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

by Lynn Shepherd

  I sat down at once to write the letter, expressing myself in it as civilly, as clearly, and as briefly as possible. Mr. Fairlie did not hurry his reply. Nearly an hour elapsed before the answer was placed in my hands. It was written with beautiful regularity and neatness of character, in violet-coloured ink, on note-paper as smooth as ivory and almost as thick as cardboard; and it addressed me in these terms:—

  “Mr. Fairlie’s compliments to Mr. Hartright. Mr. Fairlie is more surprised and disappointed than he can say (in the present state of his health) by Mr. Hartright’s application. Mr. Fairlie is not a man of business, but he has consulted his steward, who is, and that person confirms Mr. Fairlie’s opinion that Mr. Hartright’s request to be allowed to break his engagement cannot be justified by any necessity whatever, excepting perhaps a case of life and death. If the highly-appreciative feeling towards Art and its professors, which it is the consolation and happiness of Mr. Fairlie’s suffering existence to cultivate, could be easily shaken, Mr. Hartright’s present proceeding would have shaken it. It has not done so—except in the instance of Mr. Hartright himself.

  “Having stated his opinion—so far, that is to say, as acute nervous suffering will allow him to state anything—Mr. Fairlie has nothing to add but the expression of his decision, in reference to the highly irregular application that has been made to him. Perfect repose of body and mind being to the last degree important in his case, Mr. Fairlie will not suffer Mr. Hartright to disturb that repose by remaining in the house under circumstances of an essentially irritating nature to both sides. Accordingly, Mr. Fairlie waives his right of refusal, purely with a view to the preservation of his own tranquillity—and informs Mr. Hartright that he may go.”

  I folded the letter up, and put it away with my other papers. The time had been when I should have resented it as an insult: I accepted it, now, as a written release from my engagement. It was off my mind, it was almost out of my memory, when I went down stairs to the breakfast-room, and informed Miss Halcombe that I was ready to walk with her to the farm.

  “Has Mr. Fairlie given you a satisfactory answer?” she asked, as we left the house.

  “He has allowed me to go, Miss Halcombe.”

  She looked up at me quickly; and then, for the first time since I had known her, took my arm of her own accord. No words could have expressed so delicately that she understood how the permission to leave my employment had been granted, and that she gave me her sympathy, not as my superior, but as my friend. I had not felt the man’s insolent letter; but I felt deeply the woman’s atoning kindness.

  On our way to the farm we arranged that Miss Halcombe was to enter the house alone, and that I was to wait outside, within call. We adopted this mode of proceeding from an apprehension that my presence, after what had happened in the churchyard the evening before, might have the effect of renewing Anne Catherick’s nervous dread, and of rendering her additionally distrustful of the advances of a lady who was a stranger to her. Miss Halcombe left me, with the intention of speaking, in the first instance, to the farmer’s wife (of whose friendly readiness to help her in any way she was well assured), while I waited for her in the near neighbourhood of the house.

  I had fully expected to be left alone, for some time. To my surprise, however, little more than five minutes had elapsed, before Miss Halcombe returned.

  “Does Anne Catherick refuse to see you?” I asked, in astonishment.

  “Anne Catherick is gone,” replied Miss Halcombe.

  “Gone!”

  “Gone, with Mrs. Clements. They both left the farm at eight o’clock this morning.”

  I could say nothing—I could only feel that our last chance of discovery had gone with them.

  “All that Mrs. Todd knows about her guests, I know,” Miss Halcombe went on; “and it leaves me, as it leaves her, in the dark. They both came back safe, last night, after they left you, and they passed the first part of the evening with Mr. Todd’s family, as usual. Just before supper-time, however, Anne Catherick startled them all by being suddenly seized with faintness. She had had a similar attack of a less alarming kind, on the day she arrived at the farm; and Mrs. Todd had connected it, on that occasion, with something she was reading at the time in our local newspaper, which lay on the farm table, and which she had taken up only a minute or two before.”

  “Does Mrs. Todd know what particular passage in the newspaper affected her in that way?” I inquired.

  “No,” replied Miss Halcombe. “She had looked it over, and had seen nothing in it to agitate any one. I asked leave, however, to look it over in my turn; and at the very first page I opened, I found that the editor had enriched his small stock of news by drawing upon our family affairs, and had published my sister’s marriage engagement, among his other announcements, copied from the London papers, of Marriages in High Life. I concluded at once that this was the paragraph which had so strangely affected Anne Catherick; and I thought I saw in it, also, the origin of the letter which she sent to our house the next day.”

  “There can be no doubt in either case. But what did you hear about her second attack of faintness yesterday evening?”

  “Nothing. The cause of it is a complete mystery. There was no stranger in the room. The only visitor was our dairymaid, who, as I told you, is one of Mr. Todd’s daughters; and the only conversation was the usual gossip about local affairs. They heard her cry out, and saw her turn deadly pale, without the slightest apparent reason. Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Clements took her up-stairs; and Mrs. Clements remained with her. They were heard talking together until long after the usual bedtime; and, early this morning, Mrs. Clements took Mrs. Todd aside, and amazed her beyond all power of expression, by saying that they must go. The only explanation Mrs. Todd could extract from her guest was, that something had happened, which was not the fault of any one at the farm-house, but which was serious enough to make Anne Catherick resolve to leave Limmeridge immediately. It was quite useless to press Mrs. Clements to be more explicit. She only shook her head, and said that, for Anne’s sake, she must beg and pray that no one would question her. All she could repeat, with every appearance of being seriously agitated herself, was that Anne must go, that she must go with her, and that the destination to which they might both betake themselves must be kept a secret from everybody. I spare you the recital of Mrs. Todd’s hospitable remonstrances and refusals. It ended in her driving them both to the nearest station, more than three hours since. She tried hard, on the way, to get them to speak more plainly; but without success. And she set them down outside the station-door, so hurt and offended by the unceremonious abruptness of their departure and their unfriendly reluctance to place the least confidence in her, that she drove away in anger, without so much as stopping to bid them good-by. That is exactly what has taken place. Search your own memory, Mr. Hartright, and tell me if anything happened in the burial-ground yesterday evening which can at all account for the extraordinary departure of those two women this morning.”

  “I should like to account first, Miss Halcombe, for the sudden change in Anne Catherick which alarmed them at the farm-house, hours after she and I had parted, and when time enough had elapsed to quiet any violent agitation that I might have been unfortunate enough to cause. Did you inquire particularly about the gossip which was going on in the room when she turned faint?”

  “Yes. But Mrs. Todd’s household affairs seem to have divided her attention, that evening, with the talk in the farm-house parlour. She could only tell me that it was ‘just the news’—meaning, I suppose, that they all talked as usual about each other.”

  “The dairymaid’s memory may be better than her mother’s,” I said. “It may be as well for you to speak to the girl, Miss Halcombe, as soon as we get back.”

  My suggestion was acted on the moment we returned to the house. Miss Halcombe led me round to the servants’ offices, and we found the girl in the dairy, with her sleeves tucked up to her shoulders, cleaning a large milk-pan, and singing blithely over her wor
k.

  “I have brought this gentleman to see your dairy, Hannah,” said Miss Halcombe. “It is one of the sights of the house, and it always does you credit.”

  The girl blushed and curtseyed, and said, shyly, that she hoped she always did her best to keep things neat and clean.

  “We have just come from your father’s,” Miss Halcombe continued. “You were there yesterday evening, I hear; and you found visitors at the house?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “One of them was taken faint and ill, I am told? I suppose nothing was said or done to frighten her? You were not talking of anything very terrible, were you?”

  “Oh, no, miss!” said the girl, laughing. “We were only talking of the news.”

  “Your sisters told you the news at Todd’s Corner, I suppose?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “And you told them the news at Limmeridge House?”

  “Yes, miss. And I’m quite sure nothing was said to frighten the poor thing, for I was talking when she was taken ill. It gave me quite a turn, miss, to see it, never having been taken faint myself.”

  Before any more questions could be put to her, she was called away to receive a basket of eggs at the dairy door. As she left us, I whispered to Miss Halcombe:

  “Ask her if she happened to mention, last night, that visitors were expected at Limmeridge House.”

  Miss Halcombe showed me, by a look, that she understood, and put the question as soon as the dairymaid returned to us.

  “Oh, yes, miss; I mentioned that,” said the girl, simply. “The company coming, and the accident to the brindled cow, was all the news I had to take to the farm.”

  “Did you mention names? Did you tell them that Sir Percival Glyde was expected on Monday?”

  “Yes, miss—I told them Sir Percival Glyde was coming.

  I hope there was no harm in it; I hope I didn’t do wrong.”

  “Oh no, no harm. Come, Mr. Hartright; Hannah will begin to think us in the way, if we interrupt her any longer over her work.”

  We stopped and looked at one another, the moment we were alone again.

  “Is there any doubt in your mind, now, Miss Halcombe?”

  “Sir Percival Glyde shall remove that doubt, Mr. Hartright—or, Laura Fairlie shall never be his wife.”

  XIV

  As we walked round to the front of the house, a fly from the railway approached us along the drive. Miss Halcombe waited on the door-steps until the fly drew up; and then advanced to shake hands with an old gentleman, who got out briskly the moment the steps were let down. Mr. Gilmore had arrived.

  I looked at him when we were introduced to each other, with an interest and a curiosity which I could hardly conceal. This old man was to remain at Limmeridge House after I had left it; he was to hear Sir Percival Glyde’s explanation, and was to give Miss Halcombe the assistance of his experience in forming her judgment; he was to wait until the question of the marriage was set at rest; and his hand, if that question were decided in the affirmative, was to draw the settlement which bound Miss Fairlie irrevocably to her engagement. Even then, when I knew nothing by comparison with what I know now, I looked at the family lawyer with an interest which I had never felt before in the presence of any man breathing who was a total stranger to me.

  In external appearance, Mr. Gilmore was the exact opposite of the conventional idea of an old lawyer. His complexion was florid; his white hair was worn rather long and kept carefully brushed; his black coat, waistcoat, and trousers, fitted him with perfect neatness; his white cravat was carefully tied; and his lavender-coloured kid gloves might have adorned the hands of a fashionable clergyman, without fear and without reproach. His manners were pleasantly marked by the formal grace and refinement of the old school of politeness, quickened by the invigorating sharpness and readiness of a man whose business in life obliges him always to keep his faculties in good working order. A sanguine constitution and fair prospects to begin with; a long subsequent career of creditable and comfortable prosperity; a cheerful, diligent, widely-respected old age—such were the general impressions I derived from my introduction to Mr. Gilmore; and it is but fair to him to add, that the knowledge I gained by later and better experience only tended to confirm them.

  I left the old gentleman and Miss Halcombe to enter the house together, and to talk of family matters undisturbed by the restraint of a stranger’s presence. They crossed the hall on their way to the drawing-room; and I descended the steps again, to wander about the garden alone.

  My hours were numbered at Limmeridge House; my departure the next morning was irrevocably settled; my share in the investigation which the anonymous letter had rendered necessary, was at an end. No harm could be done to any one but myself, if I let my heart loose again, for the little time that was left me, from the cold cruelty of restraint which necessity had forced me to inflict upon it, and took my farewell of the scenes which were associated with the brief dream-time of my happiness and my love.

  I turned instinctively to the walk beneath my study-window, where I had seen her the evening before with her little dog; and followed the path which her dear feet had trodden so often, till I came to the wicket gate that led into her rose garden. The winter bareness spread drearily over it, now. The flowers that she had taught me to distinguish by their names, the flowers that I had taught her to paint from, were gone; and the tiny white paths that led between the beds, were damp and green already. I went on to the avenue of trees, where we had breathed together the warm fragrance of August evenings; where we had admired together the myriad combinations of shade and sunlight that dappled the ground at our feet. The leaves fell about me from the groaning branches, and the earthy decay in the atmosphere chilled me to the bones. A little farther on, and I was out of the grounds, and following the lane that wound gently upward to the nearest hills. The old felled tree by the wayside, on which we had sat to rest, was sodden with rain; and the tuft of ferns and grasses which I had drawn for her, nestling under the rough stone wall in front of us, had turned to a pool of water stagnating round an islet of draggled weeds. I gained the summit of the hill; and looked at the view which we had so often admired in the happier time. It was cold and barren—it was no longer the view that I remembered. The sunshine of her presence was far from me; the charm of her voice no longer murmured in my ear. She had talked to me, on the spot from which I now looked down, of her father, who was her last surviving parent; had told me how fond of each other they had been, and how sadly she missed him still, when she entered certain rooms in the house, and when she took up forgotten occupations and amusements with which he had been associated. Was the view that I had seen, while listening to those words, the view that I saw now, standing on the hill-top by myself? I turned, and left it; I wound my way back again, over the moor, and round the sandhills, down to the beach. There was the white rage of the surf, and the multitudinous glory of the leaping waves—but where was the place on which she had once drawn idle figures with her parasol in the sand; the place where we had sat together, while she talked to me about myself and my home, while she asked me a woman’s minutely observant questions about my mother and my sister, and innocently wondered whether I should ever leave my lonely chambers and have a wife and a house of my own? Wind and wave had long since smoothed out the trace of her which she had left in those marks on the sand. I looked over the wide monotony of the sea-side prospect, and the place in which we two had idled away the sunny hours, was as lost to me as if I had never known it, as strange to me as if I stood already on a foreign shore.

  The empty silence of the beach struck cold to my heart. I returned to the house and the garden, where traces were left to speak of her at every turn.

  On the west terrace walk, I met Mr. Gilmore. He was evidently in search of me, for he quickened his pace when we caught sight of each other. The state of my spirits little fitted me for the society of a stranger. But the meeting was inevitable; and I resigned myself to make the best of it.

 
; “You are the very person I wanted to see,” said the old gentleman. “I had two words to say to you, my dear sir; and, if you have no objection, I will avail myself of the present opportunity. To put it plainly, Miss Halcombe and I have been talking over family affairs—affairs which are the cause of my being here—and, in the course of our conversation, she was naturally led to tell me of this unpleasant matter connected with the anonymous letter, and of the share which you have most creditably and properly taken in the proceedings so far. That share, I quite understand, gives you an interest which you might not otherwise have felt, in knowing that the future management of the investigation, which you have begun, will be placed in safe hands. My dear sir, make yourself quite easy on that point—it will be placed in my hands.”

  “You are, in every way, Mr. Gilmore, much fitter to advise and to act in the matter than I am. Is it an indiscretion, on my part, to ask if you have decided yet on a course of proceeding?”

  “So far as it is possible to decide, Mr. Hartright, I have decided. I mean to send a copy of the letter, accompanied by a statement of the circumstances, to Sir Percival Glyde’s solicitor in London, with whom I have some acquaintance. The letter itself, I shall keep here, to show to Sir Percival as soon as he arrives. The tracing of the two women, I have already provided for, by sending one of Mr. Fairlie’s servants—a confidential person—to the station to make inquiries: the man has his money and his directions, and he will follow the women in the event of his finding any clue. This is all that can be done until Sir Percival comes on Monday. I have no doubt myself that every explanation which can be expected from a gentleman and a man of honour, he will readily give. Sir Percival stands very high, sir,—an eminent position, a reputation above suspicion—I feel quite easy about results; quite easy, I am rejoiced to assure you. Things of this sort happen constantly in my experience. Anonymous letters—unfortunate woman—sad state of society. I don’t deny that there are peculiar complications in this case; but the case itself is, most unhappily, common—common.”