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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “You said, the other day, that Mrs. Clements had told you everything she knew. In that case, there is no need for me to write about the trumpery scandal by which I was the sufferer—the innocent sufferer, I positively assert. You must know as well as I do what the notion was which my husband took into his head, when he found me and my fine-gentleman acquaintance meeting each other privately, and talking secrets together. But what you don’t know, is how it ended between that same gentleman and myself. You shall read, and see how he behaved to me.

  “The first words I said to him, when I saw the turn things had taken, were, ‘Do me justice—clear my character of a stain on it which you know I don’t deserve. I don’t want you to make a clean breast of it to my husband—only tell him, on your word of honour as a gentleman, that he is wrong, and that I am not to blame in the way he thinks I am. Do me that justice, at least, after all I have done for you.’ He flatly refused, in so many words. He told me, plainly, that it was his interest to let my husband and all my neighbours believe the falsehood—because, as long as they did so, they were quite certain never to suspect the truth. I had a spirit of my own; and I told him they should know the truth from my lips. His reply was short, and to the point. If I spoke, I was a lost woman, as certainly as he was a lost man.

  “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 had 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, presently.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  PART THE SECOND. HARTRIGHT’S NARRATIVE

  MRS. CATHERICK’S LETTER CONCLUDED

  I must begin this fresh page, Mr. Hartright, by expressing my 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 overfond of my late daughter. She was a worry and an incumbrance to me from first to last, with the additional disadvantage of being always weak in the head.

  “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’s 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), whom you and I know of, 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 uppe
rmost, 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 connexion 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 are trifles, of little or no interest to you after what you have heard already.

  “So far, I have written in the friendliest possible spirit. But I cannot close this letter without adding a word here of serious remonstrance and reproof, addressed to yourself. In the course of your personal interview with me, you audaciously referred to my late daughter’s parentage, on the father’s side, as if that parentage was a matter of doubt. This was highly improper and very ungentlemanlike on your part! If we see each other again, remember, if you please, that I will allow no liberties to be taken with my reputation, and that the moral atmosphere of Welmingham (to use a favourite expression of my friend the rector’s) must not be tainted by loose conversation of any kind. If you allow yourself to doubt that my husband was Anne’s father, you personally insult me in the grossest manner. If you have felt, and if you still continue to feel, an unhallowed curiosity on this subject, I recommend you, in your own interests, to check it at once and for ever. On this side of the grave, Mr. Hartright, whatever may happen on the other, that curiosity will never be gratified.

  “Perhaps, after what I have just said, you will see the necessity of writing me an apology. Do so; and I will willingly receive it. I will, afterwards, if
your wishes point to a second interview with me, go a step farther, and receive you. My circumstances only enable me to invite you to tea—not that they are at all altered for the worse by what has happened. I have always lived, as I think I told you, well within my income; and I have saved enough, in the last twenty years, to make me quite comfortable for the rest of my life. It is not my intention to leave Welmingham. There are one or two little advantages which I have still to gain in the town. The clergyman bows to me—as you saw. He is married; and his wife is not quite so civil. I propose to join the Dorcas Society; and I mean to make the clergyman’s wife bow to me next.

  “If you favour me with your company, pray understand that the conversation must be entirely on general subjects. Any attempted reference to this letter will be quite useless—I am determined not to acknowledge having written it. The evidence has been destroyed in the fire, I know; but I think it desirable to err on the side of caution, nevertheless. On this account, no names are mentioned here, nor is any signature attached to these lines: the handwriting is disguised throughout, and I mean to deliver the letter myself, under circumstances which will prevent all fear of its being traced to my house. You can have no possible cause to complain of these precautions; seeing that they do not affect the information I here communicate, in consideration of the special indulgence which you have deserved at my hands. My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”