APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/wmn_white/WHITE_7

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Thus far the information which I had received from Mrs Clements –;
though it established facts of which I had not previously been aware –;
was of a preliminary character only.

It was clear that the series of deceptions which had removed Anne
Catherick to London, and separated her from Mrs Clements, had been
accomplished solely by Count Fosco and the Countess, and the question
whether any part of the conduct of husband or wife had been of a kind to
place either of them within reach of the law might be well worthy of
future consideration. But the purpose I had now in view led me in
another direction than this. The immediate object of my visit to Mrs
Clements was to make some approach at least to the discovery of Sir
Percival's secret, and she had said nothing as yet which advanced me on
my way to that important end. I felt the necessity of trying to awaken
her recollections of other times, persons, and events than those on
which her memory had hitherto been employed, and when I next spoke I
spoke with that object imdirectly in view.

`I wish I could be of any help to you in this sad calamity,' I said.
`All I can do is to feel heartily for your distress. If Anne had been
your own child, Mrs Clements, you could have shown her no truer kindness
–; you could have made no readier sacrifices for her sake.'

`There's no great merit in that, sir,' said Mrs Clements simply. `The
poor thing was as good as my own child to me. I nursed her from a baby,
sir, bringing her up by hand –; and a hard job it was to rear her. It
wouldn't go to my heart so to lose her if I hadn't made her first short
clothes and taught her to walk. I always said she was sent to console me
for never having chick or child of my own. And now she's lost the old
times keep coming back to my mind, and even at my age I can't help
crying about her –; I can't indeed, sir !'

I waited a little to give Mrs Clements time to compose herself. Was the
light that I had been looking for so long glimmering on me –; far off,
as yet –; in the good woman's recollections of Anne's early life?

`Did you know Mrs Catherick before Anne was born?' I asked.

`Not very long, sir –; not above four months. We saw a great deal of
each other in that time, but we were never very friendly together.'

Her voice was steadier as she made that reply. Painful as many of her
recollections might be, I observed that it was unconsciously a relief to
her mind to revert to the dimly-seen troubles of the past, after
dwelling so long on the vivid sorrows of the present.

`Were you and Mrs Catherick neighbours?' I inquired, leading her memory
on as encouragingly as I could.

`Yes, sir –; neighbours at Old Welmingham.'

`Old Wehningham? There are two places of that name, then, in Hampshire
?'

`Well, sir, there used to be in those days –; better than
three-andtwenty years ago. They built a new town about two miles off,
convenient to the river –; and Old Welmingham, which was never much more
than a village, got in time to be deserted. The new towm is the place
they call Welmingham now –; but the old pan-sh church is the parish
church still. It stands by itself, with the houses pulled down or gone
to ruin all round it. I've lived to see sad changes. It was a pleasant,
pretty place in my time.'

`Did you live there before your marriage, Mrs Clements ?'

`No, sir –; I'm a Norfolk woman. It wasn't the place my husband belonged
to either. He was from Grimsby, as I told you, and he served his
apprenticeship there. But having friends down south, and hearing of an
opening, he got into business at Southampton. It was in a small way, but
he made enough for a plain man to retire on, and settled at Old
Welmingham. I went there with him when he married me. We were neither of
us young, but we lived very happy together –; happier than our
neighbour, Mr Catherick, lived along with his wife when they came to Old
Welmingham a year or two afterwards.'

`Was your husband acquainted with them before that?'

`With Catherick, sir –; not with his wife. She was a stranger to both of
us. Some gentlemen had made interest for Catherick, and he got the
situation of clerk at Welmingham church, which was the reason of his
coming to settle in our neighbourhood. He brought his newly-married wife
along with him, and we heard in course of time she had been lady's-maid
in a family that lived at Varneck Hall, near Southampton. Catherick had
found it a hard matter to get her to marry him, in consequence of her
holding herself uncommonly high. He had asked and asked, and given the
thing up at last, seeing she was so contrary about it. When he had given
it up she turned contrary just the other way, and came to him of her own
accord, without rhyme or reason seemingly. My poor husband always said
that was the time to have given her a lesson. But Catherick was too fond
of her to do anything of the sort –; he never checked her either before
they were married or after. He was a quick man in his feelings, letting
them carry him a deal too far, now in one way and now in another, and he
would have spoilt a better wife than Mrs Catherick if a better had
married him. I don't like to speak ill of any one, sir, but she was a
heartless woman, with a teriible will of her own –; fond of foolish
admiration and fine clothes, and not caring to show so much as decent
outward respect to Catherick, kindly as he always treated her. My
husband said he thought things would turn out badly when they first came
to live near us, and his words proved true. Before they had been quite
four months in our neighbourhood there was a dreadful scandal and a
miserable break-up in their household. Both of them were in fault –; I
am afraid both of them were equally in fault.'

`You mean both husband and wife?'

`Oh, no, sir! I don't mean Catherick –; he was only to be pitied. I
meant his wife and the person –;'

`And the person who caused the scandal?'

`Yes, sir. A gentleman born and brought up, who ought to have set a
better example. You know him, sir –; and my poor dear Anne knew him only
too well.'

` Sir Percival Glyde ?'

`Yes, Sir Percival Glyde.'

My heart beat fast –; I thought I had my hand on the clue. How little I
knew then of the windings of the labyrinths which were still to mislead
me !

`Did Sir Percival live in your neighbourhood at that time?' I asked.

`No, sir. He came among us as a stranger. His father had died not long
before in foreign parts. I remember he was in mourming. He put up at the
little inn on the river (they have pulled it down since that time),
where gentlemen used to go to fish. He wasn't much noticed when he first
came –; it was a common thing enough for gentlemen to travel from all
parts of England to fish in our river.'

`Did he make his appearance in the village before Anne was born ?- '

`Yes, sir. Anne was born in the June month of eighteen hundied and
twenty-seven –; and I think he came at the end of April or the beginning
of May.'

`Came as a stranger to all of you? A stranger to Mrs Catherick as well
as to the rest of the neighbours?'

`So we thought at first, sir. But when the scandal broke out, nobody
believed they were strangers. I remember how it happened as well as if
it was yesterday. Catherick came into our garden one night, and woke us
by throwing up a handful of gravel from the walk at our window. I heard
him beg my husband, for the Lord's sake, to come down and speak to him.
They were a long time together talking in the porch. When my husband
came back upstairs he was all of a tremble. He sat down on the side of
the bed and he says to me, ``Lizzie! I always told you that woman was a
bad one –; I always said she would end ill, and I'm afraid in my own
mind that the end has come already. Catherick has found a lot of lace
handkerchiefs, and two fine rings, and a new gold watch and chain, hid
away in his wife's drawer –; things that nobody but a born lady ought
ever to have –; and his wife won't say how she came by them.'' ``Does he
think she stole them?'' says I. ``No,'' says he, ``stealing would be bad
enough. But it's worse than that, she's had no chance of stealing such
things as those, and she's not a woman to take them if she had. They're
gifts, Lizzie –; there's her own initials engraved inside the watch –;
and Catherick has seen her talking privately, and carrying on as no
married woman should, with that gentleman in mourning, Sir Percival
Glyde. Don't you say anything about it –; I've quieted Catherick for
tonight. I've told him to keep his tongue to himself, and his eyes and
his ears open, and to wait a day or two, till he can be quite certain.''
``I believe you are both of you wrong,'' says I. ``It's not in nature,
comfortable and respectable as she is here, that Mrs Catherick should
take up with a chance stranger like Sir Percival Glyde.'' ``Ay, but is
he a stranger to her?'' says my husband. ``You forget how Catherick's
wife came to marry him. She went to him of her own accord, after saying
No over and over again when he asked her. There have been wicked women
before her time, Lizzie, who have used honest men who loved them as a
means of saving their characters, and I'm sorely afraid this Mrs
Catherick is as wicked as the worst of them. We shall see,'' says my
husband, ``we shall soon see.'' And only two days afterwards we did
see.'

Mrs Clements waited for a moment before she went on. Even in that
moment, I began to doubt whether the clue that l thought I had found was
really leading me to the central mystery of the labyrinth after all. Was
this common, too common, story of a man's treachery and a woman's
frailty the key to a secret which had been the life-long terror of Sir
Percival Glyde?

`Well, sir, Catherick took my husband's advice and waited,' Mrs Clements
continued. `And as I told you, he hadn't long to wait. On the second day
he found his wife and Sir Percival whispering together quite familiar,
close under the vestry of the church. I suppose they thought the
neighbourhood of the vestry was the last place in the world where
anybody would think of looking after them, but, however that may be,
there they were. Sir Percival, being seemingly surprised and confounded,
defended himself in such a guilty way that Poor Catherick (whose quick
temper I have told you of already) fell into a kind of frenzy at his own
disgrace, and struck Sir Percival. He was no match (and I am sorry to
say it) for the man who had wronged him, and he was beaten in the
cruellest manner, before the neighbours, who had come to the place on
hearing the disturbance, could run in to part them. All this happened
towards evening, and before nightfall, when my husband went to
Catherick's house, he was gone, nobody knew where. No living soul in the
village ever saw him again. He knew too well, by that time, what his
wife's vile reason had been for marrying him, and he felt his misery and
disgrace, especially after what had happened to him with Sir Percival,
too keenly. The clergyman of the parish put an advertisement in the
paper begging him to come back, and saying that he should not lose his
situation or his friends. But Catherick had too much piide and spirit,
as some people said –; too much feeling, as I think, sir –; to face his
neighbours again, and try to live down the memory of his disgrace. My
husband heard from him when he had left England, and heard a second
time, when he was settled and doing well in America. He is alive there
now, as far as I know, but none of us in the old country –; his wicked
wife least of all –; are ever likely to set eyes on him again.'

`What became of Sir Percival? ' I inquired. `Did he stay in the
neighbourhood ? '

`Not he, sir. The place was too hot to hold him. He was heard at high
words with Mrs Catherick the same night when the scandal broke out, and
the next morning he took himself off.'

`And Mrs Catherick? Surely she never remained in the village among the
People who knew of her disgrace?'

`She did, sir. She was hard enough and heartless enough to set the
opinions of all her neighbours at flat defiance. She declared to
everybody, from the clergyman downwards, that she was the victim of a
dreadful mistake, and that all the scandal-mongers in the place should
not drive her out of it, as if she was a guilty woman. All through my
time she lived at Old Welmingham, and after my time, when the new town
was building, and the respectable neighbours began moving to it, she
moved too, as if she was determined to live among them and scandalise
them to the very last. There she is now, and there she will stop, in
defiance of the best of them, to her dying day.'

`But how has she lived through all these years?' I asked. `Was her
husband able and willing to help her?'

`Both able and willing, sir,' said Mrs Clements. `In the second letter
he wrote to my good man, he said she had borne his name, and lived in
his home, and, wicked as she was, she must not starve like a beggar in
the street. He could afford to make her place in London.'

`Did she accept the allowance?'

`Not a farthing of it, sir. She said she would never be beholden to
Catherick for bit or drop, if she lived to be a hundred. And she has
kept her word ever since. When my poor dear husband died, and left all
to me, Catherick's letter was put in my possession with the other
things, and I told her to let me know if she was ever in want. ``I'll
let all England know I'm in want,'' she said, ``before I tell Catherick,
or any friend of Catherick's. Take that for your answer, and give it to
him for an answer, if he ever writes again.'''

`Do you suppose that she had money of her own?'

`Very little, if any, sir. It was said, and said truly, I am afraid,
that her means of living came privately from Sir Percival Glyde.'

After that last reply I waited a little, to reconsider what I had heard.
If I unreservedly accepted the story so far, it was now plain that no
approach, direct or indirect, to the Secret had yet been revealed to me,
and that the pursuit of my object had ended again in leaving me face to
face with the most palpable and the most disheartening failure.

But there was one point in the narrative which made me doubt the
propriety of accepting it unreservedly, and which suggested the idea of
something hidden below the surface.

I could not account to myself for the circumstance of the clerk's guilty
wife voluntarily living out all her after-existence on the scene of her
disgrace. The woman's own reported statement that she had taken this
strange course as a practical assertion of her innocence did not satisfy
me. It seemed, to my mind, more natural and more probable to assume that
she was not so completely a free agent in this matter as she had herself
asserted. In that case, who was the likeliest person to possess the
power of compelling her to remain at Welmingham? The person
unquestionably from whom she derived the means of living. She had
refused assistance from her husband, she had no adequate resources of
her own, she was a friendless, degraded woman –; from what source should
she derive help but from the source at which report pointed –; Sir
Percival Glyde ?

Reasoning on these assumptions, and always bearing in mind the one
certain fact to guide me, that Mrs Catherick was in posission of the
Secret, I easily understood that it was Sir Percival's interest to keep
her at Welmingham, because her character in that place was certain to
isolate her from all communication with female neighbours, and to allow
her no opportunities of talking incautiously in moments of free
intercourse with inquisitive bosom friends. But what was the mystery to
be concealed? Not Sir Percival's infamous connection with Mrs
Catherick's disgrace, for the neighbours were the very people who knew
of it –; not the suspicion that he was Anne's father, for Welmingham was
the place in which that suspicion must inevitably exist. If I accepted
the guilty appearances described to me as unreservedly as others had
accepted them, if I drew from them the same superficial conclusion which
Mr Catherick and all his neighhours had drawn, where was the suggestion,
in all that I had heard, of a dangerous secret between Sir Percival and
Mrs Catherick, which had been kept hidden from that time to this?

And yet, in those stolen meetings, in those familar whisperings between
the clerk's wife and `the gentleman in mourning,' the clue to discovery
existed beyond a doubt.

Was it possible that appearances in this case had pointed one way while
the truth lay all the while unsuspected in another direction? Could Mrs
Catherick's assertion, that she was the victim of a dreadful mistake, by
any possibility be true? Or, assuming it to be false, could the
conclusion which associated Sir Percival with her guilt have been
founded in some inconceivable error? Had Sir Percival, by any chance,
courted the suspicion that was wrong for the sake of diverting from
himself some other suspicion that was right? Here –; if I could find it
–; here was the approach to the Secret, hidden deep under the surface of
the apparently unpromising story which I had just heard.

My next questions were now directed to the one object of ascertaining
whether Mr Catherick had or had not arrived truly at the conviction of
his wife's misconduct. The answers I received from Mrs Clements left me
in no doubt whatever on that point. Mrs Catherick had, on the clearest
evidence, compromised her reputation, while a single woman, with some
person unknown, and had married to save her character. It had been
positively ascertained, by calculations of time and place into which I
need not enter particularly, that the daughter who bore her husband's
name was not her husband's child.

The next object of inquiry, whether it was equally certain that Sir
Percival must have been the father of Anne, was beset by far greater
difficulties. I was in no position to try the probabilities on one side
or on the other in this instance by any better test than the test of
personal resemblance.

`I suppose you often saw Sir Percival when he was in your village ?' I
said.

`Yes, sir, very often,' replied Mrs Clements.

`Did you ever observe that Anne was like him?'

`She was not at all like him, sir.'

`Was she like her mother, then?'

`Not like her mother either, sir. Mrs Catherick was dark, and full in
the face.'

Not like her mother and not like her (supposed) father. I knew that the
test by personal resemblance was not to be implicitly trusted, but, on
the other hand, it was not to be altogether rejected on that account.
Was it possible to strengthen the evidence by discovering any conclusive
facts in relation to the lives of Mrs Catherick and Sir Percival before
they either of them appeared at Old Welmingham? When I asked my next
questions I put them with this view.

`When Sir Percival first arrived in your neighbourhood,' I said, `did
you hear where he had come from last?'

`No, sir. Some said from Blackwater Park, and some said from Scotland –;
but nobody knew.'

`Was Mrs Catherick living in service at Varneck Hall immediately before
her marriage?'

`Yes, sir.'

`And had she been long in her place?'

`Three or four years, sir; I am not quite certain which.'

`Did you ever hear the name of the gentleman to whom Varneck Hall
belonged at that time?'

`Yes, sir. His name was Major Donthorne.'

`Did Mr Catherick, or did any one else you knew, ever hear that Sir
Percival was a friend of Major Donthorne's, or ever see Sir Percival in
the neighbourhood of Varneck Hall?'

`Catherick never did, sir, that I can remember –; nor any one else
either, that I know of.'

I noted down Major Donthorne's name and address, on the chance that he
might still be alive, and that it might be useful at some future time to
apply to him. Meanwhile, the impression on my mind was now decidedly
adverse to the opinion that Sir Percival was Anne's father, and
decidedly favourable to the conclusion that the secret of his stolen
interviews with Mrs Catherick was entirely unconnected with the disgrace
which the woman had inflicted on her hushand's good name. I could think
of no further inquiries which I might make to strengthen this impression
–; I could only encourage Mrs Clements to speak next of Anne's early
days, and watch for any chance-suggestion which might in this way offer
itself to me.

`I have not heard yet,' I said, `how the poor child, born in all this
sin and misery, came to be trusted, Mrs Clements, to your care.'

`There was nobody else, sir, to take the little helpless creature in
hand,' replied Mrs Clements. `The wicked mother seemed to hate it –; as
if the poor baby was in fault! –; from the day it was born. My heart was
heavy for the child, and I made the offer to brine it up as tenderly as
if it was my own.'

`Did Anne remain entirely under your care from that time?'

`Not quite entirely, sir. Mrs Catherick had her whims and fancies about
it at times, and used now and then to lay claim to the child, as if she
wanted to spite me for bringing it up. But these fits of hers, never
lasted for long. Poor little Anne was always returned to me, and was
always glad to get back –; though she led but a gloomy life in my house,
having no play-mates, like other children, to brighten her up. Our
longest separation was when her mother took her to Limmeridge. rust at
that time I lost my husband, and I felt it was as well, in that
miserable affliction, that Anne should not be in the house. She was
between ten and eleven years old then, slow at her lessons, poor soul,
and not so cheerful as other children –; but as pretty a little girl to
look at as you would wish to see. I waited at home till her mother
brought her back, and then I made the offer to take her with me to
London –; the truth being, sir, that I could not find it in my heart to
stop at Old Welmingham after my husband's death, the place was so
changed and so dismal to me.'

`And did Mrs Catherick consent to your proposal?'

`No, sir. She came back from the north harder and bitterer than ever.
Folks did say that she had been obliged to ask Sir Percival's leave to
go, to begin with; and that she only went to nurse her dying sister at
Limmeridge because the poor woman was reported to have saved money –;
the truth being that she hardly left enough to bury her. These things
may have soured Mrs Catherick likely enough, but however that may be,
she wouldn't hear of my taking the child away. She seemed to like
distressing us both by parting us. All I could do was to give Anne my
direction, and to tell her privately, if she was ever in trouble, to
come to me. But years passed before she was free to come. I never saw
her again, poor soul, till the night she escaped from the mad-house.'

`You know, Mrs Clements, why Sir Percival Glyde shut her up?'

`l only know what Anne herself told me, sir. The poor thing used to
ramble and wander about it sadly. She said her mother had Got some
secret of Sir Percival's to keep, and had let it out to her long after I
left Hampshire –; and when Sir Percival found she knew it, he shut her
up. But she never could say what it was when I asked her. All she could
tell me was, that her mother might be the ruin and destruction of Sir
Percival if she chose. Mrs Catherick may have let out just as much as
that, and no more. I'm next to certain I should have heard the whole
truth from Anne, if she had really known it as she pretended to do, and
as she very likely fancied she did, poor soul.'

This idea had more than once occurred to my own mind. I had already told
Marian that I doubted whether Laura was really on the point of making
any important discovery when she and Anne Catherick were disturbed by
Count Fosco at the boat-house. It was perfectly in character with Anne's
mental affliction that she should assume an absolute knowledge of the
secret on no better grounds than vague suspicion, derived from hints
which her mother had incautiously let drop in her presence. Sir
Percival's guilty distrust would, in that case, infallibly inspire him
with the false idea that Anne knew all from her mother, just as it had
afterwards fixed in his mind the equally false suspicion that his wife
knew all from Anne.

The time was passing, the morning was wearing away. It was doubtful, if
I stayed longer, whether I should hear anything more from Mrs Clements
that would be at all useful to my purpose. I had already discovered
those local and family particulars, in relation to Mrs Catherick, of
which I had been in search, and I had arrived at certain conclusions,
entirely new to me, which might immensely assist in directing the course
of my future proceedings. I rose to take my leave, and to thank Mrs
Clements for the friendly readiness she had shown in affording me
information.

`I am afraid you must have thought me very inquisitive,' I said. `I have
troubled you with more questions than many people would have cared to
answer.'

`You are heartily welcome, sir, to anything I can tell you,' answered
Mrs Clements. She stopped and looked at me wistfully. `But I do wish,'
said the poor woman, `you could have told me a little more about Anne,
sir. I thought I saw something in your face when you came in which
looked as if you could. You can't think how hard it is not even to know
whether she is living or dead. I could bear it better if I was only
certain. You said you never expected we should see her alive again. Do
vou know, sir –; do you know for truth –; that it has pleased God to
take her?'

I was not proof against this appeal, it would have been unspeakably mean
and cruel of me if I had resisted it.

`I am afraid there is no doubt of the truth,' I answered gently; `I have
the certainty in my own mind that her troubles in this world are over.'

The poor woman dropped into her chair and hid her face from me. `Oh,
sir,' she said, `how do you know it? Who can have told you?'

`No one has told me, Mrs Clements. But I have reasons for feeling sure
of it –; reasons which I promise you shall know as soon as I can safely
explain them. I am certain she was not neglected in her last moments –;
I am certain the heart complaint from which she suffered so sadly was
the true cause of her death. You shall feel as sure of this as I do,
soon –; you shall know, before long, that she is buried in a quiet
country churchyard –; in a pretty peaceful place, which you might have
chosen for her yourself.'

`Dead !' said Mrs Clements, `dead so young, and I am left to hear it! I
made her first short frocks. I taught her to walk. The first time she
ever said Mother she said it to me –; and now I am left and Anne is
taken ! Did you say, sir,' said the poor woman, removing the
handkerchief from her face, and looking up at me for the first time,
`did you say that she had been nicely buried? Was it the sort of funeral
she might have had if she had really been my own child?'

I assured her that it was. She seemed to take an inexplicable pride in
my answer –; to find a comfort in it which no other and higher
considerations could afford. `It would have broken my heart,' she said
simply, `if Anne had not been nicely buried –; but how do you know it,
sir? who told you?' I once more entreated her to wait until I could
speak to her unreservedly. `You are sure to see me again,' I said. `for
I have a favour to ask when you are a little more composed –; perhaps in
a day or two.'

`Don't keep it waiting, sir, on my account,' said Mrs Clements. `Never
mind my crying if I can be of use. If you have anything on your mind to
say to me, sir, please to say it now.'

`I only wish to ask you one last question,' I said. `I only want to know
Mrs Catherick's address at Welmingham.'

My request so startled Mrs Clements, that, for the moment, even the
tidings of Anne's death seemed to be driven from her mind. Her tears
suddenly ceased to flow, and she sat looking at me in blank amazement.

`For the Lord's sake, sir !' she said, `what do you want with Mrs
Catherick !'

`I want this, Mrs Clements,' I replied, `I want to know the secret of
those private meetings of hers with Sir Percival Glyde. There is
something more in what you have told me of that woman's past conduct,
and of that man's past relations with her, than you or any of your
neighbours ever suspected. There is a secret we none of us know between
those two, and I am going to Mrs Catherick with the resolution to find
it out.'

`Think twice about it, sir!' said Mrs Clements, rising in her
earnestness and laying her hand on my arm. `She's an awful woman –; you
don't know her as I do. Think twice about it.'

`I am sure your warning is kindly meant, Mrs Clements. But I am
determined to see the woman, whatever comes of it.'

Mrs Clements looked me anxiously in the face.

`I see your mind is made up, sir,' she said. `I will give you the
address.'

I wrote it down in my pocket-book and then took her hand to say
farewell.

`You shall hear from me soon,' I said; `you shall know all that I have
promised to tell you.'

Mrs Clements sighed and shook her head doubtfully.

`An old woman's advice is sometimes worth taking, sir,' she said. `Think
twice before you go to Welmingham.'




When I reached home again after my interview with Mrs Clements, I was
struck by the appearance of a change in Laura.

The unvarying gentleness and patience which long misfortune had tried so
cruelly and had never conquered yet, seemed now to have suddenly failed
her. Insensible to all Marian's attempts to soothe and amuse her, she
sat with her neglected drawing pushed away on the table, her eyes
resolutely cast down, her fingers twining and untwining themselves
restlessly in her lap. Marian rose when I came in, with a silent
distress in her face, waited for a moment to see if Laura would look up
at my approach, whispered to me, `Try if vou can rouse her,' and left
the room.

I sat down in the vacant chair –; gently unclasped the poor, worn,
restless fingers, and took both her hands in mine.

`What are you thinking of, Laura? Tell me, my darling –; try and tell me
what it is.'

She struggled with herself, and raised her eyes to mine. `I can't feel
happy,' she said, `I can't help thinking –;' She stopped, bent forward a
little, and laid her head on my shoulder, with a terrible mute
helplessness that struck me to the heart.

`Try to tell me,' I repeated gently; `try to tell me why you are not
happy.'

`I am so useless –; I am such a burden on both of you,' she answered,
with a weary, hopeless sigh. `You work and get money, Walter, and Marian
helps you. Why is there nothing I can do! You will end in liking Marian
better than you like me –; you will, because I am so helpless ! Oh,
don't, don't, don't treat me like a child !'

I raised her head, and smoothed away the tangled hair that fell over her
face and kissed her –; my poor, faded flower ! my lost, afflicted sister
! ` You shall help us, Laura,' I said, ` you shall begin, my darling,
today.'

She looked at me with a feverish eagerness, with a breathless interest,
that made me tremble for the new life of hope which I had called into
being by those few words.

I rose, and set her drawing materials in order, and placed them near her
again.

`You know that I work and get money by drawing,' I said. `Now you have
taken such pains, now you are so much improved, you shall begin to work
and get money too. Try to finish this little sketch as nicely and
prettily as you can. When it is done I will take it awav with me, and
the same person will buy it who buys all that I do. You shall keep your
own earnings in your own purse, and Marian shall come to you to help us,
as often as she comes to me. Think how useful you are going to make
yourself to both of us, and you will soon be as happy, Laura, as the day
is long.'

Her face grew eager, and brightened into a smile. In the moment while it
lasted. in the moment when she again took up the pencils that had been
laid aside, she almost looked like the Laura of past days.

I had rightly interpreted the first signs of a new growth and strength
in her mind, unconsciously expressing themselves in the notice she had
taken of the occupations which filled her sister's life and mine. Marian
(when I told her what had passed) saw, as l saw, that she was longing to
assume her own little position of importance, to raise herself in her
own estimation and in ours –; and, from that day, we tenderly helped the
new ambition which gave promise of the hopeful, happier future, that
might now not be far off. Her drawings, as she finished them, or tried
to finish them, were placed in my hands. Marian took them from me and
hid them carefully, and I set aside a little weekly tribute from my
earnings, to be offered to her as the price paid by strangers for the
poor, faint, valueless sketches, of which I was the only purchaser. It
was hard sometimes to maintain our innocent deception, when she proudly
brought out her purse to contribute her share towards the expenses, and
wondered with serious interest, whether I or she had earned the most
that week. I have all those hidden drawings in my possession still –;
they are my treasures beyond price –; the dear remembrances that I love
to keep alive –; the friends in past adversity that my heart will never
part from, my tenderness never forget.

Am I trifling, here, with the necessities of my task? am I looking
forward to the happier time which my narrative has not yet reached? Yes.
Back again –; back to the days of doubt and dread, when the spirit
within me struggled hard for its life, in the icy stillness of perpetual
suspense. I have paused and rested for a while on my forward course. It
is not, perhaps, time wasted, if the friends who read these pages have
paused and rested too.

I took the first opportunity I could find of speaking to Marian in
private, and of communicating to her the result of the inquiries which I
had made that morning. She seemed to share the opinion on the subject of
my proposed journey to Welmingham, which Mrs Clements had already
expressed to me.

`Surely, Walter,' she said, `you hardly know enough yet to give you any
hope of claiming Mrs Catherick's confidence? Is it wise to proceed to
these extremities, before you have really exhausted all safer and
simpler means of attaining your object? When you told me that Sir
Percival and the Count were the only two people in existence who knew
the exact date of Laura's journey, you forgot, and I forgot, that there
was a third person who must surely know it –; I mean Mrs Rubelle. Would
it not be far easier, and far less dangerous, to insist on a confession
from her, than to force it from Sir Percival?'

`It might be easier,' I rePlied, `but we are not aware of the full
extent of Mrs Rubelle's connivance and interest in the conspiracy, and
we are therefore not certain that the date has been impressed on her
mind, as it has been assuredly impressed on the minds of Sir Percival
and the Count. It is too late, now, to waste the time on Mrs Rubelle,
which may be all-important to the discovery of the one assailable point
in Sir Percival's life. Are you thinking a little too seriously, Marian,
of the risk I may run in returning to Hampshire? Are you beginning to
doubt whether Sir Percival Glyde may not in the end be more than a match
for me?'

`He will not be more than your match,' she replied decidedly, `because
he will not be helped in resisting you by the impenetrable wickedness of
the Count.'

`What has led you to that conclusion?' I asked, in some surprise.

`My own knowledge of Sir Percival's obstinacy and impatience of the
Count's control,' she answered. `I believe he will insist on meeting you
single-handed –; just as he insisted at first on acting for himself at
Blackwater Park. The time for suspecting the Count's interference will
be the time when you have Sir Percival at your mercy. His own interests
will then be directly threatened, and he will act, Walter, to terrible
purpose in his own defence.'

`We may deprive him of his weapons beforehand,' I said. `Some of the
particulars I have heard from Mrs Clements may yet be turned to account
against him, and other means of strengthening the case may be at our
disposal. There are passages in Mrs Michelson's narrative which show
that the Count found it necessary to place himself in communication with
Mr Fairlie, and there may be circumstances which compromise him in that
proceeding. While I am away, Marian, write to Mr Fairlie and say that
you want an answer describing exactly what passed between the Count and
himself, and informing you also of any particulars that may have come to
his knowledge at the same time in connection with his niece. Tell him
that the statement you request will, sooner or later, be insisted on, if
he shows any reluctance to furnish you with it of his own accord.'

`The letter shall be written, Walter. But are you really determined to
go to Welmingham?'

`Absolutely determined. I will devote the next two days to earning what
we want for the week to come, and on the third day I go to Hampshire.'

When the third day came I was ready for my journey.

As it was possible that I might be absent for some little time, I
arranged with Marian that we were to correspond every day –; of course
addressing each other by assumed names, for caution's sake. As long as I
heard from her regularly, I should assume that nothing was wrong. But if
the morning came and brought me no letter, my return to London would
take place, as a matter of course, by the first train. I contrived to
reconcile Laura to my departure by telling her that I was going to the
country to find new purchasers for her drawings and for mine, and I left
her occupied and happy. Marian followed me downstairs to the street
door.

`Remember what anxious hearts you leave here,' she whispered, as we
stood together in the passage. `Remember all the hopes that hang on your
safe return. If strange things haPpen to you on this journey –; if you
and Sir Percival meet –;'

`What makes you think we shall meet?' I asked.

`l don't know –; I have fears and fancies that I cannot account for.
Laugh at them, Walter, if you like –; but, for God's sake, keep your
temper if you come in contact with that man !'

`Never fear, Marian ! I answer for my self-control.'

With those words we parted.

I walked briskly to the station. There was a glow of hope in me. There
was a growing conviction in my mind that my journey this time would not
be taken in vain. It was a fine, clear, cold morning.  My nerves were
firmly strung, and I felt all the strength of my resolution stirring in
me vigorously from head to foot.

As I crossed the railway platform, and looked right and left among the
people congregated on it, to search for any faces among them that I
knew, the doubt occurred to me whether it might not have been to my
advantage if I had adopted a disguise before setting out for Hampshire.
But there was something so repellent to me in the idea –; something so
meanly like the common herd of spies and informers in the mere act of
adopting a disguise –; that I dismissed the question from consideration
almost as soon as it had risen in my mind. Even as a mere matter of
expediency the proceeding was doubtful in the extreme. If I tried the
experiment at home the landlord of the house would sooner or later
discover me, and would have his suspicions aroused immediately. If I
tried it away from home the same persons might see me, by the commonest
accident, with the disguise and without it, and I should in that way be
inviting the notice and distrust which it was my most pressing interest
to avoid. In my own character I had acted thus far –; and in my own
character I was resolved to continue to the end.

The train left me at Welmingham early in the afternoon.

Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any
prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine, which can rival the
repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind,
of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in
the transition state of its prosperity? I asked myself that question as
I passed through the clean desolation, the neat ugliness, the prim
torPor of the streets of Welmingham. And the tradesmen who stared after
me from their lonely shops –; the trees that drooped helpless in their
arid exile of unfinished crescents and squares –; the dead
house-carcasses that waited in vain for the vivifying human element to
animate them with the breath of life –; every creature that I saw, every
object that I passed, seemed to answer with one accord : The deserts of
Arabia are innocent of our civilised desolation –; the ruins of
Palestine are incapable of our modern gloom !

I inquired my way to the quarter of the town in which Mrs Catherick
lived, and on reaching it found myself in a square of small houses, one
story high. There was a bare little plot of grass in the middle,
protected by a cheap wire fence. An elderiy nursemaid and two children
were standing in a corner of the enclosure, looking at a lean goat
tethered to the grass. Two footpassengers were talking together on one
side of the pavement before the houses, and an idle little boy was
leading an idle little dog along by a string on the other. I heard the
dull tinkling of a piano at a distance, accompanied by the intermittent
knocking of a hammer nearer at hand. These were all the sights and
sounds of life that encountered me when I entered the square.

I walked at once to the door of Number Thirteen –; the number of Mrs
Catherick's house –; and knocked, without waiting to consider beforehand
how I might best present myself when I got in. The first necessity was
to see Mrs Catherick. I could then judge, from my own observation, of
the safest and easiest manner of approaching the object of my visit.

The door was opened by a melancholy middle-aged woman servant. I gave
her my card, and asked if I could see Mrs Catherick. The card was taken
into the front parlour, and the servant returned with a message
requesting me to mention what my business was.

`Say, if you Flease, that my business relates to Mrs Catherick's
daughter,' I replied. This was the best pretext I could think of, on the
spur of the moment, to account for my visit.

The servant again retired to the parlour, again returned, and this time
begged me, with a look of gloomy amazement, to walk in.

I entered a little room, with a flaring paper of the largest pattern on
the walls- Chairs, tables, cheffonier, and sofa, all gleamed with the
glutinous brightness of cheap upholstery. On the largest table, in the
middle of the room, stood a smart Bible, placed exactly in the centre on
a red and yellow woollen mat; and at the side of the table nearest to
the window, with a little knitting-basket on her lap, and a wheezing,
blear-eyed old spaniel crouched at her feet, there sat an elderly woman,
wearing a black net cap and a black silk gown, and having slate-coloured
mittens on her hands. Her iron-grey hair hung in heavy bands on either
side of her face –; her dark eyes looked straight forward, with a hard,
defiant, implacable stare. She had full square cheeks, a long, firm
chin, and thick, sensual, colourless lips. Her figure was stout and
sturdy, and her manner aggressively self-possessed. This was Mrs
Catherick.

`You have come to speak to me about my daughter,' she said, before I
could utter a word on my side. `Be so good as to mention what you have
to say.'

The tone of her voice was as hard, as defiant, as implacable as the
expression of her eyes. She pointed to a chair, and looked me all over
attentively, from head to foot, as I sat down in it. I saw that my only
chance with this woman was to speak to her in her own tone, and to meet
her, at the outset of our interview, on her own ground.

`You are aware,' I said, `that your daughter has been lost?'

`I am perfectly aware of it.'

`Have you felt any apprehension that the misfortune of her loss might be
followed by the misfortune of her death?'

`Yes. Have you come here to tell me she is dead?'

`I have.'

`Why?'

She put that extraordinary question without the slightest change in her
voice, her face, or her maimer. She could not have appeared more
perfectly unconcerned if I had told her of the death of the goat in the
enclosure outside.

`Why?' I repeated. `Do you ask why I come here to tell you of your
daughter's death?'

`Yes. What interest have you in me, or in her? How do you come to know
anything about my daughter?'

`In this way. I met her on the night when she escaped from the Asylum,
and I assisted her in reaching a place of safety.'

`You did very wrong.'

`I am sorry to hear her mother say so.'

`Her mother does say so. How do you know she is dead?'

`I am not at liberty to say how I know it-but I do know it.'

`Are you at liberty to say how you found out my address?'

`Certainly. I got your address from Mrs Clements.'

`Mrs Clements is a foolish woman. Did she tell you to come here ?'

`She did not.'

`Then, I ask you again, why did you come?'

As she was determined to have her answer, I gave it to her in the
plainest possible form.

`I came,' I said, `because I thought Anne Catherick's mother might have
some natural interest in knowing whether she was alive or dead.'

`Just so,' said Mrs Catherick, with additional self-possession. `Had you
no other motive?'

I hesitated. The right answer to that question was not easy to find at a
moment's notice.

`If you have no other motive,' she went on, deliberately taking off her
slate-coloured mittens, and rolling them up, `I have only to thank you
for your visit, and to say that I will not detain you here any longer.
Your information would be more satisfactory if you were willing to
explain how you became possessed of it. However, it justifies me, I
suppose, in going into mourning. There is not much alteration necessary
in my dress, as you see. When I have changed my mittens, I shall be all
in black.'

She searched in the pocket of her gown, drew out a pair of black lace
mittens, put them on with the stoniest and steadiest composure, and then
quietly crossed her hands in her lap.

`l wish you good morning,' she said.

The cool contempt of her manner irritated me into directly avowing that
the purpose of my visit had not been answered yet.

`I have another motive in coming here,' I said.

`Ah ! I thought so,' remarked Mrs Catherick.

`Your daughter's death –;'

`What did she die of?'

`Of disease of the heart.'

`Yes. Go on.'

`Your daughter's death has been made the pretext for inflicting serious
injury on a person who is very dear to me. Two men have been concerned,
to my certain knowledge, in doing that wrong. One of them is Sir
Percival Glyde.'

`Indeed!'

I looked attentively to see if she flinched at the sudden mention of
that name. Not a muscle of her stirred –; the hard, defiant, implacable
stare in her eyes never wavered for an instant.

`You may wonder,' I went on, `how the event of your daughter's death can
have been made the means of inflicting injury on another person.'

`No.' said Mrs Catherick; `I don't wonder at all. This appears to be
your affair. You are interested in my affairs. I am not interested in
yours.'

`You may ask, then,' I persisted, `why I mention the matter in your
presence.'

`Yes, I do ask that.'

`I mention it because I am determined to bring Sir Percival Glyde to
account for the wickedness he has committed.'

`What have I to do with your determination ?'

`You shall hear. There are certain events in Sir Percival's past life
which it is necessary for my purpose to be fully acquainted with. You
know them –; and for that reason I come to you.'

`What events do you mean?'

`Events that occurred at Old Welmingham when your husband was
parish-clerk at that place, and before the time when your daughter was
born.'

I had reached the woman at last through the barrier of impenetrable
reserve that she had tried to set up between us. I saw her temper
smouldering in her eyes –; as plainly as I saw her hands grow restless,
then unclasp themselves, and begin mechanically smoothing her dress over
her knees.

`What do you know of those events?' she asked.

`All that Mrs Clements could tell me,' I answered.

There was a momentary flush on her firm square face, a momentary
stillness in her restless hands, which seemed to betoken a coming
outburst of anger that might throw her off her guard. But no –; she
mastered the rising irritation, leaned back in her chair, crossed her
arms on her broad bosom, and with a smile of grim sarcasm on her thick
lips, looked at me as steadily as ever.

`Ah ! I begin to understand it all now,' she said, her tamed and
disciplined anger only expressing itself in the elaborate mockery of her
tone and manner. `You have got a grudge of your own against Sir Percival
Glyde, and I must help you to wreak it. I must tell you this, that, and
the other about Sir Percival and myself, must I? Yes, indeed? You have
been prying into my private affairs. You think you have found a lost
woman to deal with, who lives here on sufferance, and who will do
anything you ask for fear you may injure her in the opinions of the
town'speople. I see through you and your precious speculation –; I do !
and it amuses me. Ha ! ha!'

She stopped for a moment, her arms tightened over her bosom, and she
laughed to herself –; a hard, harsh, angry laugh.

`You don't know how I have lived in this place, and what I have done in
this place, Mr What's-your-name,' she went on. `I'll tell you, before I
ring the bell and have you shown out. I came here a wronged woman –; I
came here robbed of my character and determined to claim it back. I've
been years and years about It –; and I have claimed it back. I have
matched the respectable people fairly and openly on their own ground. If
they say anything against me now they must say it in secret –; they
can't say it, they daren't say it, openly. I stand high enough in this
town to be out of your reach. The clergyman bows to me. Aha! you didn't
bargain for that when you came here. Go to the church and inquire about
me –; you will find Mis Catherick has her sitting like the rest of them,
and pays the rent on the day it's due. Go to the town-hall. There's a
petition lying there –; a petition of the respectable inhabitants
against allowing a circus to come and perform here and corrupt our
morals –;yes! our morals. I signed that petition this morning. Go to the
bookseller's shop. The clergyman's Wednesday evening Lectures on
Justification by Faith are publishing there by subscription –; I'm down
on the list. The doctor's wife only put a shilling in the plate at our
last charity sermon –; I put half-a-crown. Mr Churchwarden Soward held
the Plate, and bowed to me. Ten years ago he told Pigrum the chemist I
ought to be whipped out of the town at the cart's tail. Is your mother
alive? Has she got a better Bible on her table than I have got on mine?
Does she stand better with her trades-people than I do with mine? Has
she always lived within her income? I have always lived within mine. Ah!
there is the clergyman coming along the square. Look, Mr
What's-your-name –; look, if you please !'

She started up with the activity of a young woman, went to the window,
waited till the clergyman passed, and bowed to him solemnly. The
clergyman ceremoniously raised his hat, and walked on. Mrs Catherick
returned to her chair, and looked at me with a grimmer sarcasm than
ever.

`There!' she said. `What do you think of that for a woman with a lost
character? How does your speculation look now?'

The singular manner in which she had chosen to assert herself, the
extraordinary practical vindication of her position in the town which
she had just offered, had so perplexed me that I listened to her in
silent surprise. I was not the less resolved, however, to make another
effort to throw her off her guard. lf the woman's fierce temper once got
beyond her control, and once flamed out on me, she might yet say the
words which would put the clue in my hands.

`How does your speculation look now ?' she repeated.

`Exactly as it looked when I first came in,' I answered. `I don't doubt
the position you have gained in the town, and I don't wish to assail it
even if I could. I came here because Sir Percival Glyde is, to my
certain knowledge, your enemy, as well as mine. If l have a grudge
against him, you have a grudge against him too. You may deny it if you
like, you may distrust me as inuch as you please, you may be as angry as
you will –; but, of all the women in England, you, if you have any sense
of injury, are the woman who ought to help me to crush that man.'

`Crush him for yourself,' she said; `then come back here, and see what I
say to you.'

She spoke those words as she had not spoken yet, quickly, fiercely,
vindictively. I had stirred in its lair the serpent-hatred of years, but
only for a moment. Like a lurking reptile it leaped up at me as she
eagerly bent forward towards the place in which I was sitting. Like a
lurking reptile it dropped out of sight again as she instantly resumed
her former position in the chair.

`You won't trust me?' I said.

`No.'

`You are afraid?'

`Do I look as if I was?'

`You are afraid of Sir Percival Glyde.'

`Am I?'

Her colour was rising, and her hands were at work agaln smoothing her
gown. I pressed the point farther and farther home, I went on without
allowing her a moment of delay.

`Sir Percival has a high position in the world,' I said; `it would be no
wonder if you were afraid of him. Sir Percival is a powerful man, a
baronet, the possessor of a fine estate, the descendant of a great
family –;'

She amazed me beyond expression by suddenly bursting out laughing.

`Yes,' she repeated, in tones of the bitterest, steadiest contempt. `A
baronet, the possessor of a fine estate, the descendant of a great
family. Yes, indeed! a great family –; especially by the mother's side.'

There was no time to reflect on the words that had just escaped her,
there was only time to feel that they were well worth thinking over the
moment I left the house.

`I am not here to dispute with you about family questions,' I said. `I
know nothing of Sir Percival's mother –;'

`And you know as little of Sir Percival himself,' she interposed
sharply,

`I advise you not to be too sure of that,' I rejoined. `I know some
things about him, and I suspect many more.'

`What do you suspect?'

`I'll tell you what I don't suspect. I don't suspect him of being Anne's
father.'

She started to her feet, and came close up to me with a look of fury.

`How dare you talk to me about Anne's father ! How dare you say who was
her father, or who wasn't !' she broke out, her face quivering, her
voice trembling with passion.

`The secret between you and Sir Percival is not that secret,' I
persisted. `The mystery which darkens Sir Percival's life was not born
with your daughter's birth, and has not died with your daughter's
death.'

She drew back a step. `Go!' she said, and pointed sternly to the door.

`There was no thought of the child in your heart or in his,' I went on,
determined to press her back to her last defences. `There was no bond of
guilty love between you and him when you held those stolen meetings,
when your husband found you whispering together under the vestry of the
church.'

Her pointing hand instantly dropped to her side, and the deep flush of
anger faded from her face while I spoke. I saw the change pass over her
–; I saw that hard, firm, fearless, selfpossessed woman quail under a
terror which her utmost resolution was not strong enough to resist when
I said those five last words, ` the vestry of the church.'

For a minute or more we stood looking at each other in silence. I spoke
first.

`Do you still refuse to trust me?' I asked.

She could not call the colour that had left it back to her face, but she
had steadied her voice, she had recovered the defiant selfpossession of
her manner when she answered me.

`I do refuse,' she said.

`Do you still tell me to go?'

`Yes. Go –; and never come back.'

I walked to the door, waited a moment before I opened it, and turned
round to look at her again.

`I may have news to brine you of Sir Percival which you don't expect,' I
said, ` and in that case I shall come back.'

`There is no news of Sir Percival that I don't expect, except –;'

She stopped, her pale face darkened, and she stole back with a quiet,
stealthy, cat-like step to her chair.

`Except the news of his death,' she said, sitting down again, with the
mockery of a smile just hovering on her cruel lips, and the furtive
light of hatred lurking deep in her steady eyes.

As I opened the door of the room to go out, she looked round at me
quickly. The cruel smile slowly widened her lips –; she eyed me, with a
strange stealthy interest, from head to foot –; an unutterable
expectation showed itself wickedly all over her face. Was she
speculating, in the secrecy of her own heart, on my youth and strength,
on the force of my sense of injury and the limits of my self-control,
and was she considering the lengths to which they might carry me, if Sir
Percival and I ever chanced to meet? The bare doubt that it might be so
drove me from her presence, and silenced even the common forms of
farewell on my lips. Without a word more, on my side or on hers, I left
the room.

As I opened the outer door, I saw the same clergyman who had already
passed the house once, about to pass it again, on his way back through
the square. I waited on the door-step to let him go by, and looked
round, as I did so, at the parlour window.

Mrs Catherick had heard his footsteps approaching, in the silence of
that lonely place, and she was on her feet at the window again, waiting
for him. Not all the strength of all the terrible passions I had roused
in that woman's heart, could loosen her desperate hold on the one
fragment of social consideration which years of resolute effort had just
dragged within her grasp. There she was again, not a minute after I had
left her, placed purposely in a position which made it a matter of
common courtesy on the part of the clergyman to bow to her for a second
time. He raised his hat once more. I saw the hard ghastly face behind
the window soften, and light up with gratified pride –; I saw the head
with the grim black cap bend ceremoniously in return. The clergyman had
bowed to her, and in my presence, twice in one day !




I left the house, feeling that Mrs Catherick had helped me a step
forward, in spite of herself. Before I had reached the turning which led
out of the square, my attention was suddenly aroused by the sound of a
closing door behind me.

I looked round, and saw an undersised man in black on the door-step of a
house, which, as well as I could judge, stood next to Mrs Catherick's
place of abode –; next to it, on the side nearest to me. The man did not
hesitate a moment about the direction he should take. He advanced
rapidly towards the turning at which I had stopped. I recognised him as
the lawyer's clerk, who had preceded me in my visit to Blackwater Park,
and who had tried to pick a quarrel with me, when I asked him if I could
see the house.

I waited where I was, to ascertain whether his object was to come to
close quarters and speak on this occasion. To my surprise he passed on
rapidly, without saying a word, without even looking up in my face as he
went by. This was such a complete inversion of the course of proceeding
which I had every reason to expect on his part, that my curiosity, or
rather my suspicion, was aroused, and I deterniined on my side to keep
him cautiously in view, and to discover what the business might be in
which he was now employed. Without caring whether he saw me or not, I
walked after him. He never looked back, and he led me straight through
the streets to the railway station.

The train was on the point of starting, and two or three passengers who
were late were clustering round the small opening through which the
tickets were issued. I joined them, and distinctly heard the lawyer's
clerk demand a ticket for the Blackwater station. I satisfied myself
that he had actually left by the train before I came away.

There was only one interpretation that I could place on what I had just
seen and heard. I had unquestionably observed the man leaving a house
which closely adjoined Mrs Catherick's residence. He had been probably
placed there, by Sir Percival's directions, as a lodger, in anticipation
of my inquiries leading me, sooner or later, to communicate with Mrs
Catherick. He had doubtless seen me go in and come out, and he had
hurried away by the first train to make his report at Blackwater Park,
to which place Sir Percival would naturally betake himself (knowing what
he evidently knew of my movements), in order to be ready on the spot, if
I returned to Hampshire. Before many days were over, there seemed every
likelihood now that he and I might meet.

Whatever result events might be destined to produce, I resolved to
pursue my own course, straight to the end in view, without stopping or
turning aside for Sir percival or for any one. The great responsibility
which weighed on me heavily in London –; the responsibility of so
guiding my slightest actions as to prevent them from leading
accidentally to the discovery of Laura's place of refuge –; was removed,
now that I was in Hampshire. I could go and come as I pleased at
Welmingham, and if I chanced to fail in observing any necessary
precautions, the immediate results, at least, would affect no one but
myself.

When I left the station the winter evening was beginning to close in.
There was little hope of continuing my inquiries after dark to any
useful purpose in a neighbourhood that was strange to me. Accordingly, I
made my way to the nearest hotel, and ordered my dinner and my bed. This
done, I wrote to Marian, to tell her that I was safe and well, and that
I had fair prospects of success. I had directed her, on leaving home, to
address the first letter she wrote to me (the letter I expected to
receive the next morming) to `The Post-Office, Welmingham,' and I now
begged her to send her second day's letter to the same address. I could
easily receive it by writing to the postmaster if I happened to be away
from the towm when it arrived.

The coffee-room of the hotel, as it grew late in the evening, became a
perfect solitude. I was left to reflect on what I had accomplished that
afternoon as uninterruptedly as if the house had been my own. Before I
retired to rest I had attentively thought over my extraordinary
interview with Mrs Catherick from beginning to end, and had verified at
my leisure the conclusions which I had hastily drawn in the earlier part
of the day.

The vestry of Old Welmingham church was the starting-point from which my
mind slowly worked its way back through all that I had heard Mrs
Catherick say, and through all I had seen Mrs Catherick do.

At the time when the neighbourhood of the vestry was first referred to
in my presence by Mrs Clements, I had thought it the strangest and most
unaccountable of all places for Sir Percival to select for a clandestine
meeting with the clerk's wife. Influenced by this impression, and by no
other, I had mentioned `the vestry of the church' before Mrs Catherick
on pure speculation –; it represented one of the minor peculiarities of
the story which occurred to me while I was speaking. I was prepared for
her answering me confusedly or angrily, but the blank terror that seized
her when I said the words took me completely by surprise. I had long
before associated Sir Percival's Secret with the concealment of a
serious crime which Mrs Catherick knew of, but I had gone no further
than this. Now the woman's paroxysm of terror associated the crime,
either directly or indirectly, with the vestry, and convinced me that
she had been more than the mere witness of it –; she was also the
accomplice, beyond a doubt.

What had been the nature of the crime? Surely there was a contemptible
side to it, as well as a dangerous side, or Mrs Catherick would not have
repeated my own words, referring to Sir Percival's rank and power, with
such marked disdain as she had certainly displayed. It was a
contemptible crime then, and a dangerous crime, and she had shared in
it, and it was associated with the vestry of the church.

The next consideration to be disposed of led me a step farther frorn
this point.

Mrs Catherick's undisguised contempt for Sir Percival plainly extended
to his mother as well. She had referred with the bitterest sarcasm to
the great family he had descended from –; `especially by the mother's
side.' What did this mean? There appeared to be only two explanations of
it. Either his mother's birth had been low, or his mother's reputation
was damaged by some hidden flaw with which Mrs Catherick and Sir
Percival were both privately acquainted? I could only put the first
explanation to the test by looking at the register of her marriage, and
so ascertaining her maiden name and her parentage as a preliminary to
further inquiries.

On the other hand, if the second case supposed were the true one, what
had been the flaw in her reputation? Remembering the account which
Marian had given me of Sir Percival's father and mother. and of the
suspiciously unsocial secluded life they had both led, I now asked
myself whether it might not be possible that his mother had never been
married at all. Here again the register might, by offering written
evidence of the marriage, prove to me, at any rate, that this doubt had
no foundation in truth. But where was the register to be found? At this
point I took up the conclusions which I had previously formed, and the
same mental process which had discovered the locality of the concealed
crime, now lodged the register also in the vestry of Old Welmingham
church.

These were the results of my interview with Mrs Catherick –; these were
the various considerations, all steadily converging to one point, which
decided the course of my proceedings on the next day.

The morning was cloudy and lowering, but no rain fell. I left my bag at
the hotel to wait there till I called for it, and, after inquiring the
way, set forth on foot for Old Welmingham church.

It was a walk of rather more than two miles, the ground rising slowly
all the way.

On the highest point stood the church –; an ancient, weatherbeaten
building, with heavy buttresses at its sides, and a clumsy square tower
in front. The vestry at the back was built out from the church, and
seemed to be of the same age. Round the building at intervals appeared
the remains of the village which Mrs Clements had described to me as her
husband's place of abode in former years, and which the principal
inhabitants had long since deserted for the new town. Some of the empty
houses had been dismantled to their outer walls, some had been left to
decay with time, and some were still inhabited by persons evidently of
the poorest class. It was a dreary scene, and yet, in the worst aspect
of its ruin, not so dreary as the modern tom that I had just left. Here
there was the brown, breezy sweep of surrounding fields for the eye to
repose on –; here the trees, leafless as they were, still varied the
monotony of the prospect, and helped the mind to look forward to
summer-time and shade.

As I moved away from the back of the church, and passed some of the
dismantled cottages in search of a person who might direct me to the
clerk, I saw two men saunter out after me from behind a wall. The
tallest of the two –; a stout muscular man in the dress of a gamekeeper
–; was a stranger to me. The other was one of the men who had followed
me in London on the day when I left Mr Kyrle's office. I had taken
particular notice of him at the time, and I felt sure that I was not
mistaken in identifying the fellow on this occasion.

Neither he nor his companion attempted to speak to me, and both kept
themselves at a respectful distance, but the motive of their presence in
the neighbourhood of the church was plainly apparent. It was exactly as
I had supposed –; Sir Percival was already prepared for me. My visit to
Mrs Catherick had been reported to him the evening before, and those two
men had been placed on the look-out near the church in anticipation of
my appearance at Old Welmingham. If I had wanted any further proof that
my investigations had taken the right direction at last, the plan now
adopted for watching me would have supplied it.

I walked on away from the church till I reached one of the inhabited
houses, with a patch of kitchen garden attached to it on which a
labourer was at work. He directed me to the clerk's abode, a cottage at
some little distance off, standing by itself on the outskirts of the
forsaken village. The clerk was indoors, and was just putting on his
greatcoat. He was a cheerful, familiar, loudly-talkative old man, with a
very poor opimion (as I soon discovered) of the place in which he lived,
and a happy sense of superiority to his neighbours in virtue of the
great personal disn-nction of having once been in London.

`It's well you came so early, sir,' said the old man, when I had
mentioned the object of my visit. `I should have been away in ten
minutes more. Parish business, sir, and a goodish long trot before it's
all done for a man at my age. But, bless you, I'm strong on my legs
still! As long as a man don't give at his legs, there's a deal of work
left in him. Don't you think so yourself, sir ?'

He took his keys down while he was talking from a hook behind the
fireplace, and locked his cottage door behind us.

`Nobody at home to keep house for me,' said the clerk, with a cheerful
sense of perfect freedom from all family encumbrances `My wife's in the
churchyard there, and my children are all married. A wretched place
this, isn't it, sir? But the parish is a large one –; every man couldn't
get through the business as I do. It's learning does it, and I've had my
share, and a little more. I can talk the Queen's English (God bless the
Queen !), and that's more than mcst of the people about here can do.
You're from London, I suppose, sir? I've been in London a matter of
five-andtwenty years ago. What's the news there now, if you please?'

Chattering on in this way, he led me back to the vestry. I looked about
to see if the two spies were still in sight. They were not visible
anywhere. After having discovered my application to the clerk, they had
probably concealed themselves where they could watch my next proceedings
in perfect freedom.

The vestry door was of stout old oak, studded with strong nails, and the
clerk put his large heavy key into the lock with the air of a man who
knew that he had a difficulty to encounter, and who was not quite
certain of creditably conquering it.

`I'm obliged to bring you this way, sir,' he said, `because the door
from the vestry to the church is bolted on the vestry side. We might
have got in through the church otherwise. This is a perverse lock, if
ever there was one yet. It's big enough for a prison-door –; it's been
hampered over and over again, and it ought to be changed for a new one.
I've mentioned that to the churchwarden fifty times over at least –;
he's always saying, ``I'll see about it'' –; and he never does see. Ah,
it's a sort of lost corner, this place. Not like London –; is it, sir?
Bless you, we are all asleep here ! We don't march with the times.'

After some twisting and turning of the key, the heavy lock yielded, and
he opened the door.

The vestry was larger than I should have supposed it to be, judging from
the outside only. It was a dim, monldy, melancholy old room, with a low,
raftered ceiling. Round two sides of it, the sides nearest to the
interior of the church, ran heavy wooden presses, worm-eaten and gaping
with age. Hooked to the inner corner of one of these presses hung
several surplices, all bulging out at their lower ends in an
irreverent-looking bundle of limp drapery. Below the surplices, on the
floor, stood three packingcases, with the lids half off, half on, and
the straw profusely bursting out of their cracks and crevices in every
direction. Behind them, in a comer, was a litter of dusty papers, some
large and rolled up like architects' plans, some loosely strung together
on files like bills or letters. The room had once been lighted by a
small side window, but this had been bricked up, and a lantern skylight
was now substituted for it. The atmosphere of the place was heavy and
mouldy, being rendered additionally oppressive by the closing of the
door which led into the church. This door also was composed of solid
oak, and was bolted at the top and bottom on the vestry side.

`We might be tidier, mightn't we, sir ?' said the cheerful clerk; `but
when you're in a lost corner of a place like this, what are you to do?
Why, look here now, just look at these packing-cases. There they've
been, for a year or more, ready to go down to London –; there they are,
littering the place and there they'll stop as long as the nails hold
them together. I'll tell you what, sir, as I said before, this is not
London. We are all asleep here. Bless you, we don't march with the times
!'

`What is there in the packing-cases?' I asked.

`Bits of old wood carvings from the pulpit, and panels from the chancel,
and images from the organ-loft,' said the clerk. `Portraits of the
twelve apostles in wood, and not a whole nose among 'em. All broken, and
worm-eaten, and crumbling to dust at the edges. As brittle as crockery,
sir, and as old as the church, if not older.'

`And why were they going to London? To be repaired?'

`That's it, sir, to be repaired, and where they were past repair, to be
copied in sound wood. But, bless you, the money fell short, and there
they are, waiting for new subscriptions, and nobody to subscribe. It was
all done a year ago, sir. Six gentlemen dined together about it, at the
hotel in the new town. They made speeches, and passed resolutions, and
put their names dowm, and printed off thousands of prospectuses.
Beautiful prospectuses, sir, all flourished over with Gothic devices in
red ink, saying it was a disgrace not to restore the church and repair
the famous carvings, and so on. There are the prospectuses that couldn't
be distributed, and the architect's plans and estimates, and the whole
correspondence which set everybody at loggerheads and ended in a
dispute, all down together in that corner, behind the packing-cases. The
money dribbled in a little at first –; but what Fan you expect out of
London? There was just enough, you know, to pack the broken carvings,
and get the estimates, and pay the printer's bill, and after that there
wasn't a halfpenny left. There the things are, as I said before. We have
nowhere else to put them –; nobody in the new town cares about
accommodating us –; we're in a lost corner –; and this is an untidy
vestry –; and who's to help it? –; that's what I want to know.'

My anxiety to examine the register did not dispose me to offer much
encouragement to the old man's talkativeness. I agreed with him that
nobody could help the untidiness of the vestry, and then suggested that
we should proceed to our business without more delay.

`Ay, ay, the marriage-register, to be sure,' said the clerk, taking a
little bunch of keys from his pocket. `How far do you want to look back,
sir?'

Marian had informed me of Sir Percival's age at the time when we had
spoken together of his marriage engagement with Laura. She had then
described him as being forty-five years old. Calculating back from this,
and making due allowance for the year that had passed since I had gained
my information, I found that he must have been born in eighteen hundred
and four, and that I might safely start on my search through the
register from that date.

`I want to begin with the year eighteen hundred and four,' I said.

`Which way after that, sir?' asked the clerk. `Forwards to our time or
backwards away from us ?'

` Backwards from eighteen hundred and four.'

He opened the door of one of the presses –; the press from the side of
which the surplices were hanging –; and produced a large volume bound in
greasy brown leather. I was struck by the insecurity of the place in
which the register was kept. The door of the press was warped and
cracked with age, and the lock was of the smallest and commonest kind. I
could have forced it easily with the walking-stick I carried in my hand.

`Is that considered a sufficiently secure place for the register?' I
inquired. `Surely a book of such importance as this ought to be
protected by a better lock, and kept carefully in an iron safe?'

`Well, now, that's curious I' said the clerk, shutting up the book
again, just after he had opened it, and smacking his hand cheerfully on
the cover. `Those were the very words my old master was always saying
years and years ago, when I was a lad. ``Why isn't the register''
(meaning this register here, umder my. hand) –; ``why isn't it kept in
an iron safe?'' If I've heard him say that once, I've heard him say it a
hundred times. He was the solicitor in those days, sir, who had the
appointment of vestryclerk to this church. A fine hearty old gentleman,
and the most particular man breathing. As long as he lived he kept a
copy of this book in his office at Knowlesbury, and had it posted up
regular, from time to time, to correspond with the fresh entries here.
You would hardly think it, but he had his own appointed days, once or
twice in every quarter, for riding over to this church on his old white
pony, to check the copy, by the register, with his own eyes and hands.
``How do I know?'' (he used to say) ``how do I know that the register in
this vestry may not be stolen or destroyed? Why isn't it kept in an iron
safe? Why can't I make other people as careful as I am myself? Some of
these days there will be an accident happen, and when the register's
lcst, then the parish will find out the value of my copy.'' He used to
take his pinch of snuff after that, and look about him as bold as a
lord. Ah ! the like of him for doing business isn't easy to find now.
You may go to London and not match him, even there. Which year did you
say, sir? Eighteen hundred and what?'

`Eighteen hundred and four,' I replied, mentally resolving to give the
old man no more opportunities of talking, until my examination of the
register was over.

The clerk put on his spectacles, and turned over the leaves of the
register, carefully wetting his finger and thumb at every third page.
`There it is, sir,' said he, with another cheerful smack on the open
volume. `There's the year you want.'

As I was ignorant of the month in which Sir Percival was born, I began
my backward search with the early part of the year. The register-book
was of the old-fashioned kind, the entries being all made on blank pages
in manuscript, and the divisions which separated them being indicated by
ink lines drawn across the page at the close of each entry.

I reached the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and four without
encountering the marriage, and then travelled back through December
eighteen hundred and three –; through November and October –; through –;

No! not through September also. Under the heading of that month in the
year I found the marriage.

I looked carefully at the entry. It was at the bottom of a page, and was
for want of room compressed into a smaller space than that occupied by
the marriages above. The marriage immediately before it was impressed on
my attention by the circumstance of the bridegroom's Christian name
being the same as my own. The entry immediately following it (on the top
of the next page) was noticeable im another way from the large space it
occupied, the record in this case registering the marriages of two
brothers at the same time. The register of the marriage of Sir Felix
Glyde was in no respect remarkable except for the narrowness of the
space into which it was compressed at the bottom of the page. The
information about his wife was the usual information given in such
cases. She was described as `Cecilia Jane Elster, of Park-View Cottages,
Knowlesbury, only daughter of the late Patrick Elster, Esq., formerly of
Bath.'

I noted down these particulars in my pocket-book, feeling as I did so
both doubtful and disheartened about my next proceedings. The Secret
which I had believed until this moment to be within my grasp seemed now
farther from my reach than ever.

What suggestions of any mystery unexplained had arisen out of my visit
to the vestry? I saw no suggestions anywhere. What Progress had I made
towards discovering the suspected stain on the reputation of Sir
Percival's mother? The one fact I had ascertained vindicated her
reputation. Fresh doubts, fresh difficulties, fresh delays began to open
before me in interminable prospect. What was I to do next? The one
immediate resource left to me appeared to be this. I might institute
inquiries about `Miss Elster of Knowlesbury,' on the chance of advancing
towards the main object of my investigation, by first discovering the
secret of Mrs Catherick's contempt for Sir Percival's mother.

`Have you found what you wanted, sir?' said the clerk, as I closed the
register-book.

`Yes,' I replied, `but I have some inquiries still to make. I suppose
the clergyman who officiated here in the year eighteen hundred and three
is no longer alive?'

`No, no, sir, he was dead three or four years before I came here, and
that was as long ago as the year twenty-seven, I got this place, sir,'
persisted my talkative old friend, `through the clerk before me leaving
it. They say he was driven out of house and home by his wife –; and
she's living still down in the new town there. I don't know the rights
of the story myself –; all I know is I got the place. Mr Wansborough got
it for me –; the son of my old master that I was telling you of. He's a
free pleasant gentleman as ever lived –; rides to the hounds, keeps his
pointers and all that. He's vestry-clerk here now as his father was
before him.

`Did you not tell me your former master lived at Knowlesbury?' I asked,
calling to mind the long story about the precise gentleman of the old
school with which my talkative friend had wearied me before he opened
the register-book.

`Yes, to be sure, sir,' replied the clerk. `Old Mr Wansborough lived at
Knowlesbury, and young Mr Wansborough lives there too.'

`You said just now he was vestry-clerk, like his father before him. I am
not quite sure that I know what a vestry-clerk is.'

`Don't you indeed, sir? –; and you come from London too! Every parish
church, you know, has a vestry-clerk and a parishclerk. The parish-clerk
is a man like me (except that I've got a deal more learning than most of
them –; though I don't boast of it). The vestry-clerk is a sort of an
appointment that the lawyers get, and if there's any business to be done
for the vestry, why there they are to do it. It's just the same in
London. Every parish church there has got its vestry-clerk –; and you
may take my word for it he's sure to be a lawyer.'

`Then young Mr Wamsborough is a lawyer, I suppose ?'

`Of course he is, sir ! A lawyer in High Street, Knowlesbury –; the old
offices that his father had before him. The number of times I've swept
those offices out, and seen the old gentleman come trotting into
business on his white pony, looking right and left all down the street
and nodding to everybody! Bless you, he was a popular character ! –;
he'd have done in London !'

`How far is it to Knowlesbury from this place ? '

`A long stretch, sir,' said the clerk, with that exaggerated idea of
distance, and that vivid perception of difficulties in getting from
place to place, which is peculiar to all country people. `Nigh on five
mile, I can tell you !'

It was still early in the forenoon. There was plenty of time for a walk
to Knowlesbury and back again to Welmingham; and there was no person
probably in the town who was fitter to assist my inquiries about the
character and position of Sir Percival's mother before her marriage than
the local solicitor. Resolving to go at once to Knowlesbury on foot, I
led the way out of the vestry.

`Thank you kindly, sir,' said the clerk, as I slipped my little present
into his hand. `Are you really going to walk all the way to Knowlesbury
and back? Well! you're strong on your legs, too –; and what a blessing
that is, isn't it? There's the road, you can't miss it. I wish I was
going your way –; it's pleasant to meet with gentlemen from London in a
lost corner like this. One hears the news. Wish you good morning, sir,
and thank you kindly once more.'

We parted. As I left the church behind me I looked back, and there were
the two men again on the road below, with a third in their company, that
third person being the short man in black whom I had traced to the
railway the evening before.

The three stood talking together for a little while, then separated. The
man in black went away by himself towards Welmingham –; the other two
remained together, evidently waiting to follow me as soon as I walked
on.

I proceeded on my way without letting the fellows see that I took any
special notice of them. They caused me no conscious irritation of
feeling at that moment –; on the contrary, they rather revived my
sinking hopes. In the surPrise of discovering the evidence of the
marriage, I had forgotten the inference I had drawn on first perceiving
the men in the neighbourhood of the vestry. Their reappearance reminded
me that Sir Percival had anticipated my visit to Old Welmingham church
as the next result of my interview with Mrs Catherick –; otherwise he
would never have placed his spies there to wait for me. Smoothly and
fairly as appearances looked in the vestry, there was something wrong
beneath them –; there was something in the register-book, for aught I
knew, that I had not discovered yet.




Once out of sight of the church, I pressed forward briskly on my way to
Knowlesbury.

The road was, for the most part, straight and level. Whenever I looked
back over it I saw the two spies steadily following me. For the greater
part of the way they kept at a safe distance behind. But once or twice
they quickened their pace, as if with the purpose of overtaking me, then
stopped, consulted together, and fell back again to their former
position. They had some special object evidently in view, and they
seemed to be hesitating or differing about the best means of
accomplishing it. I could not guess exactly what their design might be,
but I felt serious doubts of reaching Knowlesbury without some mischance
happening to me on the way. These doubts were realised.

I had just entered on a lonely part of the road, with a sharp turn at
some distance ahead, and had just concluded (calculating by time) that I
must be getting near to the town, when I suddenly heard the steps of the
men close behind me.

Before I could look round, one of them (the man by whom I had been
followed in London) passed rapidly on my left side and hustled me with
his shoulder. I had been more irritated by the manner in which he and
his companion had dogged my steps all the way from Old Welmingham than I
was myself aware of, and I unfortunately pushed the fellow away smartly
with my open hand. He instantly shouted for help. His companion, the
tall man in the gamekeeper's clothes, sprang to my right side, and the
next moment the two scoundrels held me pinioned between them in the
middle of the road.

The conviction that a trap had been laid for me, and the vexation of
knowing that I had fallen into it, fortunately restrained me from making
my position still worse by an unavailing struggle with two men, one of
whom would, in all probability, have been more than a match for me
single-handed. I repressed the first natural movement by which I had
attempted to shake them off, and looked about to see if there was any
person near to whom I could appeal.

A labourer was at work in an adjoining field who must have witnessed all
that had passed. I called to him to follow us to the town. He shook his
head with stolid obstinacy, and walked away in the direction of a
cottage which stood back from the high-road. At the same time the men
who held me between them declared their intention of charging me with an
assault. I was cool enough and wise enough now to make no opposition.
`Drop your hold of my arms,' I said, `and I will go with you to the
town.' The man in the gamekeeper's dress roughly refused. But the
shorter man was sharp enough to look to consequences, and not to let his
companion commit himself by unnecessary violence. He made a sign to the
other, and I walked on between them with my arms free.

We reached the turning in the road, and there, close before us, were the
suburbs of Knowlesbury. One of the local policemen was walking along the
path by the roadside. The men at once appealed to him. He replied that
the magistrate was then sitting at the town-hall, and recommended that
we should appear before him immediately.

We went on to the town-hall. The clerk made out a formal summons, and
the charge was preferred against me, with the customary exaggeration and
the customary perversion of the truth on such occasions. The magistrate
(an ill-tempered man, with a sour enjoyment in the exercise of his own
power) inquired if any one on or near the road had witnessed the
assault, and, greatly to my surprise, the complainant admitted the
presence of the labourer in the field. I was enlightened, however, as to
the object of the admission by the magistrate's next words. He remanded
me at once for the production of the witness, expressing, at the same
time, his willingness to take bail for my reappearance if I could
produce one responsible surety to offer it. If I had been known in the
town he would have liberated me on my own recognisances, but as I was a
total stranger it was necessary that I should ad responsible bail.

The whole object of the stratagem was now disclosed to me. It had been
so managed as to make a remand necessary in a town where I was a perfect
stranger, and where I could not hope to get my liberty on bail. The
remand merely extended over three days, until the next sitting of the
magistrate. But in that time, while I was in confinement, Sir Percival
might use any means he pleased to embarrass my future proceedings –;
perhaps to screen himself from detection altogether –; without the
slightest fear of any hindrance on my part. At the end of the three days
the charge would, no doubt, be withdrawn, and the attendance of the
witness would be perfectly useless.

My indignation, I may almost say, my despair, at this mischievous check
to all further progress –; so base and trifling in itself, and yet so
disheartening and so serious in its probable results –; quite unfitted
me at first to reflect on the best means of extricating myself from the
dilemma in which I now stood. I had the folly to call for writing
materials, and to think of privately communicating my real position to
the magistrate. The hopelessness and the imprudence of this proceeding
failed to strike me before I had actually written the opening lines of
the letter. It was not till I had pushed the paper away –; not till, I
am ashamed to say, I had almost allowed the vexation of my helpless
position to conquer me –; that a course of action suddenly occurred to
my mind, which Sir percival had probably not anticipated, and which
might set me free again in a few hours. I determined to communicate the
situation in which I was placed to Mr Dawson, of Oak Lodge.

I had visited this gentleman's house, it may be remembered, at the time
of my first inquiries in the Blackwater Park neighbourhood, and I had
presented to him a letter of introduction from Miss Halcombe, in which
she recommended me to his friendly attention in the strongest terms. I
now wrote, referring to this letter, and to what I had previously told
Mr Dawson of the delicate and dangerous nature of my inquiries. I had
not revealed to him the truth about Laura, having merely described my
errand as being of the utmost importance to private family interests
with which Miss Halcombe was concerned. Using the same caution still, I
now accounted for my presence at Knowlesbury in the same manner, and I
put it to the doctor to say whether the trust reposed in me by a lady
whom he well knew, and the hospitality I had myself received in his
house, justified me or not in asking him to come to my assistance in a
place where I was quite friendless.

I obtained permission to hire a messenger to drive away at once with my
letter in a conveyance which might be used to bring the doctor back
immediately. Oak Lodge was on the Knowlesbury side of Blackwater. The
man declared he could drive there in forty minutes, and could bring Mr
Dawson back in forty more. I directed him to follow the doctor wherever
he might happen to be, if he was not at home, and then sat down to wait
for the result with all the patience and all the hope that I could
summon to help me.

It was not quite half-past one when the messenger departed. Before
half-past three he returned, and brought the doctor with him. Mr
Dawson's kindness, and the delicacy with which he treated his prompt
assistance quite as a matter of course, almost overpowered me. The bail
required was offered, and accepted immediately. Before four o'clock, on
that afternoon, I was shaking hands warmly with the good old doctor –; a
free man again –; in the streets of Knowlesbury.

Mr Dawson hospitably invited me to go back with him to Oak Lodge, and
take up my quarters there for the night. I could only reply that my time
was not my own, and I could only ask him to let me pay my visit in a few
days, when I might repeat my thanks, and offer to him all the
explanations which I felt to be only his due, but which I was not then
in a position to make. We parted with friendly assurances on both sides,
and I turned my steps at once to Mr Wansborough's office in the High
Street.

Time was now of the last importance.

The news of my being free on bail would reach Sir Percival, to an
absolute certainty, before night. If the next few hours did not put me
in a position to justify his worst fears, and to hold him helpless at my
mercy, I might lose every inch of the ground I had gained, never to
recover it again. The unscrupulous nature of

the man, the local influence he possessed, the desperate peril of

exposure with which my blindfold inquiries threatened him –; all

warned me to press on to positive discovery, without the useless

waste of a single minute. I had found time to think while I was

waiting for Mr Dawson's arrival, and I had well employed it. Certain
portions of the conversation of the talkative old clerk,

which had wearied me at the time, now recurred to my memory

with a new significance, and a suspicion crossed my mind darkly

which had not occurred to me while I was in the vestry. On my

way to Knowlesbury, I had only proposed to apply to Mr Wans borough for
information on the subject of Sir Percival's mother. My object now was
to examine the duplicate register of Old Welmingham Church.

Mr Wansborough was in his office when I inquired for him.

He was a jovial, red-faced, easy-looking man –; more like a country
squire than a lawyer –; and he seemed to be both surprised and amused by
my application. He had heard of his father's copy of the register, but
had not even seen it himself. It had never been inquired after, and it
was no doubt in the strong room among other papers that had not been
disturbed since his father's death. It was a pity (Mr Wansborough said)
that the old gentleman was not alive to hear his precious copy asked for
at last. He would have ridden his favourite hobby harder than ever now.
How had I come to hear of the copy? was it through anybody in the town?

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,21 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 vears, have hanged
him –; might now transport him for life. 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
origimal 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 hght 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. Downhill
the men rather gained on me, but uphill 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
farther 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 Wehmingham 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 hillside, 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 m- –; stantly.

`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, in to 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 daytime, 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 cormer 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.'22

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 memory like a dream. I remembered nothing 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 changed, 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, wrining
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, suffoocating, burning,
dyimg so near us all, so utterly beyond our reach !

The thought half maddened me. I lowered myself from the roof, by my
hands, and dropped to the ground.

`The key of the church !' I shouted to the clerk. `We must try it that
way –; we may save him yet if we can burst open the inner door.'

`No, no, no !' cried the old man. `No hope! the church key and the
vestry key are on the same ring –; both inside there! Oh, sir, he's past
saving –; he's dust and ashes by this time !'

`They'll see the fire from the town,' said a voice from among the men
behind me. `There's a ingine in the town. They'll save the church.'

I called to that man –; he had his wits about him –; I called to him to
come and speak to me. It would be a quarter of an hour at least before
the town engine could reach us. The horror of remaining inactive all
that time was more than I could face. In defiance of my own reason I
persuaded myself that the doomed and lost wretch in the vestry might
still be lying senseless on the floor, might not be dead yet. If we
broke open the door, might we save him? I knew the strength of the heavy
lock –; I knew the thickness of the nailed oak –; I knew the
hopelessness of assailing the one and the other by ordinary means. But
surely there were beams still left in the dismantled cottages near the
church ? What if we got one, and used it as a battering-ram against the
door?

The thought leaped through me like the fire leaping out of the shattered
skylight. I appealed to the man who had spoken first of the fire-engine
in the towm. `Have you got your pick-axes handy?' Yes, they had. `And a
hatchet, and a saw, and a bit of rope?' Yes ! yes ! yes ! I ran down
among the villagers, with the lantern in my hand. `five shillings apiece
to every man who helps me!' They started into life at the words. That
ravenous

second hunger of poverty –; the hunger for money –; roused them into
tumult and activity in a moment. `Two of you for more lanterns, if you
have them! Two of you for the pickaxes and the

tools ! The rest after me to find the beam !' They cheered –; with
shrill starveling voices they cheered. The women and the children

fled back on either side. We rushed in a body down the church yard path
to the first empty cottage. Not a man was left behind

but the clerk –; the poor old clerk standing on the flat tombstone

sobbing and wailing over the church. The servant was still at my heels
–; his white, helpless, panic-stricken face was close over my shoulder
as we pushed into the cottage. There were rafters from the torn-down
floor above, lying loose on the ground –; but they were too light. A
beam ran across over our heads, but not out of reach of our arms and our
pickaxes –; a beam fast at each end in the ruined wall, with ceiling and
flooring all ripped away, and a great gap in the roof above, open to the
sky. We attacked the beam at both ends at once. God! how it held –; how
the brick and mortar of the wall resisted us ! We struck, and tugged,
and tore. The beam gave at one end –; it came down with a lump of
brickwork after it. There was a scream from the women all huddled in the
doorway to look at us –; a shout from the men –; two of them down but
not hurt. Another tug all together –; and the beam was loose at both
ends. We raised it, and gave the word to clear the doorway. Now for the
work! now for the rush at the door! There is the fire streaming into the
sky, streaming brighter than ever to light us ! Steady along the
churchyard path –; steady with the beam for a rush at the door. One,
two, three –; and off. Out rings the cheering again, irrepressibly.  We
have shaken it already, the hinges must give if the lock won't. Another
run with the beam ! One, two, three –; and off. It's loose ! the
stealthy fire darts at us through the crevice all around it. Another,
and a last rush ! The door falls in with a crash. A great hush of awe, a
stillness of breathless expectation, possesses every living soul of us.
We look for the body. The scorching heat on our faces drives us back: we
see nothing –; above, below, all through the room, we see nothing but a
sheet of living fire.

`Where is he?' whispered the servant, staring vacantly at the flames.

`He's dust and ashes,' said the clerk. `And the books are dust and ashes
–; and oh, sirsl the church will be dust and ashes soon.'

Those were the only two who spoke. When they were silent again, nothing
stirred in the stillness but the bubble and the crackle of the flames.

Hark !

A harsh rattling sound in the distance –; then the hollow beat of
horses' hoofs at full gallop –; then the low roar, the allpredominant
tumult of hundreds of human voices clamouring and shouting together. The
engine at last.

The people about me all turned from the fire, and ran eagerly to the
brow of the hill. The old clerk tried to go with the rest, but his
strength was exhausted. I saw him holding by one of the tombstones.
`Save the church!' he cried out faintly, as if the firemen could hear
him already.

Save the church!

The only man who never moved was the servant. There he stood, his eyes
still fastened on the flames in a changeless, vacant stare. I spoke to
him, I shook him by the arm. He was rousing. He only whispered once
more, `Where is he?'

In ten minutes the engine was in position, the well at the back of the
church was feeding it, and the hose was carried to the doorway of the
vestry. If help had been wanted from me I could not have afforded it
now. My energy of will was gone –; my strength was exhausted –; the
turmoil of my thoughts was fearfully and suddenly stilled, now I knew
that he was dead. I stood useless and helpless –; looking, looking,
looking into the burning room.

I saw the fire slowly conquered. The brightness of the glare faded –;
the steam rose in white clouds, and the smouldering heaps of embers
showed red and black through it on the floor. There was a pause –; then
an advance all together of the firemen and the police which blocked up
the doorway –; then a consultation in low voices –; and then two men
were detached from the rest, and sent out of the churchyard through the
crowd. The crowd drew back on either side in dead silence to let them
pass.

After a while a great shudder ran through the people, and the living
lane widened slowly. The men came back along it with a door from one of
the empty houses. They carried it to the vestry and went in. The police
closed again round the doorway, and men stole out from among the crowd
by twos and threes and

stood behind them to be the first to see. Others waited near to be

the fist to hear. Women and children were among these last.

The tidings from the vestry began to flow out among the

crowd –; they dropped slowly from mouth to mouth till they

reached the place where I was standing. I heard the questions and
answers repeated again and again in low, eager tones all round me.

`Have they found him?' `Yes.' –; `Where?' `Against the door, on his
face.'  `Which door?' `The door that goes into the church. His head was
against it –; he was down on his face.' –; `Is his face burnt?' `No.'
`Yes, it is.' `No, scorched, not burnt –; he lay on his face, I tell
you.' –; `Who was he? A lord, they say.' `No, not a lord.  Sir
Something; Sir means Knight.' `And Baronight, too.' `No.' `Yes, it
does.' –; `What did he want in there?' `No good, you may depend on it.'
–; `Did he do it on purpose ?' –; ` Burn himself on purpose !' –; ` I
don't mean himself, I mean the vestry.' –; `Is he dreadful to look at?'
`Dreadful!' –; `Not about the face, though?' `No, no, not so much about
the face.' –; `Don't anybody know him?' `There's a man says he does.' –;
`Who ?' `A servant, they say. But he's struck stupid-like, and the
police don't believe him.' –; `Don't anybody else know whoitis?'`Hush-!'

The loud, clear voice of a man in authority silenced the low hum of
talking all round me in an instant.

`Where is the gentleman who tried to save him?' said the voice.

`Here, sir –; here he is!' Dozens of eager faces pressed about me –;
dozens of eager arms parted the crowd. The man in authority came up to
me with a lantern in his hand.

`This way, sir, if you please,' he said quietly.

I was unable to speak to him, I was unable to resist him when he took my
arm. I tried to say that I had never seen the dead man in his lifetime
–; that there was no hope of identifying him by means of a stranger like
me. But the words failed on my lips. I was faint, and silent, and
helpless.

`Do you know him, sir?'

I was standing inside a circle of men. Three of them opposite to me were
holding lanterns low down to the ground. Their eyes, and the eyes of all
the rest, were fixed silently and expectantly on my face. I knew what
was at my feet –; I knew why they were holding the lanterns so low to
the ground.

`Can you identify him, sir?'

My eyes dropped slowly. At first I saw nothing under them but a coarse
canvas cloth. The dripping of the rain on it was audible in the dreadful
silence. I looked up, along the cloth, and there at the end, stark and
grim and black, in the yellow light –; there was his dead face.

So, for the first and last time, I saw him. So the Visitation of God
ruled it that he and I should meet.




The inquest was hurried for certain local reasons which weighed with the
coroner and the town authorities. It was held on the afternoon of the
next day. I was necessarily one among the witnesses summoned to assist
the objects of the investigation.

My first proceeding in the morning was to go to the postoffice, and
inquire for the letter which I expected from Marian. No change of
circumstances, however extraordinary, could affect the one great anxiety
which weighed on my mind while I was away from London. The morning's
letter, which was the only assurance I could receive that no misfortune
had happened in my absence, was still the absorbing interest with which
my day began.

To my relief, the letter from Marian was at the office waiting for me.

Nothing had happened –; they were both as safe and as well as when I had
left them. Laura sent her love, and begged that I would let her know of
my return a day beforehand. Her sister added, in explanation of this
message, that she had saved `nearly a sovereign' out of her own private
purse, and that she had claimed the privilege of ordering the dinner and
giving the dinner which was to celebrate the day of my return. I read
these little domestic confidences in the bright morning with the
terrible recollection of what had happened the evening before vivid in
my memory. The necessity of sparing Laura any sudden knowledge of the
truth was the first consideration which the letter suggested to me. I
wrote at once to Marian to tell her what I have told in these pages –;
presenting the tidings as gradually and gently as I could, and warning
her not to let any such thing as a newspaper fall in Laura's way while I
was absent. In the case of any other woman, less courageous and less
reliable, I might have hesitated before I ventured on unreservedly
disclosing the whole truth. But I owed it to Marian to be faithful to my
past experience of her, and to trust her as I trusted myself.

My letter was necessarily a long one. It occupied me until the time came
for proceeding to the inquest.

The objects of the legal inquiry were necessarily beset by peculiar
complications and difficulties. Resides the investigation into the
manner in which the deceased had met his death, there were serious
questions to be settled relating to the cause of the fire, to the
abstraction of the keys, and to the presence of a stranger in the vestry
at the time when the flames broke out. Even the identification of the
dead man had not yet been accomplished. The helpless condition of the
servant had made the police distrustful of his asserted recognition of
his master.  They had sent to Knowlesbury over-night to secure the
attendance of witnesses who were well acquainted with the personal
appearance of Sir Percival Glyde, and they had communicated, the first
thing in the morning, with Blackwater Park. These precautions enabled
the coroner and jury to settle the question of identity, and to confirm
the correctness of the servant's assertion; the evidence offered by
competent witnesses, and by the discovery of certain facts, being
subsequently strengthened by an examination of the dead man's watch. The
crest and the name of Sir Percival Glyde were engraved inside it.

The next inquiries related to the fire.

The servant and I, and the boy who had heard the light struck in the
vestry, were the first witnesses called. The boy gave his evidence
clearly enough, but the servant's mind had not yet recovered the shock
inflicted on it –; he was plainly incapable of assisting the objects of
the inquiry, and he was desired to stand down.

To my own relief, my examination was not a long one. I had not known the
deceased –; I had never seen him –; I was not aware of his presence at
Old Welmingham –; and I had not been in the vestry at the finding of the
body. All I could prove was that I had stopped at the clerk's cottage to
ask my way –; that I had heard from him of the loss of the keys –; that
I had accompanied him to the church to render what help I could –; that
I had seen the fire –; that I had heard some person unknown, inside the
vestry, trying vainly to unlock the door –; and that I had done what I
could, from motives of humanity, to save the man. Other witnesses, who
had been acquainted with the deceased, were asked if they could explain
the mystery of his presumed abstraction of the keys, and his presence in
the burning room. But the coroner seemed to take it for granted,
naturally enough, that I, as a total stranger in the neighbourhood, and
a total stranger to Sir Percival Glyde, could not be in a position to
offer any evidence on these two points.

The course that I was myself bound to take, when my formal examination
had closed, seemed clear to me. I did not feel called on to volunteer
any statement of my own private convictions, in the first place, because
my doing so could serve no practical purpose, now that all proof in
support of any surmises of mine was burnt with the burnt register; in
the second place, because I could not have intelligibly stated my
opinion –; my unsupported opinion –; without disclosing the whole story
of the conspiracy, and producing beyond a doubt the same unsatisfactory
effect on the mind of the coroner and the jury, which I had already
produced on the mind of Mr Kyrle.

In these pages, however, and after the time that has now elapsed, no
such cautions and restraints as are here described need fetter the free
expression of my opinion. I will state briefly, before my pen occupies
itself with other events, how my own convictions lead me to account for
the abstraction of the keys, for the outbreak of the fire, and for the
death of the man.

The news of my being free on bail drove Sir Percival, as I believe. to
his last resources. The attempted attack on the road was one of those
resources, and the suppression of all practical proof of his crime, by
destroying the page of the register on which the forgery had been
committed, was the other, and the surest of the two. If I could produce
no extract from the original book to compare with the certified copy at
Knowlesbury, I could produce no positive evidence, and could threaten
him with no fatal exposure. All that was necessary to the attainment of
his end was, that he should get into the vestry unperceived, that he
should tear out the page in the register, and that he should leave the
vestry again as privately as he had entered it.

On this supposition, it is easy to understand why he waited until
nightfall before he made the attempt, and why he took advantage of the
clerk's absence to possess himself of the keys. Necessity would oblige
him to strike a light to find his way to the right register, and common
caution would suggest his locking the door on the inside in case of
intrusion on the part of any inquisitive stranger, or on my part, if I
happened to be in the neighbourhood at the time.

I cannot believe that it was any part of his intention to make the
destruction of the register appear to be the result of accident, by
purposely setting the vestry on fire. The bare chance that prompt
assistance might arrive, and that the books might, by the remotest
possibility, be saved, would have been enough, on a moment's
consideration, to dismiss any idea of this sort from his mind.
Remembering the quantity of combustible objects in the vestry –; the
straw, the papers, the packing-cases, the dry wood, the old worm-eaten
presses –; all the probabilities, in my estimation, point to the fire as
the result of an accident with his matches or his light.

His first impulse, under these circumstances, was doubtless to try to
extinguish the flames, and failing in that, his second impulse (ignorant
as he was of the state of the lock) had been to attempt to escape by the
door which had given him entrance. When I had called to him, the flames
must have reached across the door leading into the church, on either
side of which the presses extended, and close to which the other
combustible objects were placed. In all probability, the smoke and flame
(confined as they were to the room) had been too much for him when he
tried to escape by the inner door. He must have dropped in his
death-swoon, he must have sunk in the place where he was found, just as
I got on the roof to break the skylight window. Even if we had been
able, afterwards, to get into the church, and to burst open the door
from that side, the delay must have been fatal. He would have been past
saving, long past saving, by that time. We should only have given the
flames free ingress into the church –; the church, which was now
preserved, but which, in that event, would have shared the fate of the
vestry. There is no doubt in my mind, there can be no doubt in the mind
of any one, that he was a dead man before ever we got to the empty
cottage, and worked with might and main to tear down the beam.

This is the nearest approach that any theory of mine can make towards
accounting for a result which was visible matter of fact. As I have
described them, so events passed to us outside. As I have related it, so
his body was found.

The inquest was adjourned over one day –; no explanation that the eye of
the law could recognise having been discovered thus far to account for
the mysterious circumstances of the case.

It was arranged that more witnesses should be summoned, and that the
London solicitor of the deceased should be invited to attend. A medical
man was also charged with the duty of reporting on the mental condition
of the servant, which appeared at present to debar him from giving any
evidence of the least importance. He could only declare, in a dazed way,
that he had been ordered, on the night of the fire, to wait in the lane,
and that he knew nothing else, except that the deceased was certainly
his master.

My own impression was, that he had been first used (without any guilty
knowledge on his own part) to ascertain the fact of the clerk's absence
from home on the previous day, and that he had been afterwards ordered
to wait near the church (but out of sight of the vestry) to assist his
master, in the event of my escaping the attack on the road, and of a
collision occurring between Sir Percival and myself. It is necessary to
add, that the man's own testimony was never obtained to confirm this
view. The medical report of him declared that what little mental faculty
he possessed was seriously shaken; nothing satisfactory was extracted
from him at the adjourned inquest, and for aught I know to the contrary,
he may never have recovered to this day.

I returned to the hotel at Welmingham so jaded in body and mind, so
weakened and depressed by all that I had gone through, as to be quite
unfit to endure the local gossip about the inquest, and to answer the
trivial questions that the talkers addressed to me in the coffee-room. I
withdrew from my scanty dinner to my cheap garret-chamber to secure
myself a little quiet, and to think undisturbed of Laura and Marian.

If I had been a richer man I would have gone back to London, and would
have comforted myself with a sight of the two dear faces again that
night. But I was bound to appear, if called on, at the adjourned
inquest, and doubly bound to answer my bail before the magistrate at
Knowlesbury. Our slender resources had suffered already, and the
doubtful future –; more doubtful than ever now –; made me dread
decreasing our means unnecessarily by allowing myself an indulgence even
at the small cost of a double railway journey in the carriages of the
second class.

The next day –; the day immediately following the inquest –; was left at
my own disposal. I began the morning by again applying at the
post-office for my regular report from Marian. It was waiting for me as
before, and it was written throughout in good spirits. I read the letter
thankfully, and then set forth with my mind at ease for the day to go to
Old Welmingham, and to view the scene of the fire by the morning light.

What changes met me when I got there!

Through all the ways of our unintelligible world the trivial and
terrible walk hand in hand together. The irony of circumstances holds no
mortal catastrophe in respect. When I reached the church, the trampled
condition of the burial-ground was the only serious trace left to tell
of the fire and the death. A rough hoarding of boards had been knocked
up before the vestry doorway. Rude caricatures were scrawled on it
already, and the village children were fighting and shouting for the
possession of the best peep-hole to see through. On the spot where I had
heard the cry for help from the burning room, on the spot where the
panicstricken servant had dropped on his knees, a fussy flock of poultry
was now scrambling for the first choice of worms after the rain; and on
the ground at my feet, where the door and its dreadful burden had been
laid, a workman's dinner was waiting for him, tied up in a yellow basin,
and his faithful cur in charge was yelping at me for coming near the
food. The old clerk, looking idly at the slow commencement of the
repairs, had only one interest that he could talk about now –; the
interest of escaping all blame for his own part on account of the
accident that had happened. One of the village women, whose white wild
face I remembered the picture of terror when we pulled down the beam,
was giggling with another woman, the picture of inanity, over an old
washing-tub. There is nothing serious in mortality l Solomon in all his
glory was Solomon with the elements of the contemptible lurking in every
fold of his robes and in every corner of his palace.

As I left the place, my thoughts turned, not for the first time, to the
complete overthrow that all present hope of establishing Laura's
identity had now suffered through Sir Percival's death. He was gone –;
and with him the chance was gone which had been the one object of all my
labours and all my hopes.

Could I look at my failure from no truer point of view than this ?

Suppose he had lived, would that change of circunstances have altered
the result? Could I have made my discovery a marketable commodity, even
for Laura's sake, after I had found out that robbery of the rights of
others was the essence of Sir Percival's crime? Could I have offered the
price of my silence for his confession of the conspiracy, when the
effect of that silence must have been to keep the right heir from the
estates, and the right owner from the name? Impossible ! If Sir Percival
had lived, the discovery, from which (in ray ignorance of the true
nature of the Secret) I had hoped so much, could not have been mine to
suppress or to make public, as I thought best, for the vindication of
Laura's rights. In common honesty and common honour I must have gone at
once to the stranger whose birthright had been usurped –; I must have
renounced the victory at the moment when it was mine by placing my
discovery unreservedly in that stranger's hands –; and I must have faced
afresh all the difficulties which stood between me and the one object of
my life, exactly as I was resolved in my heart of hearts to face them
now!

I returned to Welmingham with my mind composed, feeling more sure of
myself and my resolution than I had felt yet.

On my way to the hotel I passed the end of the square in which Mrs
Catherick lived. Should I go back to the house, and make another attempt
to see her. No. That news of Sir Percival's death, which was the last
news she ever expected to hear, must have reached her hours since. All
the proceedings at the inquest had been reported in the local paper that
morning –; there was nothing I could tell her which she did not know
already. My interest in making her speak had slackened. I remembered the
furtive hatred in her face when she said, `There is no news of Sir
percival that I don't expect –; except the news of his death.' I
remembered the stealthy interest in her eyes when they settled on me at
parting, after she had spoken those words.  Some instinct, deep in my
heart, which I felt to be a true one, made the prospect of again
entering her presence repusive to me –; I turned away from the square,
and went straight back to the hotel.

Some hours later, while I was resting in the coffee-room, a letter was
placed in my hands by the waiter. It was addressed to me by name, and I
found on inquiry that it had been left at the bar by a woman just as it
was near dusk, and just before the gas was lighted. She had said
nothing, and she had gone away again before there was time to speak to
her, or even to notice whom she was.

I opened the letter. It was neither dated nor signed, and the
handwriting was palpably disguised. Before I had read the first
sentence, however, I knew who my correspondent was –; Mrs Catherick.

The letter ran as follows –; I copy it exactly, word for word:




THE STORY CONTINUED BY MRS CATHERICK

SIR, –; You have not come back, as you said you would. No matter –; I
know the news, and I write to tell you so. Did you see anything
particular in my face when you left me? I was wondering, in my own mind,
whether the day of his downfall had come at last, and whether you were
the chosen instrument for working it. You were, and you have worked it.

You were weak enough, as I have heard, to try and save his life. If you
had succeeded, I should have looked upon you as my enemy. Now you have
failed, I hold you as my friend. Your inquiries frightened him into the
vestry by night –; your inquiries, without your privity and against your
will, have served the hatred and wreaked the vengeance of
three-and-twenty years. Thank you, sir, in spite of yourself.

I owe something to the man who has done this. How can I pay my debt? If
I was a young woman still I might say, `Come, put your arm round my
waist, and kiss me, if you like.' I should have been fond enough of you
even to go that length, and you would have accepted my invitation –; you
would, sir, twenty years ago ! But I am an old woman now. Well ! I can
satisfy your curiosity, and pay my debt in that way. You had a great
curiosity to know certain private affairs of mine when you came to see
me –; private affairs which all your sharpness could not look into
without my help –; private affairs which you have not discovered' even
nowyou shall discover them –; your curiosity shall be satisfied- I will
take any trouble to please you, my estimable young friend !

You were a little boy, I suppose, in the year twenty-seven? I was a
handsome young woman at that time, living at Old Welmingham. I had a
contemptible fool for a husband. I had also the honour of being
acquainted (never mind how) with a certain gentleman (never mind whom).
I shall not call him by his name. Why should I? It was not his own. He
never had a name: you know that, by this time, as well as I do.

It will be more to the purpose to tell you how he worked himself into my
good graces. I was born with the tastes of a lady, and he gratified them
–; in other words, he admired me, and he made me presents. No woman can
resist admiration and presents –; especially presents, provided they
happen to be just the thing she wants. He was sharp enough to know that
–; most men are. Naturally he wanted something in return –; all men do.
And what do you think was the something? The merest trifle. Nothing but
the key of the vestry, and the key of the press inside it, when my
husband's back was turned. Of course he lied when I asked him why he
wished me to get him the keys in that private way. He might have saved
himself the trouble –; I didn't believe him. But I liked my presents,
and I wanted more. So I got him the keys, without my husband's
knowledge, and I watched him, without his owm knowledge. Once, twice,
four times I watched him, and the fourth time I found him out.

I was never over-scrupulous where other people's affairs were concerned,
and I was not over-scrupulous about his adding one to the marriages in
the register on his own account.

Of course I knew it was wrong, but it did no harm to me, which was one
good reason for not making a fuss about it. And I had not got a gold
watch and chain, which was another, still better –; and he had promised
me one from London only the day before, which was a third, best of all.
If I had known what the law considered the crime to be, and how the law
punished it, I should have taken proper care of myself, and have exposed
him then and there. But I knew nothing, and I longed for the gold watch.
All the conditions I insisted on were that he should take me into his
confidence and tell me everything. I was as curious about his affairs
then as you are about mine now. He granted my conditions –; why, you
will see presently.

This, put in short, is what I heard from him. He did not wilhngly tell
me all that I tell you here. I drew some of it from him by persuasion
and some of it by questions. I was determined to have all the truth, and
I believe I got it.

He knew no more than any one else of what the state of things really was
between his father and mother till after his mother's death. Then his
father confessed it, and promised to do what he could for his son. He
died having done nothing –; not having even made a will. The son (who
can blame him?) wisely provided for himself. He came to England at once,
and took possession of the property. There was no one to suspect him,
and no one to say him nay. His father and mother had always lived as man
and wife –; none of the few people who were acquainted with them ever
supposed them to be anything else. The right person to claim the
property (if the truth had been known) was a distant relation, who had
no idea of ever getting it, and who was away at sea when his father
died. He had no difficulty so far –; he took possession, as a matter of
course. But he could not borrow money on the property as a matter of
course. There were two things wanted of him before he could do this. One
was a certificate of his birth, and the other was a certificate of his
parents' marriage. The certificate of his birth was easily got –; he was
born abroad, and the certificate was there in due form. The other matter
was a difficulty, and that difficulty brought him to Old Welmingham.

But for one consideration he might have gone to Knowlesbury instead.

His mother had been living there just before she met with his father –;
living under her maiden name, the truth being that she was really a
married woman, married in Ireland, where her husband had ill-used her,
and had afterwards gone off with some other person. I give you this fact
on good authority –; Sir Felix mentioned it to his son as the reason why
he had not married. You may wonder why the son, knowing that his parents
had met each other at Knowlesbury, did not play his first tricks with
the register of that church, where it might have been fairly presumed
his father and mother were married. The reason was that the clergyman
who did duty at Knowlesbury church, in the year eighteen hundred and
three (when, according to his birth certificate, his father and mother
ought to have been married), was alive still when he took possession of
the property in the New Year of eighteen hundred and twenty-seven. This
awkward circumstance forced him to extend his inquiries to our
neighbourhood. There no such danger existed, the former clergyman at our
church having been dead for some years.

Old Welmingham suited his purpose as well as Knowlesbury. His father had
removed his mother from Knowlesbury, and had lived with her at a cottage
on the river, a little distance from our willage. People who had known
his solitary ways when he was single did not wonder at his solitary ways
when he was supposed to be married. If he had not been a hideous
creature to look it, his retired life with the lady might have raised
suspicions; but, as things were, his hiding his ugliness and his
deformity in the strictest privacy surprised nobody. He lived in our
neighbourhood till he came in possession of the Park. After three or
four and twenty years had passed, who was to say (the clergyman being
dead) that his marriage had not been as private as the rest of his life,
and that it had not taken place at Old Welmimgham church ?

So, as I told you, the son found our neighbourhood the surest place he
could choose to set things right secretly in his own interests. It may
surprise you to hear that what he really did to the marriage register
was done on the spur of the moment –; done on second thoughts.

His first notion was only to tear the leaf out (in the right year and
month), to destroy it privately, to go back to London, and to tell the
lawyers to get him the necessary certificate of his father's marriage,
innocently referring them of course to the date on the leaf that was
gone. Nobody could say his father and mother had not been married after
that, and whether, under the circumstances, they would stretch a point
or not about lending him the money (he thought they would), he had his
answer ready at all events, if a question was ever raised about his
right to the name and the estate.

But when he came to look privately at the register for himself, he found
at the bottom of one of the pages for the year eighteen hundred and
three a blank space left, seemingly through there being no room to make
a long entry there, which was made instead at the top of the next page.
The sight of this chance altered all his plans. It was an opportunity he
had never hoped for, or thought of –; and he took it –; you know how.
The blank space, to have exactly tallied with his birth certificate,
ought to have occurred in the July part of the register. It occurred in
the September part instead. However, in this case, if suspicious
questions were asked, the answer was not hard to find. He had only to
describe himself as a seven months' child.

I was fool enough, when he told me his story, to feel some interest and
some pity for him –; which was just what he calculated on, as you will
see. I thought him hardly used. It was not his fault that his father and
mother were not married, and it was not his father's and mother's fault
either. A more scrupulous woman than I was –; a woman who had not set
her heart on a gold watch and chain –; would have found some excuses for
him. At all events, I held my tongue, and helped to screen what he was
about.

He was some time getting the ink the right colour (mixing it over and
over again in pots and bottles of mine), and some time afterwards in
practising the handwriting. But he succeeded in the end, and made an
honest woman of his mother after she was dead in her grave ! So far, I
don't deny that he behaved honourably enough to myself. He gave me my
watch and chain, and spared no exPense in buying them; both were of
superior workmanship, and very expensive. I have got them still –; the
watch goes beautifully.

You said the other day that Mrs Clements had told you everything she
knew. hi 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 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 imposter! 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 owm 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
immediately. But you must excuse one thing –; you must excuse my
beginning, Mr Hartright, with an expression of 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 over-fond of my late daughter. She was a
worry to me from first to last, with the additional disadvantage of
being always weak in the head. You like candour, and I hope this
satisfies you.

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' 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 halfwitted 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) 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 uppermost, 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 imposter 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 bv 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 connection 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 had 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 eacli 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 –; ad 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 fist 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 sweettempered, 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, and other
trifles like them, are 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. l 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 l 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 fears 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.