical care. Mrs. Catherick is rather a strange person in her manners, but extremely respectable-looking. She seemed sorely put out, when she found that there was no foundation—none, at least, that any of us could discover—for the report of her daughter having been seen in this neighbourhood.”

  “I am rather interested about Mrs. Catherick,” I went on, continuing the conversation as long as possible. “I wish I had arrived here soon enough to see her yesterday. Did she stay for any length of time?”

  “Yes,” said the housekeeper, “she stayed for some time. And I think she would have remained longer, if I had not been called away to speak to a strange gentleman—a gentleman who came to ask when Sir Percival was expected back. Mrs. Catherick got up and left at once, when she heard the maid tell me what the visitor’s errand was. She said to me, at parting, that there was no need to tell Sir Percival of her coming here. I thought that rather an odd remark to make, especially to a person in my responsible situation.”

  I thought it an odd remark, too. Sir Percival had certainly led me to believe, at Limmeridge, that the most perfect confidence existed between himself and Mrs. Catherick. If that was the case, why should she be anxious to have her visit at Blackwater Park kept a secret from him?

  “Probably,” I said, seeing that the housekeeper expected me to give my opinion on Mrs. Catherick’s parting words; “probably, she thought the announcement of her visit might vex Sir Percival to no purpose, by reminding him that her lost daughter was not found yet. Did she talk much on that subject?”

  “Very little,” replied the housekeeper. “She talked principally of Sir Percival, and asked a great many questions about where he had been travelling, and what sort of lady his new wife was. She seemed to be more soured and put out than distressed, by failing to find any traces of her daughter in these parts. ‘I give her up,’ were the last words she said that I can remember; ‘I give her up, ma’am, for lost.’ And from that, she passed at once to her questions about Lady Glyde; wanting to know if she was a handsome, amiable lady, comely and healthy and young—Ah, dear! I thought how it would end. Look, Miss Halcombe! The poor thing is out of its misery at last!”

  The dog was dead. It had given a faint, sobbing cry, it had suffered an instant’s convulsion of the limbs, just as those last words, “comely and healthy and young,” dropped from the housekeeper’s lips. The change had happened with startling suddenness—in one moment, the creature lay lifeless under our hands.

  Eight o’clock. I have just returned from dining down stairs, in solitary state. The sunset is burning redly on the wilderness of trees that I see from my window; and I am poring over my journal again, to calm my impatience for the return of the travellers. They ought to have arrived, by my calculations, before this. How still and lonely the house is in the drowsy evening quiet! Oh, me! How many minutes more before I hear the carriage-wheels and run down stairs to find myself in Laura’s arms?

  The poor little dog! I wish my first day at Blackwater Park had not been associated with death—th
ough it is only the death of a stray animal.

  Welmingham—I see, on looking back through these private pages of mine, that Welmingham is the name of the place where Mrs. Catherick lives. Her note is still in my possession, the note in answer to that letter about her unhappy daughter which Sir Percival obliged me to write. One of these days, when I can find a safe opportunity, I will take the note with me by way of introduction, and try what I can make of Mrs. Catherick at a personal interview. I don’t understand her wishing to conceal her visit to this place from Sir Percival’s knowledge; and I don’t feel half so sure, as the housekeeper seems to do, that her daughter Anne is not in the neighbourhood, after all. What would Walter Hartright have said in this emergency? Poor, dear Hartright! I am beginning to feel the want of his honest advice and his willing help, already.

  Surely, I heard something? Yes! There is a bustle of footsteps below stairs. I hear the horses’ feet; I hear the rolling of wheels. Away with my journal and my pen and ink! The travellers have returned—my darling Laura is home again at last!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  June 15th.—The confusion of their arrival has had time to subside. Two days have elapsed since the return of the travellers; and that interval has sufficed to put the new machinery of our lives at Blackwater Park in fair working order. I may now return to my journal, with some little chance of being able to continue the entries in it as collectedly as usual.

  I think I must begin by putting down an odd remark, which has suggested itself to me since Laura came back.

  When two members of a family, or two intimate friends, are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been travelling, always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage, when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems, at first, to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side. After the first happiness of my meeting with Laura was over, after we had sat down together, hand in hand, to recover breath enough and calmness enough to talk, I felt this strangeness instantly, and I could see that she felt it too. It has partially worn away, now that we have fallen back into most of our old habits; and it will probably disappear before long. But it has certainly had an influence over the first impressions that I have formed of her, now that we are living together again—for which reason only I have thought fit to mention it here.

  She has found me unaltered; but I have found her changed.

  Changed in person, and, in one respect, changed in character. I cannot absolutely say that she is less beautiful than she used to be: I can only say that she is less beautiful to me. Others, who do not look at her with my eyes and my recollections, would probably think her improved. There is more colour, and more decision and roundness of outline in her face than there used to be; and her figure seems more firmly set, and more sure and easy in all its movements than it was in her maiden days. But I miss something when I look at her—something that once belonged to the happy, innocent life of Laura Fairlie, and that I cannot find in Lady Glyde. There was, in the old times, a freshness, a softness, an ever-varying and yet ever-remaining tenderness of beauty in her face, the charm of which it is not possible to express in words—or, as poor Hartright used often to say, in painting, either. This is gone. I thought I saw the faint reflection of it, for a moment, when she turned pale under the agitation of our sudden meeting, on the evening of her return; but it has never reappeared since. None of her letters had prepared me for a personal change in her. On the contrary, they had led me to expect that her marriage had left her, in appearance at least, quite unaltered. Perhaps, I read her letters wrongly, in the past, and am now reading her face wrongly, in the present? No matter? Whether her beauty has gained, or whether it has lost, in the last six months, the separation, either way, has made her own dear self more precious to me than ever—and that is one good result of her marriage, at any rate!

  The second change, the change that I have observed in her character, has not surprised me, because I was prepared for it, in this case, by the tone of her letters. Now that she is at home again, I find her just as unwilling to enter into any details on the subject of her married life, as I had previously found her, all through the time of our separation, when we could only communicate with each other by writing. At the first approach I made to the forbidden topic, she put her hand on my lips, with a look and gesture which touchingly, almost painfully, recalled to my memory the days of her girlhood and the happy bygone time when there were no secrets between us.

  “Whenever you and I are together, Marian,” she said, “we shall both be happier and easier with one another, if we accept my married life for what it is, and say and think as little about it as possible. I would tell you everything, darling, about myself,” she went on, nervously buckling and unbuckling the ribbon round my waist, “if my confidences could only end there. But they could not—they would lead me into confidences about my husband, too; and, now I am married, I think I had better avoid them, for his sake, and for your sake, and for mine. I don’t say that they would distress you, or distress me—I wouldn’t have you think that for the world. But—I want to be so happy, now I have got you back again; and I want you to be so happy too——”

  She broke off abruptly, and looked round the room, my own sitting-room, in which we were talking. “Ah!” she cried, clapping her hands with a bright smile of recognition, “another old friend found already! Your bookcase, Marian—your dear-little-shabby-old-satin-wood bookcase—how glad I am you brought it with you from Limmeridge! And your workbox, just as untidy as ever! And the horrid, heavy, man’s umbrella, that you always would walk out with when it rained! And, first and foremost of all, your own dear, dark, clever, gipsy-face, looking at me just as usual! It is so like home again to be here. How can we make it more like home still? I will put my father’s portrait in your room instead of in mine—and I will keep all my little treasures from Limmeridge here—and we will pass hours and hours every day with these four friendly walls round us. Oh, Marian!” she said, suddenly seating herself on a footstool at my knees, and looking up earnestly in my face, “promise you will never marry, and leave me. It is selfish to say so, but you are so much better off as a single woman—unless—unless you are very fond of your husband—but you won’t be very fond of anybody but me, will you?” She stopped again; crossed my hands on my lap; and laid her face on them. “Have you been writing many letters, and receiving many letters, lately?” she asked, in low, suddenly-altered tones. I understood what the question meant; but I thought it my duty not to encourage her by meeting her half way. “Have you heard from him?” she went on, coaxing me to forgive the more direct appeal on which she now ventured, by kissing my hands, upon which her face still rested. “Is he well and happy, and getting on in his profession? Has he recovered himself—and forgotten me?”

  She should not have asked those questions. She should have remembered her own resolution, on the morning when Sir Percival held her to her marriage engagement, and when she resigned the book of Hartright’s drawings into my hands for ever. But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back? Where is the woman who has ever really torn from her heart the image that has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books tell us that such unearthly creatures have existed—but what does our own experience say in answer to books?

  I made no attempt to remonstrate with her: perhaps, because I sincerely appreciated the fearless candour which let me see, what other women in her position might have had reasons for concealing even from their dearest friends—perhaps, because I felt, in my own heart and conscience, that, in her place I should
have asked the same questions and had the same thoughts. All I could honestly do was to reply that I had not written to him or heard from him lately, and then to turn the conversation to less dangerous topics.

  There had been much to sadden me in our interview—my first confidential interview with her since her return. The change which her marriage has produced in our relations towards each other, by placing a forbidden subject between us, for the first time in our lives; the melancholy conviction of the dearth of all warmth of feeling, of all close sympathy, between her husband and herself, which her own unwilling words now force on my mind; the distressing discovery that the influence of that ill-fated attachment still remains (no matter how innocently, how harmlessly) rooted as deeply as ever in her heart—all these are disclosures to sadden any woman who loves her as dearly, and feels for her as acutely, as I do. There is only one consolation to set against them—a consolation that ought to comfort me, and that does comfort me. All the graces and gentleness of her character; all the frank affection of her nature; all the sweet, simple, womanly charms which used to make her the darling and the delight of every one who approached her, have come back to me with herself. Of my other impressions I am sometimes a little inclined to doubt. Of this last, best, happiest of all impressions, I grow more and more certain, every hour in the day.

  Let me turn, now, from her to her travelling companions. Her husband must engage my attention first. What have I observed in Sir Percival, since his return, to improve my opinion of him?

  I can hardly say. Small vexations and annoyances seem to have beset him since he came back; and no man, under those circumstances, is ever presented at his best. He looks, as I think, thinner than he was when he left England. His wearisome cough and his comfortless restlessness have certainly increased. His manner—at least, his manner towards me—is much more abrupt than it used to be. He greeted me, on the evening of his return, with little or nothing of the ceremony and civility of former times—no polite speeches of welcome—no appearance of extraordinary gratification at seeing me—nothing but a short shake of the hand, and a sharp “How-d’ye-do, Miss Halcombe—glad to see you again.” He seemed to accept me as one of the necessary fixtures of Blackwater Park; to be satisfied at finding me established in my proper place; and then to pass me over altogether.