The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins [top ten ebook reader txt] 📗

the effect of renewing Anne Catherick’s nervous dread, and of rendering her additionally distrustful of the advances of a lady who was a stranger to her. Miss Halcombe left me, with the intention of speaking, in the first instance, to the farmer’s wife (of whose friendly readiness to help her in any way she was well assured), while I waited for her in the near neighbourhood of the house.

I had fully expected to be left alone for some time. To my surprise, however, little more than five minutes had elapsed before Miss Halcombe returned.

“Does Anne Catherick refuse to see you?” I asked in astonishment.

“Anne Catherick is gone,” replied Miss Halcombe.

“Gone?”

“Gone with Mrs. Clements. They both left the farm at eight o’clock this morning.”

I could say nothing⁠—I could only feel that our last chance of discovery had gone with them.

“All that Mrs. Todd knows about her guests, I know,” Miss Halcombe went on, “and it leaves me, as it leaves her, in the dark. They both came back safe last night, after they left you, and they passed the first part of the evening with Mr. Todd’s family as usual. Just before suppertime, however, Anne Catherick startled them all by being suddenly seized with faintness. She had had a similar attack, of a less alarming kind, on the day she arrived at the farm; and Mrs. Todd had connected it, on that occasion, with something she was reading at the time in our local newspaper, which lay on the farm table, and which she had taken up only a minute or two before.”

“Does Mrs. Todd know what particular passage in the newspaper affected her in that way?” I inquired.

“No,” replied Miss Halcombe. “She had looked it over, and had seen nothing in it to agitate anyone. I asked leave, however, to look it over in my turn, and at the very first page I opened I found that the editor had enriched his small stock of news by drawing upon our family affairs, and had published my sister’s marriage engagement, among his other announcements, copied from the London papers, of Marriages in High Life. I concluded at once that this was the paragraph which had so strangely affected Anne Catherick, and I thought I saw in it, also, the origin of the letter which she sent to our house the next day.”

“There can be no doubt in either case. But what did you hear about her second attack of faintness yesterday evening?”

“Nothing. The cause of it is a complete mystery. There was no stranger in the room. The only visitor was our dairymaid, who, as I told you, is one of Mr. Todd’s daughters, and the only conversation was the usual gossip about local affairs. They heard her cry out, and saw her turn deadly pale, without the slightest apparent reason. Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Clements took her upstairs, and Mrs. Clements remained with her. They were heard talking together until long after the usual bedtime, and early this morning Mrs. Clements took Mrs. Todd aside, and amazed her beyond all power of expression by saying that they must go. The only explanation Mrs. Todd could extract from her guest was, that something had happened, which was not the fault of anyone at the farmhouse, but which was serious enough to make Anne Catherick resolve to leave Limmeridge immediately. It was quite useless to press Mrs. Clements to be more explicit. She only shook her head, and said that, for Anne’s sake, she must beg and pray that no one would question her. All she could repeat, with every appearance of being seriously agitated herself, was that Anne must go, that she must go with her, and that the destination to which they might both betake themselves must be kept a secret from everybody. I spare you the recital of Mrs. Todd’s hospitable remonstrances and refusals. It ended in her driving them both to the nearest station, more than three hours since. She tried hard on the way to get them to speak more plainly, but without success; and she set them down outside the station-door, so hurt and offended by the unceremonious abruptness of their departure and their unfriendly reluctance to place the least confidence in her, that she drove away in anger, without so much as stopping to bid them goodbye. That is exactly what has taken place. Search your own memory, Mr. Hartright, and tell me if anything happened in the burial-ground yesterday evening which can at all account for the extraordinary departure of those two women this morning.”

“I should like to account first, Miss Halcombe, for the sudden change in Anne Catherick which alarmed them at the farmhouse, hours after she and I had parted, and when time enough had elapsed to quiet any violent agitation that I might have been unfortunate enough to cause. Did you inquire particularly about the gossip which was going on in the room when she turned faint?”

“Yes. But Mrs. Todd’s household affairs seem to have divided her attention that evening with the talk in the farmhouse parlour. She could only tell me that it was ‘just the news,’⁠—meaning, I suppose, that they all talked as usual about each other.”

“The dairymaid’s memory may be better than her mother’s,” I said. “It may be as well for you to speak to the girl, Miss Halcombe, as soon as we get back.”

My suggestion was acted on the moment we returned to the house. Miss Halcombe led me round to the servants’ offices, and we found the girl in the dairy, with her sleeves tucked up to her shoulders, cleaning a large milk-pan and singing blithely over her work.

“I have brought this gentleman to see your dairy, Hannah,” said Miss Halcombe. “It is one of the sights of the house, and it always does you credit.”

The girl blushed and curtseyed, and said shyly that she hoped she always did her best to keep things neat and clean.

“We have just come from your father’s,” Miss Halcombe continued. “You were there yesterday evening, I hear, and you found visitors at the house?”

“Yes, miss.”

“One