"Yes, she was a neighbour of ours once, at home, in Hampshire, and liked me, and took care of me when I was a little girl. Years ago, when she went away from us, she wrote down in my Prayer-book for me where she was going to live in London, and she said, "If you are ever in trouble, Anne, come to me. I have no husband alive to say me nay, and no children to look after, and I will take care of you." Kind words, were they not? I suppose I remember them because they were kind.
It"s little enough I remember besides--little enough, little enough!"
"Had you no father or mother to take care of you?"
"Father?--I never saw him--I never heard mother speak of him. Father?
Ah, dear! he is dead, I suppose."
"And your mother?"
"I don"t get on well with her. We are a trouble and a fear to each other."
A trouble and a fear to each other! At those words the suspicion crossed my mind, for the first time, that her mother might be the person who had placed her under restraint.
"Don"t ask me about mother," she went on. "I"d rather talk of Mrs.
Clements. Mrs. Clements is like you, she doesn"t think that I ought to be back in the Asylum, and she is as glad as you are that I escaped from it. She cried over my misfortune, and said it must be kept secret from everybody."
Her "misfortune." In what sense was she using that word? In a sense which might explain her motive in writing the anonymous letter? In a sense which might show it to be the too common and too customary motive that has led many a woman to interpose anonymous hindrances to the marriage of the man who has ruined her? I resolved to attempt the clearing up of this doubt before more words pa.s.sed between us on either side.
"What misfortune?" I asked.
"The misfortune of my being shut up," she answered, with every appearance of feeling surprised at my question. "What other misfortune could there be?"
I determined to persist, as delicately and forbearingly as possible.
It was of very great importance that I should be absolutely sure of every step in the investigation which I now gained in advance.
"There is another misfortune," I said, "to which a woman may be liable, and by which she may suffer lifelong sorrow and shame."
"What is it?" she asked eagerly.
"The misfortune of believing too innocently in her own virtue, and in the faith and honour of the man she loves," I answered.
She looked up at me with the artless bewilderment of a child. Not the slightest confusion or change of colour--not the faintest trace of any secret consciousness of shame struggling to the surface appeared in her face--that face which betrayed every other emotion with such transparent clearness. No words that ever were spoken could have a.s.sured me, as her look and manner now a.s.sured me, that the motive which I had a.s.signed for her writing the letter and sending it to Miss Fairlie was plainly and distinctly the wrong one. That doubt, at any rate, was now set at rest; but the very removal of it opened a new prospect of uncertainty. The letter, as I knew from positive testimony, pointed at Sir Percival Glyde, though it did not name him.
She must have had some strong motive, originating in some deep sense of injury, for secretly denouncing him to Miss Fairlie in such terms as she had employed, and that motive was unquestionably not to be traced to the loss of her innocence and her character. Whatever wrong he might have inflicted on her was not of that nature. Of what nature could it be?
"I don"t understand you," she said, after evidently trying hard, and trying in vain, to discover the meaning of the words I had last said to her.
"Never mind," I answered. "Let us go on with what we were talking about. Tell me how long you stayed with Mrs. Clements in London, and how you came here."
"How long?" she repeated. "I stayed with Mrs. Clements till we both came to this place, two days ago."
"You are living in the village, then?" I said. "It is strange I should not have heard of you, though you have only been here two days."
"No, no, not in the village. Three miles away at a farm. Do you know the farm? They call it Todd"s Corner."
I remembered the place perfectly--we had often pa.s.sed by it in our drives. It was one of the oldest farms in the neighbourhood, situated in a solitary, sheltered spot, inland at the junction of two hills.
"They are relations of Mrs. Clements at Todd"s Corner," she went on, "and they had often asked her to go and see them. She said she would go, and take me with her, for the quiet and the fresh air. It was very kind, was it not? I would have gone anywhere to be quiet, and safe, and out of the way. But when I heard that Todd"s Corner was near Limmeridge--oh! I was so happy I would have walked all the way barefoot to get there, and see the schools and the village and Limmeridge House again. They are very good people at Todd"s Corner. I hope I shall stay there a long time. There is only one thing I don"t like about them, and don"t like about Mrs. Clements----"
"What is it?"
"They will tease me about dressing all in white--they say it looks so particular. How do they know? Mrs. Fairlie knew best. Mrs. Fairlie would never have made me wear this ugly blue cloak! Ah! she was fond of white in her lifetime, and here is white stone about her grave--and I am making it whiter for her sake. She often wore white herself, and she always dressed her little daughter in white. Is Miss Fairlie well and happy? Does she wear white now, as she used when she was a girl?"
Her voice sank when she put the questions about Miss Fairlie, and she turned her head farther and farther away from me. I thought I detected, in the alteration of her manner, an uneasy consciousness of the risk she had run in sending the anonymous letter, and I instantly determined so to frame my answer as to surprise her into owning it.
"Miss Fairlie was not very well or very happy this morning," I said.
She murmured a few words, but they were spoken so confusedly, and in such a low tone, that I could not even guess at what they meant.
"Did you ask me why Miss Fairlie was neither well nor happy this morning?" I continued.
"No," she said quickly and eagerly--"oh no, I never asked that."
"I will tell you without your asking," I went on. "Miss Fairlie has received your letter."
She had been down on her knees for some little time past, carefully removing the last weather-stains left about the inscription while we were speaking together. The first sentence of the words I had just addressed to her made her pause in her occupation, and turn slowly without rising from her knees, so as to face me. The second sentence literally petrified her. The cloth she had been holding dropped from her hands--her lips fell apart--all the little colour that there was naturally in her face left it in an instant.
"How do you know?" she said faintly. "Who showed it to you?" The blood rushed back into her face--rushed overwhelmingly, as the sense rushed upon her mind that her own words had betrayed her. She struck her hands together in despair. "I never wrote it," she gasped affrightedly; "I know nothing about it!"
"Yes," I said, "you wrote it, and you know about it. It was wrong to send such a letter, it was wrong to frighten Miss Fairlie. If you had anything to say that it was right and necessary for her to hear, you should have gone yourself to Limmeridge House--you should have spoken to the young lady with your own lips."
She crouched down over the flat stone of the grave, till her face was hidden on it, and made no reply.
"Miss Fairlie will be as good and kind to you as her mother was, if you mean well," I went on. "Miss Fairlie will keep your secret, and not let you come to any harm. Will you see her to-morrow at the farm?
Will you meet her in the garden at Limmeridge House?"
"Oh, if I could die, and be hidden and at rest with YOU!" Her lips murmured the words close on the grave-stone, murmured them in tones of pa.s.sionate endearment, to the dead remains beneath. "You know how I love your child, for your sake! Oh, Mrs. Fairlie! Mrs. Fairlie! tell me how to save her. Be my darling and my mother once more, and tell me what to do for the best."
I heard her lips kissing the stone--I saw her hands beating on it pa.s.sionately. The sound and the sight deeply affected me. I stooped down, and took the poor helpless hands tenderly in mine, and tried to soothe her.
It was useless. She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hands from me, and never moved her face from the stone. Seeing the urgent necessity of quieting her at any hazard and by any means, I appealed to the only anxiety that she appeared to feel, in connection with me and with my opinion of her--the anxiety to convince me of her fitness to be mistress of her own actions.
"Come, come," I said gently. "Try to compose yourself, or you will make me alter my opinion of you. Don"t let me think that the person who put you in the Asylum might have had some excuse----"
The next words died away on my lips. The instant I risked that chance reference to the person who had put her in the Asylum she sprang up on her knees. A most extraordinary and startling change pa.s.sed over her.
Her face, at all ordinary times so touching to look at, in its nervous sensitiveness, weakness, and uncertainty, became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear, which communicated a wild, unnatural force to every feature. Her eyes dilated in the dim evening light, like the eyes of a wild animal. She caught up the cloth that had fallen at her side, as if it had been a living creature that she could kill, and crushed it in both her hands with such convulsive strength, that the few drops of moisture left in it trickled down on the stone beneath her.
"Talk of something else," she said, whispering through her teeth. "I shall lose myself if you talk of that."
Every vestige of the gentler thoughts which had filled her mind hardly a minute since seemed to be swept from it now. It was evident that the impression left by Mrs. Fairlie"s kindness was not, as I had supposed, the only strong impression on her memory. With the grateful remembrance of her school-days at Limmeridge, there existed the vindictive remembrance of the wrong inflicted on her by her confinement in the Asylum. Who had done that wrong? Could it really be her mother?
It was hard to give up pursuing the inquiry to that final point, but I forced myself to abandon all idea of continuing it. Seeing her as I saw her now, it would have been cruel to think of anything but the necessity and the humanity of restoring her composure.
"I will talk of nothing to distress you," I said soothingly.
"You want something," she answered sharply and suspiciously. "Don"t look at me like that. Speak to me--tell me what you want."
"I only want you to quiet yourself, and when you are calmer, to think over what I have said."