The Solitary House (256 page)

“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 the good woman by the 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.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

PART THE SECOND. HARTRIGHT’S NARRATIVE

VII

W
hen 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
you
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, to-day.”

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 away 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 her, 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 not misinterpreted
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, and in the inference that she had truly drawn from them for herself. Marian (when I told her what had passed) saw, as I 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 the course which is leading me to the End. Is it 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 connexion with his niece. Tell him, in case he hesitates to comply, 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 write to each other every day. 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 down stairs 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.

“I don’t know—I have fears and fancies that I can’t 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 these 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-carcases 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 elderly nursemaid and two children were standing
in a corner of the enclosure, looking at a lean goat tethered to the grass. Two foot passengers 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 please, 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.