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

by Lynn Shepherd

  † The passages omitted, here and elsewhere, in Miss Halcombe’s Diary, are only those which bear no reference to Miss Fairlie or to any of the persons with whom she is associated in these pages.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED

  Limmeridge House.

  November 27. My forebodings are realised. The marriage is fixed for the twenty-second of December.

  The day after we left for Polesdean Lodge, Sir Percival wrote, it seems, to Mr. Fairlie, to say that the necessary repairs and alterations in his house in Hampshire would occupy a much longer time in completion than he had originally anticipated. The proper estimates were to be submitted to him as soon as possible; and it would greatly facilitate his entering into definite arrangements with the workpeople, if he could be informed of the exact period at which the wedding ceremony might be expected to take place. He could then make all his calculations in reference to time, besides writing the necessary apologies to friends who had been engaged to visit him that winter, and who could not, of course, be received when the house was in the hands of the workmen.

  To this letter Mr. Fairlie had replied by requesting Sir Percival himself to suggest a day for the marriage, subject to Miss Fairlie’s approval, which her guardian willingly undertook to do his best to obtain. Sir Percival wrote back by the next post, and proposed (in accordance with his own views and wishes, from the first) the latter part of December—perhaps the twenty-second, or twenty-fourth, or any other day that the lady and her guardian might prefer. The lady not being at hand to speak for herself, her guardian had decided, in her absence, on the earliest day mentioned—the twenty-second of December—and had written to recall us to Limmeridge in consequence.

  After explaining these particulars to me at a private interview, yesterday, Mr. Fairlie suggested, in his most amiable manner, that I should open the necessary negotiations to-day. Feeling that resistance was useless, unless I could first obtain Laura’s authority to make it, I consented to speak to her, but declared, at the same time, that I would on no consideration undertake to gain her consent to Sir Percival’s wishes. Mr. Fairlie complimented me on my “excellent conscience,” much as he would have complimented me, if we had been out walking, on my “excellent constitution,” and seemed perfectly satisfied, so far, with having simply shifted one more family responsibility from his own shoulders to mine.

  This morning, I spoke to Laura as I had promised. The composure—I may almost say, the insensibility—which she has so strangely and so resolutely maintained ever since Sir Percival left us, was not proof against the shock of the news I had to tell her. She turned pale, and trembled violently.

  “Not so soon!” she pleaded. “Oh, Marian, not so soon!”

  The slightest hint she could give was enough for me. I rose to leave the room, and fight her battle for her at once with Mr. Fairlie.

  Just as my hand was on the door, she caught fast hold of my dress, and stopped me.

  “Let me go!” I said. “My tongue burns to tell your uncle that he and Sir Percival are not to have it all their own way.”

  She sighed bitterly, and still held my dress.

  “No!” she said, faintly. “Too late, Marian—too late!”

  “Not a minute too late,” I retorted. “The question of time is our question—and trust me, Laura, to take a woman’s full advantage of it.”

  I unclasped her hand from my gown while I spoke; but she slipped both her arms round my waist at the same moment, and held me more effectually than ever.

  “It will only involve us in more trouble and more confusion,” she said. “It will set you and my uncle at variance, and bring Sir Percival here again with fresh causes of complaint——”

  “So much the better!” I cried out, passionately. “Who cares for his causes of complaint? Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace—they drag us away from our parents’ love and our sisters’ friendship—they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return? Let me go, Laura—I’m mad when I think of it!”

  The tears—miserable, weak, women’s tears of vexation and rage—started to my eyes. She smiled sadly; and put her handkerchief over my face, to hide for me the betrayal of my own weakness—the weakness of all others which she knew that I most despised.

  “Oh, Marian!” she said. “You crying! Think what you would say to me, if the places were changed, and if those tears were mine. All your love and courage and devotion will not alter what must happen, sooner or later. Let my uncle have his way. Let us have no more troubles and heart-burnings that any sacrifice of mine can prevent. Say you will live with me, Marian, when I am married—and say no more.”

  But I did say more. I forced back the contemptible tears that were no relief to me, and that only distressed her; and reasoned and pleaded as calmly as I could. It was of no avail. She made me twice repeat the promise to live with her when she was married, and then suddenly asked a question which turned my sorrow and my sympathy for her into a new direction.

  “While we were at Polesdean,” she said, “you had a letter, Marian——”

  Her altered tone; the abrupt manner in which she looked away from me, and hid her face on my shoulder; the hesitation which silenced her before she had completed her question, all told me, but too plainly, to whom the half-expressed inquiry pointed.

  “I thought, Laura, that you and I were never to refer to him again,” I said gently.

  “You had a letter from him?” she persisted.

  “Yes,” I replied, “if you must know it.”

  “Do you mean to write to him again?”

  I hesitated. I had been afraid to tell her of his absence from England, or of the manner in which my exertions to serve his new hopes and projects had connected me with his departure. What answer could I make? He was gone where no letters could reach him for months, perhaps for years, to come.

  “Suppose I do mean to write to him again,” I said at last. “What, then, Laura?”

  Her cheek grew burning hot against my neck; and her arms trembled and tightened round me.

  “Don’t tell him about the twenty-second,” she whispered. “Promise, Marian—pray promise you will not even mention my name to him when you write next.”

  I gave the promise. No words can say how sorrowfully I gave it. She instantly took her arm from my waist, walked away to the window, and stood looking out, with her back to me. After a moment she spoke once more, but without turning round, without allowing me to catch the smallest glimpse of her face.

  “Are you going to my uncle’s room?” she asked. “Will you say that I consent to whatever arrangement he may think best? Never mind leaving me, Marian. I shall be better alone for a little while.”

  I went out. If, as soon as I got into the passage, I could have transported Mr. Fairlie and Sir Percival Glyde to the uttermost ends of the earth, by lifting one of my fingers, that finger would have been raised without an instant’s hesitation. For once, my unhappy temper now stood my friend. I should have broken down altogether and burst into a violent fit of crying, if my tears had not been all burnt up in the heat of my anger. As it was, I dashed into Mr. Fairlie’s room—called to him as harshly as possible, “Laura consents to the twenty-second”—and dashed out again without waiting for a word of answer. I banged the door after me; and I hope I shattered Mr. Fairlie’s nervous system for the rest of the day.

  28th. This morning, I read poor Hartright’s farewell letter over again; a doubt having crossed my mind, since yesterday, whether I am acting wisely in concealing the fact of his departure from Laura.

  On reflection, I still think I am right. The allusions in his letter to the preparations made for the expedition to Central America, all show that the leaders of it know it to be dangerous. If the discovery of th
is makes me uneasy, what would it make her? It is bad enough to feel that his departure has deprived us of the friend of all others to whose devotion we could trust, in the hour of need, if ever that hour comes and finds us helpless. But it is far worse to know that he has gone from us to face the perils of a bad climate, a wild country, and a disturbed population. Surely it would be a cruel candour to tell Laura this, without a pressing and a positive necessity for it?

  I almost doubt whether I ought not to go a step farther, and burn the letter at once, for fear of its one day falling into wrong hands. It not only refers to Laura in terms which ought to remain a secret for ever between the writer and me; but it reiterates his suspicion—so obstinate, so unaccountable, and so alarming—that he has been secretly watched since he left Limmeridge. He declares that he saw the faces of the two strange men, who followed him about the streets of London, watching him among the crowd which gathered at Liverpool to see the expedition embark; and he positively asserts that he heard the name of Anne Catherick pronounced behind him, as he got into the boat. His own words are, “These events have a meaning, these events must lead to a result. The mystery of Anne Catherick is not cleared up yet. She may never cross my path again; but if ever she crosses yours, make better use of the opportunity, Miss Halcombe, than I made of it. I speak on strong conviction; I entreat you to remember what I say.” These are his own expressions. There is no danger of my forgetting them—my memory is only too ready to dwell on any words of Hartright’s that refer to Anne Catherick. But there is danger in my keeping the letter. The merest accident might place it at the mercy of strangers. I may fall ill; I may die—better to burn it at once, and have one anxiety the less.

  It is burnt! The ashes of his farewell letter—the last he may ever write to me—lie in a few black fragments on the hearth. Is this the sad end to all that story? Oh, not the end—surely, surely, not the end already!

  29th. The preparations for the marriage have begun. The dressmaker has come to receive her orders. Laura is perfectly impassive, perfectly careless about the question of all others in which a woman’s personal interests are most closely bound up. She has left it all to the dressmaker and to me. If poor Hartright had been the baronet, and the husband of her father’s choice, how differently she would have behaved! How anxious and capricious she would have been; and what a hard task the best of dressmakers would have found it to please her!

  30th. We hear every day from Sir Percival. The last news is, that the alterations in his house will occupy from four to six months, before they can be properly completed. If painters, paper-hangers, and upholsterers could make happiness as well as splendour, I should be interested about their proceedings in Laura’s future home. As it is, the only part of Sir Percival’s last letter which does not leave me as it found me, perfectly indifferent to all his plans and projects, is the part which refers to the wedding tour. He proposes, as Laura is delicate, and as the winter threatens to be unusually severe, to take her to Rome, and to remain in Italy until the early part of next summer. If this plan should not be approved, he is equally ready, although he has no establishment of his own in town, to spend the season in London, in the most suitable furnished house that can be obtained for the purpose.

  Putting myself and my own feelings entirely out of the question (which it is my duty to do, and which I have done), I, for one, have no doubt of the propriety of adopting the first of these proposals. In either case, a separation between Laura and me is inevitable. It will be a longer separation, in the event of their going abroad, than it would be in the event of their remaining in London—but we must set against this disadvantage, the benefit to Laura on the other side, of passing the winter in a mild climate; and, more than that, the immense assistance in raising her spirits, and reconciling her to her new existence, which the mere wonder and excitement of travelling for the first time in her life in the most interesting country in the world, must surely afford. She is not of a disposition to find resources in the conventional gaieties and excitements of London. They would only make the first oppression of this lamentable marriage fall the heavier on her. I dread the beginning of her new life more than words can tell; but I see some hope for her if she travels—none if she remains at home.

  It is strange to look back at this latest entry in my journal, and to find that I am writing of the marriage and the parting with Laura, as people write of a settled thing. It seems so cold and so unfeeling to be looking at the future already in this cruelly composed way. But what other way is possible, now that the time is drawing so near? Before another month is over our heads, she will be his Laura instead of mine! His Laura! I am as little able to realise the idea which those two words convey—my mind feels almost as dulled and stunned by it, as if writing of her marriage were like writing of her death.

  December 1st. A sad, sad day; a day that I have no heart to describe at any length. After weakly putting it off, last night, I was obliged to speak to her this morning of Sir Percival’s proposal about the wedding tour.

  In the full conviction, that I should be with her, wherever she went, the poor child—for a child she is still in many things—was almost happy at the prospect of seeing the wonders of Florence and Rome and Naples. It nearly broke my heart to dispel her delusion, and to bring her face to face with the hard truth. I was obliged to tell her that no man tolerates a rival—not even a woman-rival—in his wife’s affections, when he first marries, whatever he may do afterwards. I was obliged to warn her, that my chance of living with her permanently under her own roof, depended entirely on my not arousing Sir Percival’s jealousy and distrust by standing between them at the beginning of their marriage, in the position of the chosen depositary of his wife’s closest secrets. Drop by drop, I poured the profaning bitterness of this world’s wisdom into that pure heart and that innocent mind, while every higher and better feeling within me recoiled from my miserable task. It is over now. She has learnt her hard, her inevitable lesson. The simple illusions of her girlhood are gone; and my hand has stripped them off. Better mine than his—that is all my consolation—better mine than his.

  So the first proposal is the proposal accepted. They are to go to Italy; and I am to arrange, with Sir Percival’s permission, for meeting them and staying with them, when they return to England. In other words, I am to ask a personal favour, for the first time in my life, and to ask it of the man of all others to whom I least desire to owe a serious obligation of any kind. Well! I think I could do even more than that, for Laura’s sake.

  2nd. On looking back, I find myself always referring to Sir Percival in disparaging terms. In the turn affairs have now taken, I must and will root out my prejudice against him. I cannot think how it first got into my mind. It certainly never existed in former times.

  Is it Laura’s reluctance to become his wife that has set me against him? Have Hartright’s perfectly intelligible prejudices infected me without my suspecting their influence? Does that letter of Anne Catherick’s still leave a lurking distrust in my mind, in spite of Sir Percival’s explanation, and of the proof in my possession of the truth of it? I cannot account for the state of my own feelings: the one thing I am certain of is, that it is my duty—doubly my duty, now—not to wrong Sir Percival by unjustly distrusting him. If it has got to be a habit with me always to write of him in the same unfavourable manner, I must and will break myself of this unworthy tendency, even though the effort should force me to close the pages of my journal till the marriage is over! I am seriously dissatisfied with myself—I will write no more to-day.

  December 16th. A whole fortnight has passed; and I have not once opened these pages. I have been long enough away from my journal, to come back to it, with a healthier and better mind, I hope, so far as Sir Percival is concerned.

  There is not much to record of the past two weeks. The dresses are almost all finished; and the new travelling-trunks have been sent here from London. Poor dear Laura hardly leaves me for a moment, all day; and, last night, when neither of us
could sleep, she came and crept into my bed to talk to me there.

  “I shall lose you so soon, Marian,” she said; “I must make the most of you while I can.”

  They are to be married at Limmeridge Church; and, thank Heaven, not one of the neighbours is to be invited to the ceremony. The only visitor will be our old friend, Mr. Arnold, who is to come from Polesdean, to give Laura away; her uncle being far too delicate to trust himself outside the door in such inclement weather as we now have. If I were not determined, from this day forth, to see nothing but the bright side of our prospects, the melancholy absence of any male relative of Laura’s, at the most important moment of her life, would make me very gloomy and very distrustful of the future. But I have done with gloom and distrust—that is to say, I have done with writing about either the one or the other in this journal.

  Sir Percival is to arrive to-morrow. He offered, in case we wished to treat him on terms of rigid etiquette, to write and ask our clergyman to grant him the hospitality of the rectory, during the short period of his sojourn at Limmeridge before the marriage. Under the circumstances, neither Mr. Fairlie nor I thought it at all necessary for us to trouble ourselves about attending to trifling forms and ceremonies. In our wild moorland country, and in this great lonely house, we may well claim to be beyond the reach of the trivial conventionalities which hamper people in other places. I wrote to Sir Percival to thank him for his polite offer, and to beg that he would occupy his old rooms, just as usual, at Limmeridge House.

  17th. He arrived to-day, looking, as I thought, a little worn and anxious, but still talking and laughing like a man in the best possible spirits. He brought with him some really beautiful presents, in jewellery, which Laura received with her best grace, and, outwardly at least, with perfect self-possession. The only sign I can detect of the struggle it must cost her to preserve appearances at this trying time, expresses itself in a sudden unwillingness, on her part, ever to be left alone. Instead of retreating to her own room, as usual, she seems to dread going there. When I went upstairs to-day, after lunch, to put on my bonnet for a walk, she volunteered to join me; and, again, before dinner, she threw the door open between our two rooms, so that we might talk to each other while we were dressing. “Keep me always doing something,” she said; “keep me always in company with somebody. Don’t let me think—that is all I ask now, Marian—don’t let me think.”