No. 42.] SATURDAY,
FEBRUARY 11, 1860 [PRICE 2d.
THE WOMAN IN WHITE.
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MISS HALCOMBE’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
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Blackwater Park, Hampshire.
June
27.—Six months to look back on—six long,
lonely months, since Laura and I last saw each other!
How many days have I still to wait? Only
one! To-morrow, the twenty-eighth, the travellers return to England. I can
hardly realise my own happiness; I can hardly believe that the next
four-and-twenty hours will complete the last day of separation between Laura
and me.
She and her husband have been in Italy all
the winter, and afterwards in the Tyrol. They come back, accompanied by
Count Fosco and his wife, who propose to settle somewhere in the
neighbourhood of London, and who have engaged to stay at Blackwater Park for
the summer months before deciding on a place of residence. So long as Laura
returns, no matter who returns with her. Sir Percival may fill the house
from floor to ceiling, if he likes, on condition that his wife and I inhabit
it together.
Meanwhile, here I am, established at
Blackwater Park; “the ancient and interesting seat” (as the county history
obligingly informs me) “of Sir Percival Glyde, Bart.”—and the future
abiding-place (as I may now venture to add, on my own account) of plain
Marian Halcombe, spinster, now settled in a snug little sitting-room, with a
cup of tea by her side, and all her earthly possessions ranged round her in
three boxes and a bag.
I left Limmeridge yesterday; having received
Laura’s delightful letter from Paris, the day before. I had been previously
uncertain whether I was to meet them in London, or in Hampshire; but this
last letter informed me, that Sir Percival proposed to land at Southampton,
and to travel straight on to his country-house. He has spent so much money
abroad, that he has none left to defray the expenses of living in London,
for the remainder of the season; and he is economically resolved to pass the
summer and autumn quietly at Blackwater. Laura has had more than enough of
excitement and change of scene; and is pleased at the prospect of country
tranquillity and retirement which her husband’s prudence provides for her.
As for me, I am ready to be happy anywhere in her society. We are all,
therefore, well contented in our various ways, to begin with.
Last night, I slept in London, and was
delayed there so long, to-day, by various calls and commissions, that I did
not reach Blackwater, this evening, till after dusk.
Judging by my vague impressions of the
place, thus far, it is the exact opposite of Limmeridge. The house is
situated on a dead flat, and seems to be shut in—almost suffocated, to my
north-country notions—by trees. I have seen nobody, but the man-servant who
opened the door to me, and the housekeeper, a very civil person who showed
me the way to my own room, and got me my tea. I have a nice little boudoir
and bedroom, at the end of a long passage on the first floor. The servants’
and some of the spare rooms are on the second floor; and all the living
rooms are on the ground floor. I have not seen one of them yet, and I know
nothing about the house, except that one wing of it is said to be five
hundred years old, that it had a moat round it once, and that it gets its
name of Blackwater from a lake in the park.
Eleven o’clock has just struck, in a ghostly
and solemn manner, from a turret over the centre of the house, which I saw
when I came in. A large dog has been woke, apparently by the sound of the
bell, and is howling and yawning drearily, somewhere round a corner. I hear
echoing footsteps in the passages below, and the iron thumping of bolts and
bars at the house door. The servants are evidently going to bed. Shall I
follow their example?
No: I am not half sleepy enough. Sleepy, did
I say? I feel as if I should never close my eyes again. The bare
anticipation of seeing that dear face and hearing that well-known voice
to-morrow, keeps me in a perpetual fever of excitement. If I only had the
privileges of a man, I would order out Sir Percival’s best horse instantly,
and tear away on a night-gallop, eastward, to meet the rising sun—a long,
hard, heavy, ceaseless gallop of hours and hours, like the famous
highwayman’s ride to York. Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to
patience, propriety, and petticoats, for life, I must respect the
housekeeper’s opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and
feminine way.
Reading is out of the question—I can’t fix my attention on books. Let me try if I can write myself into sleepiness and fatigue. My journal has been very much neglected of late. What can I recal—standing, as I now do, on the threshold of a new life—of persons and events, of chances and changes, during the past six months—the long, weary, empty interval since Laura’s wedding day?
Walter Hartright is uppermost in my memory;
and he passes first in the shadowy procession of my absent friends. I
received a few lines from him, after the landing of the expedition in
Honduras, written more cheerfully and hopefully than he has written yet. A
month or six weeks later, I saw an extract from an American newspaper,
describing the departure of the adventurers on their inland journey. They
were last seen entering a wild primeval forest, each man with his rifle on
his shoulder and his baggage at his back. Since that time, civilisation has
lost all trace of them. Not a line more have I received from Walter; not a
fragment of news from the expedition has appeared in any of the public
journals.
The same dense, disheartening obscurity
hangs over the fate and fortunes of Anne Catherick, and her companion, Mrs.
Clements. Nothing whatever has been heard of either of them. Whether they
are in the country or out of it, whether they are living or dead, no one
knows. Even Sir Percival’s solicitor has lost all hope, and has ordered the
useless search after the fugitives to be finally given up.
Our good old friend Mr. Gilmore has met with
a sad check in his active professional career. Early in the spring, we were
alarmed by hearing that he had been found insensible at his desk, and that
the seizure had been pronounced to be an apoplectic fit. He had been long
complaining of fulness and oppression in the head; and his doctor had warned
him of the consequences that would follow his persistency in continuing to
work, early and late, as if he were still a young man. The result now is
that he has been positively ordered to keep out of his office for a year to
come, at least, and to seek repose of body and relief of mind by altogether
changing his usual mode of life. The business is left, accordingly, to be
carried on by his partner; and he is, himself, at this moment, away in
Germany, visiting some relations who are settled there in mercantile
pursuits. Thus, another true friend, and trustworthy adviser, is lost to
us—lost, I earnestly hope and trust, for a time only.
Poor Mrs. Vesey travelled with me, as far as
London. It was impossible to abandon her to solitude at Limmeridge, after
Laura and I had both left the house; and we have arranged that she is to
live with an unmarried younger sister of hers, who keeps a school at
Clapham. She is to come here this autumn to visit her pupil—I might almost
say, her adopted child. I saw the good old lady safe to her destination; and
left her in the care of her relative, quietly happy at the prospect of
seeing Laura again, in a few months’ time.
As for Mr. Fairlie, I believe I am guilty of
no injustice if I describe him as being unutterably relieved by having the
house clear of us women. The idea of his missing his niece is simply
preposterous—he used to let months pass, in the old times, without
attempting to see her—and, in my case and Mrs. Vesey’s, I take leave to
consider his telling us both that he was half heart-broken at our departure,
to be equivalent to a confession that he was secretly rejoiced to get rid of
us. His last caprice has led him to keep two photographers incessantly
employed on producing sun-pictures of all the treasures and curiosities in
his possession. One complete copy of the collection of photographs is to be
presented to the Mechanics’ Institution of Carlisle, mounted on the finest
cardboard, with ostentatious red-letter inscriptions underneath. “Madonna
and Child by Raphael. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire.”
“Copper coin of the period of Tiglath Pileser. In the possession of
Frederick Fairlie, Esquire.” “Unique Rembrandt etching. Known all over
Europe, as The Smudge, from a printer’s blot in the corner which exists in no
other copy. Valued at three hundred guineas. In the possession of Frederick
Fairlie, Esquire.” Dozens of photographs of this sort, and all inscribed in
this manner, were completed before I left Cumberland; and hundreds more
remain to be done. With this new interest to occupy him, Mr. Fairlie will be
a happy man for months and months to come; and the two unfortunate
photographers will share the social martyrdom which he has hitherto
inflicted on his valet alone.
So much for the persons and events which
hold the foremost place in my memory. What, next, of the one person who
holds the foremost place in my heart? Laura has been present to my thoughts,
all the while I have been writing these lines. What can I recal of her,
during the past six months, before I close my journal for the night?
I have only her letters to guide me; and, on
the most important of all the questions which our correspondence can
discuss, every one of those letters leaves me in the dark.
Does he treat her kindly? Is she happier now
than she was when I parted with her on the wedding-day? All my letters have
contained these two inquiries, put more or less directly, now in one form,
and now in another; and all, on that one point only, have remained without
reply, or have been answered as if my questions merely related to the state
of her health. She informs me, over and over again, that she is perfectly
well; that travelling agrees with her; that she is getting through the
winter, for the first time in her life, without catching cold—but not a word
can I find anywhere which tells me plainly that she is reconciled to her
marriage, and that she can now look back to the twenty-third of December
without any bitter feelings of repentance and regret. The name of her
husband is only mentioned in her letters, as she might mention the name of a
friend who was travelling with them, and who had undertaken to make all the
arrangements for the journey. “Sir Percival” has settled that we leave on
such a day; “Sir Percival” has decided that we travel by such a road.
Sometimes she writes, “Percival” only, but very seldom—in nine cases out of
ten, she gives him his title.
I cannot find that his habits and opinions
have changed and coloured hers in any single particular. The usual moral
transformation which is insensibly wrought in a young, fresh, sensitive
woman by her marriage, seems never to have taken place in Laura. She writes
of her own thoughts and impressѼ҃’ s, amid all the wonders she has seen, exactly as she might have
written to some one else, if I had been travelling with her instead of her
husband. I see no betrayal anywhere, of sympathy of any kind existing
between them. Even when she wanders from the subject of her travels, and
occupies herself with the prospects that await her in England, her
speculations are busied with her future as my sister, and persistently
neglect to notice her future as Sir Percival’s wife. In all this, there is
no under tone of complaint, to warn me that she is absolutely unhappy in her
married life. The impression I have derived from our correspondence does
not, thank God, lead me to any such distressing conclusion as that. I only
see a sad torpor, an unchangeable indifference, when I turn my mind from her
in the old character of a sister, and look at her, through the medium of her
letters, in the new character of a wife. In other words, it is always Laura
Fairlie who has been writing to me for the last six months, and never Lady
Glyde.
The strange silence which she maintains on
the subject of her husband’s character and conduct, she preserves with
almost equal resolution in the few references which her later letters
contain to the name of her husband’s bosom friend, Count Fosco.
For some unexplained reason, the Count and
his wife appear to have changed their plans abruptly, at the end of last
autumn, and to have gone to Vienna, instead of going to Rome, at which
latter place Sir Percival had expected to find them when he left England.
They only quitted Vienna in the spring, and travelled as far as the Tyrol to
meet the bride and bridegroom on their homeward journey. Laura writes
readily enough about the meeting with Madame Fosco, and assures me that she
has found her aunt so much changed for the better—so much quieter and so
much more sensible as a wife than she was as a single woman—that I shall
hardly know her again when I see her here. But, on the subject of Count
Fosco (who interests me infinitely more than his wife), Laura is provokingly
circumspect and silent. She only says that he puzzles her, and that she will
not tell me what her impression of him is, until I have seen him, and formed
my own opinion first. This, to my mind, looks ill for the Count. Laura has
preserved, far more perfectly than most people do in later life, the child’s
subtle faculty of knowing a friend by instinct; and, if I am right in
assuming that her first impression of Count Fosco has not been favourable,
I, for one, am in some danger of doubting and distrusting that illustrious
foreigner before I have so much as set eyes on him. But, patience, patience;
this uncertainty, and many uncertainties more, cannot last much longer.
To-morrow will see all my doubts in a fair way of being cleared up, sooner
or later.
Twelve o’clock has struck; and I have just
come back to close these pages, after looking out at my open window.
It is a still, sultry, moonless night. The
stars are dull and few. The trees that shut out the view on all sides, look
dimly black and solid in the distance, like a great wall of rock. I hear the
croaking of frogs, faint and far off; and the echoes of the great clock bell
hum in the airless calm, long after the strokes have ceased. I wonder how
Blackwater Park will look in the daytime? I don’t altogether like it by
night.
28th.—A day of investigations and
discoveries—a more interesting day, for many reasons, than I had ventured to
anticipate.
I began my sight-seeing, of course, with the
house.
The main body of the building is of the time
of that highly overrated woman, Queen Elizabeth. On the ground floor, there
are two hugely long galleries, with low ceilings, lying parallel with each
other, and rendered additionally dark and dismal by hideous family
portraits—every one of which I should like to burn. The rooms on the floor
above the two galleries, are kept in tolerable repair, but are very seldom
used. The civil housekeeper, who acted as my guide, offered to show me over
them; but considerately added that she feared I should find them rather out
of order. My respect for the integrity of my own petticoats and stockings,
infinitely exceeds my respect for all the Elizabethan bedrooms in the
kingdom; so I positively declined exploring the upper regions of dust and
dirt at the risk of soiling my nice clean clothes. The housekeeper said, “I
am quite of your opinion, miss;” and appeared to think me the most sensible
woman she had met with for a long time past.
So much, then, for the main building. Two
wings are added, at either end of it. The half-ruined wing on the left (as
you approach the house) was once a place of residence standing by itself,
and was built in the fourteenth century. One of Sir Percival’s maternal
ancestors—I don’t remember, and don’t care, which—tacked on the main
building, at right angles to it, in the aforesaid Queen Elizabeth’s time.
The housekeeper told me that the architecture of “the old wing,” both
outside and inside, was considered remarkably fine by good judges. On
further investigation, I discovered that good judges could only exercise
their abilities on Sir Percival’s piece of antiquity by previously
dismissing from their minds all fear of damp, darkness, and rats. Under
these circumstances, I unhesitatingly acknowledged myself to be no judge at
all; and suggested that we should treat “the old wing” precisely as we had
previously treated the Elizabethan bedrooms. Once more, the housekeeper
said, “I am quite of your opinion, miss;” and once more she looked at me,
with undisguised admiration of my extraordinary common sense.
We went, next, to the wing on the right,
which was built, by way of completing the wonderful architectural jumble at
Blackwater Park, in the time of George the Second. This is the habitable
part of the house, which has been repaired and redecorated, inside, on
Laura’s account. My two rooms, and all the good bedrooms besides, are on the
first floor; and the basement contains a drawing-room, a dining-room, a
morning-room, a library, and a pretty little boudoir for Laura—all very
nicely ornamented in the bright modern way, and all very elegantly furnished
with the delightful modern luxuries. None of the rooms are anything like so
large and airy as our rooms at Limmeridge; but they all look pleasant to
live in. I was terribly afraid, from what I had heard of Blackwater Park, of
fatiguing antique chairs, and dismal stained glass, and musty, frouzy
hangings, and all the barbarous lumber which people born without a sense of
comfort accumulate about them, in defiance of all consideration due to the
convenience of their friends. It is an inexpressible relief to find that the
nineteenth century has invaded this strange future home of mine, and has
swept the dirty “good old times” out of the way of our daily life.
I dawdled away the morning—part of the time
in the rooms down stairs; and part, out of doors, in the great square which
is formed by the three sides of the house, and by the lofty iron railings
and gates which protect it in front. A large circular fishpond, with stone
sides and an allegorical leaden monster in the middle, occupies the centre
of the square. The pond itself is full of gold and silver fish, and is
encircled by a broad belt of the softest turf I ever walked on. I loitered
here, on the shady side, pleasantly enough, till luncheon time; and, after
that, took my broad straw hat, and wandered out alone, in the warm lovely
sunlight, to explore the grounds.
Daylight confirmed the impression which I
had felt the night before, of there being too many trees at Blackwater. The
house is stifled by them. They are, for the most part, young, and planted
far too thickly. I suspect there must have been a ruinous cutting down of
timber, all over the estate, before Sir Percival’s time, and an angry
anxiety, on the part of the next possessor, to fill up all the gaps as
thickly and rapidly as possible. After looking about me, in front of the
house, I observed a flower-garden on my left hand, and walked towards it, to
see what I could discover in that direction.
On a nearer view, the garden proved to be
small and poor and ill-kept. I left it behind me, opened a little gate in a
ring fence, and found myself in a plantation of fir-trees. A pretty, winding
path, artificially made, led me on among the trees; and my north-country
experience soon informed me that I was approaching sandy, heathy ground.
After a walk of more than half a mile, I should think, among the firs, the
path took a sharp turn; the trees abruptly ceased to appear on either side
of me; and I found myself standing suddenly on the margin of a vast open
space; and looking down at the Blackwater lake from which the house takes
its name.
The ground, shelving away below me, was all
sand, with a few little heathy hillocks to break the monotony of it in
certain places. The lake itself had evidently once flowed to the spot on
which I stood, and had been gradually wasted and dried up to less than a
third of its former size. I saw its still, stagnant waters, a quarter of a
mile away from me in the hollow, separated into pools and ponds, by twining
reeds and rushes, and little knolls of earth. On the farther bank from me,
the trees rose thickly again, and shut out the view, and cast their black
shadows on the sluggish, shallow water. As I walked down to the lake, I saw
that the ground on its farther side was damp and marshy, overgrown with rank
grass and dismal willows. The water, which was clear enough on the open
sandy side, where the sun shone, looked black and poisonous opposite to me,
where it lay deeper under the shade of the spongy banks, and the rank
overhanging thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the
rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows
themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw here,
lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old
overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in
the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot,
fantastically coiled, and treacherously still. Far and near, the view
suggested the same dreary impressions of solitude and decay; and the
glorious brightness of the summer sky overhead, seemed only to deepen and
harden the gloom and barrenness of the wilderness on which it shone. I
turned and retraced my steps to the high, heathy ground; directing them a
little aside from my former path, towards a shabby old wooden shed, which
stood on the outer skirt of the fir plantation, and which had hitherto been
too unimportant to share my notice with the wide, wild prospect of the lake.
On approaching the shed, I found that it had
once been a boat-house, and that an attempt had apparently been made to
convert it afterwards into a sort of rude arbour, by placing inside it a
firwood seat, a few stools, and a table. I entered the place, and sat down
for a little while, to rest and get my breath again.
I had not been in the boat-house more than a
minute, when it struck me that the sound of my own quick breathing was very
strangely echoed by something beneath me. I listened intently for a moment,
and heard a low, thick, sobbing breath that seemed to come from the ground
under the seat which I was occupying. My nerves are not easily shaken by
trifles; but, on this occasion, I started to my feet in a fright—called
out—received no answer—summoned back my recreant courage—and looked under
the seat.
There, crouched up in the farthest corner,
lay the forlorn cause of my terror, in the shape of a poor little dog—a
black and white spaniel. The creature moaned feebly when I looked at it and
called to it, but never stirred. I moved away the seat and looked closer.
The poor little dog’s eyes were glazing fast, and there were spots of blood
on its glossy white side. The misery of a weak, helpless, dumb creature is
surely one of the saddest of all the mournful sights which this world can
show. I lifted the poor dog in my arms as gently as I could, and contrived a
sort of make-shift hammock for him to lie in, by gathering up the front of
my dress all round him. In this way, I took the creature, as painlessly as
possible, and as fast as possible, back to the house.
Finding no one in the hall, I went up at
once to my own sitting-room, made a bed for the dog with one of my old
shawls, and rang the bell. The largest and fattest of all possible
housemaids answered it, in a state of cheerful stupidity which would have
provoked the patience of a saint. The girl’s fat, shapeless face actually
stretched into a broad grin, at the sight of the wounded creature on the
floor.
“What do you see there to laugh at?” I
asked, as angrily as if she had been a servant of my own. “Do you know whose
dog it is?”
“No, miss, that I certainly don’t.” She
stopped, and looked down at the spaniel’s injured side—brightened suddenly
with the irradiation of a new idea—and, pointing to the wound with a chuckle
of satisfaction, said, “That’s Baxter’s doings, that is.”
I was so exasperated that I could have boxed
her ears. “Baxter?” I said. “Who is the brute you call Baxter?”
The girl grinned again, more cheerfully than
ever. “Bless you, miss! Baxter’s the keeper; and when he finds strange dogs
hunting about, he takes and shoots ‘em. It’s keeper’s dooty, miss. I think
that dog will die. Here’s where he’s been shot, ain’t it? That’s Baxter’s
doings, that is. Baxter’s doings, miss, and Baxter’s dooty.”
I was almost wicked enough to wish that
Baxter had shot the housemaid instead of the dog. Seeing that it was quite
useless to expect this densely impenetrable personage to give me any help in
relieving the suffering creature at our feet, I told her to request the
housekeeper’s attendance, with my compliments. She went out exactly as she
had come in, grinning from ear to ear. As the door closed on her, she said
to herself, softly, “It’s Baxter’s doings and Baxter’s dooty—that’s what it
is.”
The housekeeper, a person of some education
and intelligence, thoughtfully brought up-stairs with her some milk and some
warm water. The instant she saw the dog on the floor, she started and
changed colour.
“Why, Lord bless me,” cried the housekeeper,
“that must be Mrs. Catherick’s dog!”
“Whose?” I asked, in the utmost
astonishment.
“Mrs. Catherick’s. You seem to know Mrs.
Catherick, Miss Halcombe?”
“Not personally, but I have heard of her.
Does she live here? Has she had any news of her daughter?”
“No, Miss Halcombe. She came here to ask for
news?”
“When?”
“Only yesterday. She said some one had
reported that a stranger answering to the description of her daughter had
been seen in our neighbourhood. No such report has reached us here; and no
such report was known in the village, when I sent to make inquiries there on
Mrs. Catherick’s account. She certainly brought this poor little dog with
her when she came; and I saw it trot out after her when she went away. I
suppose the creature strayed into the plantations, and got shot. Where did
you find it, Miss Halcombe?”
“In the old shed that looks out on the
lake.”
“Ah, yes, that is the plantation side, and
the poor thing dragged itself, I suppose, to the nearest shelter, as dogs
will, to die. If you can moisten its lips with the milk, Miss Halcombe, I
will wash the clotted hair from the wound. I am very much afraid it is too
late to do any good. However, we can but try.”
Mrs. Catherick! The name still rang in my
ears, as if the housekeeper had only that moment surprised me by uttering
it. While we were attending to the dog, the words of Walter Hartright’s
caution to me returned to my memory. “If ever Anne Catherick crosses your
path, make better use of the opportunity, Miss Halcombe, than I made of it.”
The finding of the wounded spaniel had led me already to the discovery of
Mrs. Catherick’s visit to Blackwater Park; and that event might lead, in its
turn, to something more. I determined to make the most of the chance which
was now offered me, and to gain as much information as I could.
“Did you say that Mrs. Catherick lived
anywhere in this neighbourhood?” I asked.
“Oh, dear no,” said the housekeeper. “She
lives at Welmingham; quite at the other end of the county—five-and-twenty
miles off at least.”
“I suppose you have known Mrs. Catherick for
some years?”
“On the contrary, Miss Halcombe; I never saw
her before she came here, yesterday. I had heard of her, of course, because
I had heard of Sir Percival’s kindness in putting her daughter under medical
care. Mrs. Catherick is rather a strange person in her manners, but
extremely respectable-looking. She seemed sorely put out, when she found
that there was no foundation—none, at least, that any of
us could discover—for the report
of her daughter having been seen in this neighbourhood.”
“I am rather interested about Mrs. Catherick,”
I went on, continuing the conversation as long as possible. “I wish I had
arrived here soon enough to see her yesterday. Did she stay for any length
of time?”
“Yes,” said the housekeeper, “she stayed for
some time. And I think she would have remained longer, if I had not been
called away to speak to a strange gentleman—a gentleman who came to ask when
Sir Percival was expected back. Mrs. Catherick got up and left at once, when
she heard the maid tell me what the visitor’s errand was. She said to me, at
parting, that there was no need to tell Sir Percival of her coming here. I
thought that rather an odd remark to make, especially to a person in my
responsible situation.”
I thought it an odd remark, too. Sir
Percival had certainly led me to believe, at Limmeridge, that the most
perfect confidence existed between himself and Mrs. Catherick. If that was
the case, why should she be anxious to have her visit at Blackwater Park
kept a secret from him?
“Probably,” I said, seeing that the
housekeeper expected me to give my opinion on Mrs. Catherick’s parting
words; “probably, she thought the announcement of her visit might vex Sir
Percival to no purpose, by reminding him that her lost daughter was not
found yet. Did she talk much on that subject?”
“Very little,” replied the housekeeper. “She
talked principally of Sir Percival, and asked a great many questions about
where he had been travelling, and what sort of lady his new wife was. She
seemed to be more soured and put out than distressed, by failing to find any
traces of her daughter in these parts. ‘I give her up,’ were the last words
she said that I can remember; ‘I give her up, ma’am, for lost.’ And from
that, she passed at once to her questions about Lady Glyde; wanting to know
if she was a handsome, amiable lady, comely and healthy and young —— Ah,
dear! I thought how it would end. Look, Miss Halcombe! the poor thing is out
of its misery at last!”
The dog was dead. It had given a faint,
sobbing cry, it had suffered an instant’s convulsion of the limbs, just as
those last words, “comely and healthy and young,” dropped from the
housekeeper’s lips. The change had happened with startling suddenness—in one
moment, the creature lay lifeless under our hands.
Eight o’clock. I have just returned from
dining downstairs, in solitary state. The sunset is burning redly on the
wilderness of trees that I see from my window; and I am poring over my
journal again, to calm my impatience for the return of the travellers. They
ought to have arrived, by my calculations, before this. How still and lonely
the house is in the drowsy evening quiet! Oh, me! how many minutes more
before I hear the carriage-wheels and run down stairs to find myself in
Laura’s arms?
The poor little dog! I wish my first day at
Blackwater Park had not been associated with death—though it is only the
death of a stray animal.
Welmingham—I see, on looking back through
these private pages of mine, that Welmingham is the name of the place where
Mrs. Catherick lives. Her note is still in my possession, the note in answer
to that letter about her unhappy daughter which Sir Percival obliged me to
write. One of these days, when I can find a safe opportunity, I will take
the note with me by way of introduction, and try what I can make of Mrs.
Catherick at a personal interview. I don’t understand her wishing to conceal
her visit to this place from Sir Percival’s knowledge; and I don’t feel half
so sure, as the housekeeper seems to do, that her daughter Anne is not in
the neighbourhood, after all. What would Walter Hartright have said in this
emergency? Poor, dear Hartright! I am beginning to feel the want of his
honest advice and his willing help, already.
Surely, I heard something? Yes! there is a
bustle of footsteps below stairs. I hear the horses’ feet; I hear the
rolling of wheels. Away with my journal and my pen and ink! The travellers
have returned—my darling Laura is home again at last!
All The Year Round, 11 February 1860, Vol.II, No.42, pp.357-362
Weekly Part 12.
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