The Woman in White Wilkie Collins (bts books to read txt) š
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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After a lapse of two days proof came, in the shape of a letter, that the Major was living, and that he was ready to help us.
The idea in my mind when I wrote to him, and the nature of my inquiries will be easily inferred from his reply. His letter answered my questions by communicating these important factsā ā
In the first place, āthe late Sir Percival Glyde, of Blackwater Park,ā had never set foot in Varneck Hall. The deceased gentleman was a total stranger to Major Donthorne, and to all his family.
In the second place, āthe late Mr. Philip Fairlie, of Limmeridge House,ā had been, in his younger days, the intimate friend and constant guest of Major Donthorne. Having refreshed his memory by looking back to old letters and other papers, the Major was in a position to say positively that Mr. Philip Fairlie was staying at Varneck Hall in the month of August, eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that he remained there for the shooting during the month of September and part of October following. He then left, to the best of the Majorās belief, for Scotland, and did not return to Varneck Hall till after a lapse of time, when he reappeared in the character of a newly-married man.
Taken by itself, this statement was, perhaps, of little positive value, but taken in connection with certain facts, everyone of which either Marian or I knew to be true, it suggested one plain conclusion that was, to our minds, irresistible.
Knowing, now, that Mr. Philip Fairlie had been at Varneck Hall in the autumn of eighteen hundred and twenty-six, and that Mrs. Catherick had been living there in service at the same time, we knew alsoā āfirst, that Anne had been born in June, eighteen hundred and twenty-seven; secondly, that she had always presented an extraordinary personal resemblance to Laura; and, thirdly, that Laura herself was strikingly like her father. Mr. Philip Fairlie had been one of the notoriously handsome men of his time. In disposition entirely unlike his brother Frederick, he was the spoilt darling of society, especially of the womenā āan easy, lighthearted, impulsive, affectionate manā āgenerous to a faultā āconstitutionally lax in his principles, and notoriously thoughtless of moral obligations where women were concerned. Such were the facts we knewā āsuch was the character of the man. Surely the plain inference that follows needs no pointing out?
Read by the new light which had now broken upon me, even Mrs. Catherickās letter, in despite of herself, rendered its mite of assistance towards strengthening the conclusion at which I had arrived. She had described Mrs. Fairlie (in writing to me) as āplain-looking,ā and as having āentrapped the handsomest man in England into marrying her.ā Both assertions were gratuitously made, and both were false. Jealous dislike (which, in such a woman as Mrs. Catherick, would express itself in petty malice rather than not express itself at all) appeared to me to be the only assignable cause for the peculiar insolence of her reference to Mrs. Fairlie, under circumstances which did not necessitate any reference at all.
The mention here of Mrs. Fairlieās name naturally suggests one other question. Did she ever suspect whose child the little girl brought to her at Limmeridge might be?
Marianās testimony was positive on this point. Mrs. Fairlieās letter to her husband, which had been read to me in former daysā āthe letter describing Anneās resemblance to Laura, and acknowledging her affectionate interest in the little strangerā āhad been written, beyond all question, in perfect innocence of heart. It even seemed doubtful, on consideration, whether Mr. Philip Fairlie himself had been nearer than his wife to any suspicion of the truth. The disgracefully deceitful circumstances under which Mrs. Catherick had married, the purpose of concealment which the marriage was intended to answer, might well keep her silent for cautionās sake, perhaps for her own prideās sake also, even assuming that she had the means, in his absence, of communicating with the father of her unborn child.
As this surmise floated through my mind, there rose on my memory the remembrance of the Scripture denunciation which we have all thought of in our time with wonder and with awe: āThe sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children.ā But for the fatal resemblance between the two daughters of one father, the conspiracy of which Anne had been the innocent instrument and Laura the innocent victim could never have been planned. With what unerring and terrible directness the long chain of circumstances led down from the thoughtless wrong committed by the father to the heartless injury inflicted on the child!
These thoughts came to me, and others with them, which drew my mind away to the little Cumberland churchyard where Anne Catherick now lay buried. I thought of the bygone days when I had met her by Mrs. Fairlieās grave, and met her for the last time. I thought of her poor helpless hands beating on the tombstone, and her weary, yearning words, murmured to the dead remains of her protectress and her friend: āOh, if I could die, and be hidden and at rest with you!ā Little more than a year had passed since she breathed that wish; and how inscrutably, how awfully, it had been fulfilled! The words she had spoken to Laura by the shores of the lake, the very words had now come true. āOh, if I could only be buried with your mother! If I could only wake at her side when the angelās trumpet sounds and the graves give up their dead
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