Woman in White (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Wilkie Collins

  I parried the question as well as I could. It was impossible at this stage of the investigation to be too cautious; and it was just as well not to let Mr. Wansborough know prematurely that I had already examined the original register. I described myself, therefore, as pursuing a family inquiry, to the object of which every possible saving of time was of great importance. I was anxious to send certain particulars to London by that day’s post; and one look at the duplicate register (paying, of course, the necessary fees) might supply what I required, and save me a further journey to Old Welmingham. I added that, in the event of my subsequently requiring a copy of the original register, I should make application to Mr. Wansborough’s office to furnish me with the document.

  After this explanation, no objection was made to producing the copy. A clerk was sent to the strong room, and, after some delay, returned with the volume. It was of exactly the same size as the volume in the vestry; the only difference being that the copy was more smartly bound. I took it with me to an unoccupied desk. My hands were trembling—my head was burning hot—I felt the necessity of concealing my agitation as well as I could from the persons about me in the room, before I ventured on opening the book.

  On the blank page at the beginning, to which I first turned, were traced some lines, in faded ink. They contained these words:

  ‘Copy of the Marriage Register of Welmingham Parish Church. Executed under my orders; and afterwards compared, entry by entry, with the original, by myself. (Signed) Robert Wansborough, vestry-clerk.’ Below this note, there was a line added, in another handwriting, as follows: ‘Extending from the first of January, 1800, to the thirtieth of June, 1815.’

  I turned to the month of September, eighteen hundred and three. I found the marriage of the man whose Christian name was the same as my own. I found the double register of the marriages of the two brothers. And between these entries, at the bottom of the page—?

  Nothing! Not a vestige of the entry which recorded the marriage of Sir Felix Glyde and Cecilia Jane Elster, in the register of the church!

  My heart gave a great bound, and throbbed as if it would stifle me. I looked again—I was afraid to believe the evidence of my own eyes. No! not a doubt. The marriage was not there. The entries on the copy occupied exactly the same places on the page as the entries in the original. The last entry on one page recorded the marriage of the man with my Christian name. Below it, there was a blank space—a space evidently left because it was too narrow to contain the entry of the marriages of the two brothers, which in the copy, as in the original, occupied the top of the next page. That space told the whole story! There it must have remained, in the church register, from eighteen hundred and three (when the marriages had been solemnised and the copy had been made) to eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, when Sir Percival appeared at Old Welmingham. Here, at Knowlesbury, was the chance of committing the forgery, shown to me in the copy—and there, at Old Welmingham, was the forgery committed, in the register of the church!

  My head turned giddy; I held by the desk to keep myself from falling. Of all the suspicions which had struck me in relation to that desperate man, not one had been near the truth. The idea that he was not Sir Percival Glyde at all, that he had no more claim to the baronetcy and to Blackwater Park than the poorest labourer who worked on the estate, had never once occurred to my mind. At one time, I had thought he might be Anne Catherick’s father; at another time I had thought he might have been Anne Catherick’s husband—the offence of which he was really guilty had been, from first to last, beyond the widest reach of my imagination.

  The paltry means by which the fraud had been effected, the magnitude and daring of the crime that it represented, the horror of the consequences involved in its discovery, overwhelmed me. Who could wonder now at the brute-restlessness of the wretch’s life; at his desperate alternations between abject duplicity and reckless violence; at the madness of guilty distrust which had made him imprison Anne Catherick in the Asylum, and had given him over to the vile conspiracy against his wife, on the bare suspicion that the one and the other knew his terrible secret? The disclosure of that secret might, in past years, have hanged him—might now transport him for life.ea The disclosure of that secret, even if the sufferers by his deception spared him the penalties of the law, would deprive him, at one blow, of the name, the rank, the estate, the whole social existence that he had usurped. This was the Secret, and it was mine! A word from me; and house, lands, baronetcy, were gone from him for ever—a word from me, and he was driven out into the world, a nameless, penniless, friendless outcast! The man’s whole future hung on my lips—and he knew it by this time as certainly as I did!

  That last thought steadied me. Interests far more precious than my own, depended on the caution which must now guide my slightest actions. There was no possible treachery which Sir Percival might not attempt against me. In the danger and desperation of his position, he would be staggered by no risks, he would recoil at no crime—he would, literally, hesitate at nothing to save himself.

  I considered for a minute. My first necessity was to secure positive evidence, in writing, of the discovery that I had just made, and, in the event of any personal misadventure happening to me, to place that evidence beyond Sir Percival’s reach. The copy of the register was sure to be safe in Mr. Wansborough’s strong room. But the position of the original, in the vestry, was, as I had seen with my own eyes, anything but secure.

  In this emergency, I resolved to return to the church, to apply again to the clerk, and to take the necessary extract from the register, before I slept that night. I was not then aware that a legally-certified copy was necessary, and that no document merely drawn out by myself could claim the proper importance, as a proof. I was not aware of this; and my determination to keep my present proceedings a secret, prevented me from asking any questions which might have procured the necessary information. My one anxiety was the anxiety to get back to Old Welmingham. I made the best excuses I could for the discomposure in my face and manner, which Mr. Wansborough had already noticed; laid the necessary fee on his table; arranged that I should write to him in a day or two; and left the office, with my head in a whirl, and my blood throbbing through my veins at fever heat.

  It was just getting dark. The idea occurred to me that I might be followed again, and attacked on the high road.

  My walking-stick was a light one, of little or no use for purposes of defence. I stopped, before leaving Knowlesbury, and bought a stout country cudgel, short, and heavy at the head. With this homely weapon, if any one man tried to stop me, I was a match for him. If more than one attacked me, I could trust to my heels. In my school-days, I had been a noted runner—and I had not wanted for practice since, in the later time of my experience in Central America.

  I started from the town at a brisk pace, and kept the middle of the road.

  A small misty rain was falling; and it was impossible, for the first half of the way, to make sure whether I was followed or not. But at the last half of my journey, when I supposed myself to be about two miles from the church, I saw a man run by me in the rain—and then heard the gate of a field by the roadside, shut to sharply. I kept straight on, with my cudgel ready in my hand, my ears on the alert, and my eyes straining to see through the mist and the darkness. Before I had advanced a hundred yards, there was a rustling in the hedge on my right, and three men sprang out into the road.

  I drew aside on the instant to the footpath. The two foremost men were carried beyond me, before they could check themselves. The third was as quick as lightning. He stopped—half turned—and struck at me with his stick. The blow was aimed at hazard, and was not a severe one. It fell on my left shoulder. I returned it heavily on his head. He staggered back, and jostled his two companions, just as they were both rushing at me. This circumstance gave me a moment’s start. I slipped by them, and took to the middle of the road again, at the top of my speed.

  The two unhurt men pursued me. They were both good runners; the road
was smooth and level; and, for the first five minutes or more, I was conscious that I did not gain on them. It was perilous work to run for long in the darkness. I could barely see the dim black line of the hedges on either side; and any chance obstacle in the road would have thrown me down to a certainty. Ere long, I felt the ground changing: it descended from the level, at a turn, and then rose again beyond. Down-hill, the men rather gained on me; but, up-hill, I began to distance them. The rapid, regular thump of their feet grew fainter on my ear; and I calculated by the sound that I was far enough in advance to take to the fields, with a good chance of their passing me in the darkness. Diverging to the footpath, I made for the first break that I could guess at, rather than see, in the hedge. It proved to be a closed gate. I vaulted over, and finding myself in a field, kept across it steadily, with my back to the road. I heard the men pass the gate, still running-then, in a minute more, heard one of them call to the other to come back. It was no matter what they did, now; I was out of their sight and out of their hearing. I kept straight across the field, and, when I had reached the further extremity of it, waited there for a minute to recover my breath.

  It was impossible to venture back to the road; but I was determined, nevertheless, to get to Old Welmingham that evening.

  Neither moon nor stars appeared to guide me. I only knew that I had kept the wind and rain at my back on leaving Knowlesbury—and if I now kept them at my back still, I might at least be certain of not advancing altogether in the wrong direction.

  Proceeding on this plan, I crossed the country—meeting with no worse obstacles than hedges, ditches, and thickets, which every now and then obliged me to alter my course for a little while—until I found myself on a hill-side, with the ground sloping away steeply before me. I descended to the bottom of the hollow, squeezed my way through a hedge, and got out into a lane. Having turned to the right on leaving the road, I now turned to the left, on the chance of regaining the line from which I had wandered. After following the muddy windings of the lane for ten minutes or more, I saw a cottage with a light in one of the windows. The garden gate was open to the lane; and I went in at once to inquire my way.

  Before I could knock at the door, it was suddenly opened, and a man came running out with a lighted lantern in his hand. He stopped and held it up at the sight of me. We both started as we saw each other. My wanderings had led me round the outskirts of the village, and had brought me out at the lower end of it. I was back at Old Welmingham; and the man with the lantern was no other than my acquaintance of the morning, the parish clerk.

  His manner appeared to have altered strangely, in the interval since I had last seen him. He looked suspicious and confused; his ruddy cheeks were deeply flushed; and his first words, when he spoke, were quite unintelligible to me.

  ‘Where are the keys?’ he asked. ‘Have you taken them?’

  ‘What keys?’ I repeated. ‘I have this moment come from Knowlesbury What keys do you mean?’

  ‘The keys of the vestry Lord save us and help us! what shall I do? The keys are gone! Do you hear?’ cried the old man, shaking the lantern at me in his agitation; ‘the keys are gone!’

  ‘How? When? Who can have taken them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the clerk, staring about him wildly in the darkness. ‘I’ve only just got back. I told you I had a long day’s work this morning—I locked the door, and shut the window down—it’s open now, the window’s open. Look! somebody has got in there, and taken the keys.’

  He turned to the casement window to show me that it was wide open. The door of the lantern came loose from its fastening as he swayed it round; and the wind blew the candle out instantly.

  ‘Get another light,’ I said; ‘and let us both go to the vestry together. Quick! quick!’

  I hurried him into the house. The treachery that I had every reason to expect, the treachery that might deprive me of every advantage I had gained, was, at that moment, perhaps, in process of accomplishment. My impatience to reach the church was so great, that I could not remain inactive in the cottage while the clerk lit the lantern again. I walked out, down the garden path, into the lane.

  Before I had advanced ten paces, a man approached me from the direction leading to the church. He spoke respectfully as we met. I could not see his face; but, judging by his voice only, he was a perfect stranger to me.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Sir Percival—’ he began.

  I stopped him before he could say more.

  ‘The darkness misleads you,’ I said. ‘I am not Sir Percival.’

  The man drew back directly.

  ‘I thought it was my master,’ he muttered, in a confused, doubtful way.

  ‘You expected to meet your master here?’

  ‘I was told to wait in the lane.’

  With that answer, he retraced his steps. I looked back at the cottage, and saw the clerk coming out, with the lantern lighted once more. I took the old man’s arm to help him on the more quickly. We hastened along the lane, and passed the person who had accosted me. As well as I could see by the light of the lantern, he was a servant out of livery.

  ‘Who’s that?’ whispered the clerk. ‘Does he know anything about the keys?’

  ‘We won’t wait to ask him,’ I replied. ‘We will go on to the vestry first.’

  The church was not visible, even by day-time, until the end of the lane was reached. As we mounted the rising ground which led to the building from that point, one of the village children—a boy—came close up to us, attracted by the light we carried, and recognised the clerk.

  ‘I say, measter,’ said the boy, pulling officiously at the clerk’s coat, ‘there be summun up yander in the church. I heerd un lock the door on hisself—I heerd un strike a loight wi’ a match.’

  The clerk trembled, and leaned against me heavily.

  ‘Come! come!’ I said, encouragingly.‘We are not too late. We will catch the man, whoever he is. Keep the lantern, and follow me as fast as you can.’

  I mounted the hill rapidly. The dark mass of the church-tower was the first object I discerned dimly against the night sky. As I turned aside to get round to the vestry, I heard heavy footsteps close to me. The servant had ascended to the church after us. ‘I don’t mean any harm,’ he said, when I turned round on him; ‘I’m only looking for my master.’ The tones in which he spoke betrayed unmistakable fear. I took no notice of him, and went on.

  The instant I turned the corner, and came in view of the vestry, I saw the lantern-skylight on the roof brilliantly lit up from within. It shone out with dazzling brightness against the murky, starless sky.

  I hurried through the churchyard to the door.

  As I got near, there was a strange smell stealing out on the damp night air. I heard a snapping noise inside—I saw the light above grow brighter and brighter—a pane of the glass cracked—I ran to the door, and put my hand on it. The vestry was on fire!

  Before I could move, before I could draw my breath after that discovery, I was horror-struck by a heavy thump against the door, from the inside. I heard the key worked violently in the lock—I heard a man’s voice, behind the door, raised to a dreadful shrillness, screaming for help.

  The servant, who had followed me, staggered back shuddering, and dropped to his knees. ‘Oh, my God!’ he said; ‘it’s Sir Percival!’

  As the words passed his lips, the clerk joined us—and, at the same moment, there was another, and a last, grating turn of the key in the lock.

  ‘The Lord have mercy on his soul!’ said the old man. ‘He is doomed and dead. He has hampered the lock.’eb

  I rushed to the door. The one absorbing purpose that had filled all my thoughts, that had controlled all my actions, for weeks and weeks past, vanished in an instant from my mind. All remembrance of the heartless injury the man’s crimes had inflicted; of the love, the innocence, the happiness he had pitilessly laid waste; of the oath I had sworn in my own heart to summon him to the terrible reckoning that he deserved—passed from my memo
ry like a dream. I rememberednothing but the horror of his situation. I felt nothing but the natural human impulse to save him from a frightful death.

  ‘Try the other door!’ I shouted. ‘Try the door into the church! The lock’s hampered. You’re a dead man if you waste another moment on it!’

  There had been no renewed cry for help, when the key was turned for the last time. There was no sound, now, of any kind, to give token that he was still alive. I heard nothing but the quickening crackle of the flames, and the sharp snap of the glass in the skylight above.

  I looked round at my two companions. The servant had risen to his feet: he had taken the lantern, and was holding it up vacantly at the door. Terror seemed to have struck him with downright idiocy—he waited at my heels, he followed me about when I moved, like a dog. The clerk sat crouched up on one of the tombstones, shivering, and moaning to himself The one moment in which I looked at them was enough to show me that they were both helpless.

  Hardly knowing what I did, acting desperately on the first impulse that occurred to me, I seized the servant and pushed him against the vestry wall. ‘Stoop!’ I said, ‘and hold by the stones. I am going to climb over you to the roof—I am going to break the skylight, and give him some air!’

  The man trembled from head to foot, but he held firm. I got on his back, with my cudgel in my mouth; seized the parapet with both hands; and was instantly on the roof. In the frantic hurry and agitation of the moment, it never struck me that I might let out the flame instead of letting in the air. I struck at the skylight, and battered in the cracked, loosened glass at a blow. The fire leaped out like a wild beast from its lair. If the wind had not chanced, in the position I occupied, to set it away from me, my exertions might have ended then and there. I crouched on the roof as the smoke poured out above me, with the flame. The gleams and flashes of the light showed me the servant’s face staring up vacantly under the wall; the clerk risen to his feet on the tombstone, wringing his hands in despair; and the scanty population of the village, haggard men and terrified women, clustered beyond in the churchyard—all appearing and disappearing, in the red of the dreadful glare, in the black of the choking smoke. And the man beneath my feet!—the man, suffocating, burning, dying so near us all, so utterly beyond our reach!