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

by Lynn Shepherd

  Sad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that ever laughed the day through; and to see her now, in the flower of her age and her beauty, so broken and so brought down as this!

  In the distress that she caused me, I forgot the years that had passed, and the change they had made in our position towards one another. I moved my chair close to her, and picked up her handkerchief from the carpet, and drew her hands from her face gently. “Don’t cry, my love,” I said, and dried the tears that were gathering in her eyes, with my own hand, as if she had been the little Laura Fairlie of ten long years ago.

  It was the best way I could have taken to compose her. She laid her head on my shoulder, and smiled faintly through her tears.

  “I am very sorry for forgetting myself,” she said, artlessly. “I have not been well—I have felt sadly weak and nervous lately; and I often cry without reason, when I am alone. I am better now; I can answer you as I ought, Mr. Gilmore, I can indeed.”

  “No, no, my dear,” I replied; “we will consider the subject as done with, for the present. You have said enough to sanction my taking the best possible care of your interests; and we can settle details at another opportunity. Let us have done with business, now, and talk of something else.”

  I led her at once into speaking on other topics. In ten minutes’ time, she was in better spirits; and I rose to take my leave.

  “Come here again,” she said, earnestly. “I will try to be worthier of your kind feeling for me and for my interests if you will only come again.”

  Still clinging to the past—the past which I represented to her, in my way, as Miss Halcombe did in hers! It troubled me sorely to see her looking back, at the beginning of her career, just as I look back, at the end of mine.

  “If I do come again, I hope I shall find you better,” I said—“better and happier. God bless you, my dear.”

  She only answered by putting up her cheek to me to be kissed. Even lawyers have hearts; and mine ached a little as I took leave of her.

  The whole interview between us had hardly lasted more than half an hour—she had not breathed a word, in my presence, to explain the mystery of her evident distress and dismay at the prospect of her marriage—and yet she had contrived to win me over to her side of the question, I neither knew how nor why. I had entered the room, feeling that Sir Percival Glyde had fair reason to complain of the manner in which she was treating him. I left it, secretly hoping that matters might end in her taking him at his word and claiming her release. A man of my age and experience ought to have known better than to vacillate in this unreasonable manner. I can make no excuse for myself; I can only tell the truth, and say—so it was.

  The hour for my departure was now drawing near. I sent to Mr. Fairlie to say that I would wait on him to take leave if he liked, but that he must excuse my being rather in a hurry. He sent a message back, written in pencil on a slip of paper: “Kind love and best wishes, dear Gilmore. Hurry of any kind is inexpressibly injurious to me. Pray take care of yourself. Good-by.”

  Just before I left, I saw Miss Halcombe, for a moment, alone.

  “Have you said all you wanted to Laura?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. “She is very weak and nervous—I am glad she has you to take care of her.”

  Miss Halcombe’s sharp eyes studied my face attentively.

  “You are altering your opinion about Laura,” she said. “You are readier to make allowances for her than you were yesterday.”

  No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman. I only answered:

  “Let me know what happens. I will do nothing till I hear from you.”

  She still looked hard in my face. “I wish it was all over, and well over, Mr. Gilmore—and so do you.” With those words she left me.

  Sir Percival most politely insisted on seeing me to the carriage door.

  “If you are ever in my neighbourhood,” he said, “pray don’t forget that I am sincerely anxious to improve our acquaintance. The tried and trusted old friend of this family will be always a welcome visitor in any house of mine.”

  A really irresistible man—courteous, considerate, delightfully free from pride—a gentleman, every inch of him. As I drove away to the station, I felt as if I could cheerfully do anything to promote the interests of Sir Percival Glyde—anything in the world, except drawing the marriage settlement of his wife.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GILMORE’S NARRATIVE CONCLUDED

  III

  A week passed, after my return to London, without the receipt of any communication from Miss Halcombe.

  On the eighth day, a letter in her handwriting was placed among the other letters on my desk.

  It announced that Sir Percival Glyde had been definitely accepted, and that the marriage was to take place, as he had originally desired, before the end of the year. In all probability the ceremony would be performed during the last fortnight in December. Miss Fairlie’s twenty-first birthday was late in March. She would, therefore, by this arrangement, become Sir Percival’s wife about three months before she was of age.

  I ought not to have been surprised, I ought not to have been sorry; but I was surprised and sorry, nevertheless. Some little disappointment, caused by the unsatisfactory shortness of Miss Halcombe’s letter, mingled itself with these feelings, and contributed its share towards upsetting my serenity for the day. In six lines my correspondent announced the proposed marriage; in three more, she told me that Sir Percival had left Cumberland to return to his house in Hampshire; and in two concluding sentences she informed me, first, that Laura was sadly in want of change and cheerful society; secondly, that she had resolved to try the effect of some such change forthwith, by taking her sister away with her on a visit to certain old friends in Yorkshire. There the letter ended, without a word to explain what the circumstances were which had decided Miss Fairlie to accept Sir Percival Glyde in one short week from the time when I had last seen her.

  At a later period, the cause of this sudden determination was fully explained to me. It is not my business to relate it imperfectly, on hearsay evidence. The circumstances came within the personal experience of Miss Halcombe; and, when her narrative succeeds mine, she will describe them in every particular, exactly as they happened. In the mean time, the plain duty for me to perform—before I, in my turn, lay down my pen and withdraw from the story—is to relate the one remaining event connected with Miss Fairlie’s proposed marriage in which I was concerned, namely, the drawing of the settlement.

  It is impossible to refer intelligibly to this document, without first entering into certain particulars, in relation to the bride’s pecuniary affairs. I will try to make my explanation briefly and plainly, and to keep it free from professional obscurities and technicalities. The matter is of the utmost importance. I warn all readers of these lines that Miss Fairlie’s inheritance is a very serious part of Miss Fairlie’s story; and that Mr. Gilmore’s experience, in this particular, must be their experience also, if they wish to understand the narratives which are yet to come.

  Miss Fairlie’s expectations, then, were of a twofold kind; comprising her possible inheritance of real property, or land, when her uncle died, and her absolute inheritance of personal property, or money, when she came of age.

  Let us take the land first.

  In the time of Miss Fairlie’s paternal grandfather (whom we will call Mr. Fairlie, the elder) the entailed succession to the Limmeridge estate stood thus:

  Mr. Fairlie, the elder, died and left three sons, Philip, Frederick, and Arthur. As eldest son, Philip succeeded to the estate. If he died without leaving a son, the property went to the second brother, Frederick. And if Frederick died also without leaving a son, the property went to the third brother, Arthur.

  As events turned out, Mr. Philip Fairlie died leaving an only daughter, the Laura of this story; and the estate, in consequence, went, in course of law, to the second brother, Frederick, a single man. The thir
d brother, Arthur, had died many years before the decease of Philip, leaving a son and a daughter. The son, at the age of eighteen, was drowned at Oxford. His death left Laura, the daughter of Mr. Philip Fairlie, presumptive heiress to the estate; with every chance of succeeding to it, in the ordinary course of nature, on her uncle Frederick’s death, if the said Frederick died without leaving male issue.

  Except in the event, then, of Mr. Frederick Fairlie’s marrying and leaving an heir (the two very last things in the world that he was likely to do), his niece, Laura, would have the property on his death; possessing, it must be remembered, nothing more than a life-interest in it. If she died single, or died childless, the estate would revert to her cousin Magdalen, the daughter of Mr. Arthur Fairlie. If she married, with a proper settlement—or, in other words, with the settlement I meant to make for her—the income from the estate (a good three thousand a year) would, during her lifetime, be at her own disposal. If she died before her husband, he would naturally expect to be left in the enjoyment of the income, for his lifetime. If she had a son, that son would be the heir, to the exclusion of her cousin Magdalen. Thus, Sir Percival’s prospects in marrying Miss Fairlie (so far as his wife’s expectations from real property were concerned) promised him these two advantages, on Mr. Frederick Fairlie’s death: First, the use of three thousand a year (by his wife’s permission, while she lived, and, in his own right, on her death, if he survived her); and, secondly, the inheritance of Limmeridge for his son, if he had one.

  So much for the landed property, and for the disposal of the income from it, on the occasion of Miss Fairlie’s marriage. Thus far, no difficulty or difference of opinion on the lady’s settlement was at all likely to arise between Sir Percival’s lawyer and myself.

  The personal estate, or, in other words, the money to which Miss Fairlie would become entitled on reaching the age of twenty-one years, is the next point to consider.

  This part of her inheritance was, in itself, a comfortable little fortune. It was derived under her father’s will, and it amounted to the sum of twenty thousand pounds. Besides this, she had a life-interest in ten thousand pounds more; which latter amount was to go, on her decease, to her aunt Eleanor, her father’s only sister. It will greatly assist in setting the family affairs before the reader in the clearest possible light, if I stop here for a moment, to explain why the aunt had been kept waiting for her legacy until the death of the niece.

  Mr. Philip Fairlie had lived on excellent terms with his sister Eleanor, as long as she remained a single woman. But when her marriage took place, somewhat late in life, and when that marriage united her to an Italian gentleman, named Fosco—or, rather, to an Italian nobleman, seeing that he rejoiced in the title of Count—Mr. Fairlie disapproved of her conduct so strongly that he ceased to hold any communication with her, and even went the length of striking her name out of his will. The other members of the family all thought this serious manifestation of resentment at his sister’s marriage more or less unreasonable. Count Fosco, though not a rich man, was not a penniless adventurer either. He had a small, but sufficient income of his own; he had lived many years in England; and he held an excellent position in society. These recommendations, however, availed nothing with Mr. Fairlie. In many of his opinions he was an Englishman of the old school; and he hated a foreigner, simply and solely because he was a foreigner. The utmost that he could be prevailed on to do, in after years, mainly at Miss Fairlie’s intercession, was to restore his sister’s name to its former place in his will, but to keep her waiting for her legacy by giving the income of the money to his daughter for life, and the money itself, if her aunt died before her, to her cousin Magdalen. Considering the relative ages of the two ladies, the aunt’s chance, in the ordinary course of nature, of receiving the ten thousand pounds, was thus rendered doubtful in the extreme; and Madame Fosco resented her brother’s treatment of her, as unjustly as usual in such cases, by refusing to see her niece, and declining to believe that Miss Fairlie’s intercession had ever been exerted to restore her name to Mr. Fairlie’s will.

  Such was the history of the ten thousand pounds. Here again no difficulty could arise with Sir Percival’s legal adviser. The income would be at the wife’s disposal, and the principal would go to her aunt, or her cousin, on her death.

  All preliminary explanations being now cleared out of the way, I came, at last, to the real knot of the case—to the twenty thousand pounds.

  This sum was absolutely Miss Fairlie’s own, on her completing her twenty-first year; and the whole future disposition of it depended, in the first instance, on the conditions I could obtain for her in her marriage-settlement. The other clauses contained in that document were of a formal kind, and need not be recited here. But the clause relating to the money is too important to be passed over. A few lines will be sufficient to give the necessary abstract of it.

  My stipulation, in regard to the twenty thousand pounds, was simply this: The whole amount was to be settled so as to give the income to the lady for her life; afterwards to Sir Percival for his life; and the principal to the children of the marriage. In default of issue, the principal was to be disposed of as the lady might by her will direct, for which purpose I reserved to her the right of making a will. The effect of these conditions may be thus summed up. If Lady Glyde died without leaving children, her half-sister, Miss Halcombe, and any other relatives or friends whom she might be anxious to benefit, would, on her husband’s death, divide among them such shares of her money as she desired them to have. If, on the other hand, she died, leaving children, then their interest, naturally and necessarily, superseded all other interests whatsoever. This was the clause; and no one who reads it, can fail, I think, to agree with me that it meted out equal justice to all parties.

  We shall see how my proposals were met on the husband’s side.

  At the time when Miss Halcombe’s letter reached me, I was even more busily occupied than usual. But I contrived to make leisure for the settlement. I had drawn it, and had sent it for approval to Sir Percival’s solicitor, in less than a week from the time when Miss Halcombe had informed me of the proposed marriage.

  After a lapse of two days, the document was returned to me, with the notes and remarks of the baronet’s lawyer. His objections, in general, proved to be of the most trifling and technical kind, until he came to the clause relating to the twenty thousand pounds. Against this, there were double lines drawn in red ink, and the following note was appended to them:

  “Not admissible. The principal to go to Sir Percival Glyde, in the event of his surviving Lady Glyde, and there being no issue.”

  That is to say, not one farthing of the twenty thousand pounds was to go to Miss Halcombe, or to any other relative or friend of Lady Glyde’s. The whole sum, if she left no children, was to slip into the pockets of her husband.

  The answer I wrote to this audacious proposal was as short and sharp as I could make it. “My dear sir. I maintain clause number so-and-so, exactly as it stands. Yours truly.” The rejoinder came back in a quarter of an hour. “My dear sir. I maintain the note in red ink exactly as it stands. Yours truly.” In the detestable slang of the day, we were now both “at a dead-lock,” and nothing was left for it but to refer to our clients on either side.

  As matters stood, my client—Miss Fairlie not having yet completed her twenty-first year—was her guardian, Mr. Frederick Fairlie. I wrote by that day’s post, and put the case before him exactly as it stood; not only urging every argument I could think of to induce him to maintain the clause as I had drawn it, but stating to him plainly the mercenary motive which was at the bottom of the opposition to my settlement of the twenty thousand pounds. The knowledge of Sir Percival’s affairs which I necessarily gained when the provisions of the deed on his side were submitted in due course to my examination, had but too plainly informed me that the debts on his estate were enormous, and that his income, though nominally a large one, was, virtually, for a man in his position, next to nothing. The
want of ready money was the practical necessity of Sir Percival’s existence; and his lawyer’s note on the clause in the settlement was nothing but the frankly selfish expression of it.

  Mr. Fairlie’s answer reached me by return of post, and proved to be wandering and irrelevant in the extreme. Turned into plain English, it practically expressed itself to this effect: “Would dear Gilmore be so very obliging as not to worry his friend and client about such a trifle as a remote contingency? Was it likely that a young woman of twenty-one would die before a man of forty-five, and die without children? On the other hand, in such a miserable world as this, was it possible to over-estimate the value of peace and quietness? If those two heavenly blessings were offered in exchange for such an earthly trifle as a remote chance of twenty thousand pounds, was it not a fair bargain? Surely, yes. Then why not make it?”

  I threw the letter away from me in disgust. Just as it had fluttered to the ground, there was a knock at my door; and Sir Percival’s solicitor, Mr. Merriman, was shown in. There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but, I think, the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good humour. A fat, well-fed, smiling, friendly man of business is of all parties to a bargain the most hopeless to deal with. Mr. Merriman was one of this class.

  “And how is good Mr. Gilmore?” he began, all in a glow with the warmth of his own amiability. “Glad to see you, sir, in such excellent health. I was passing your door; and I thought I would look in, in case you might have something to say to me. Do—now pray do let us settle this little difference of ours by word of mouth, if we can! Have you heard from your client yet?”

  “Yes. Have you heard from yours?”

  “My dear, good sir! I wish I had heard from him to any purpose—I wish, with all my heart, the responsibility was off my shoulders; but he won’t take it off. ‘Merriman, I leave details to you. Do what you think right for my interests; and consider me as having personally withdrawn from the business until it is all over.’ Those were Sir Percival’s words a fortnight ago; and all I can get him to do now is to repeat them. I am not a hard man, Mr. Gilmore, as you know. Personally and privately, I do assure you, I should like to sponge out that note of mine at this very moment. But if Sir Percival won’t go into the matter, if Sir Percival will blindly leave all his interests in my sole care, what course can I possibly take except the course of asserting them? My hands are bound—don’t you see, my dear sir?—my hands are bound.”