The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (portable ebook reader txt) 📕

“What has happened?” I asked. “What has frightened you?”

She looked round at the half-open door, put her lips close to my ear, and answered in a whisper⁠—

“Marian!⁠—the figure at the lake⁠—the footsteps last night⁠—I’ve just seen her! I’ve just spoken to her!”

“Who, for Heaven’s sake?”

“Anne Catherick.”

I was so startled by the disturbance in Laura’s face and manner, and so dismayed by the first waking impressions of my dream, that I was not fit to bear the revelation which burst upon me when that name passed her lips. I could only stand rooted to the floor, looking at her in breathless silence.

She was too much absorbed by what had happened to notice the effect which her reply had produced on me. “I have seen Anne Catherick! I have spoken to Anne Catherick!” she repeated as if I had not heard her. “Oh, Marian, I have such things to tell you! Come away⁠—we may be interrupted here⁠—come at once into my room.”

With those eager words she caught me by the hand, and led me through the library, to the end room on the ground floor, which had been fitted up for her own especial use. No third person, except her maid, could have any excuse for surprising us here. She pushed me in before her, locked the door, and drew the chintz curtains that hung over the inside.

The strange, stunned feeling which had taken possession of me still remained. But a growing conviction that the complications which had long threatened to gather about her, and to gather about me, had suddenly closed fast round us both, was now beginning to penetrate my mind. I could not express it in words⁠—I could hardly even realise it dimly in my own thoughts. “Anne Catherick!” I whispered to myself, with useless, helpless reiteration⁠—“Anne Catherick!”

Laura drew me to the nearest seat, an ottoman in the middle of the room. “Look!” she said, “look here!”⁠—and pointed to the bosom of her dress.

I saw, for the first time, that the lost brooch was pinned in its place again. There was something real in the sight of it, something real in the touching of it afterwards, which seemed to steady the whirl and confusion in my thoughts, and to help me to compose myself.

“Where did you find your brooch?” The first words I could say to her were the words which put that trivial question at that important moment.

“She found it, Marian.”

“Where?”

“On the floor of the boathouse. Oh, how shall I begin⁠—how shall I tell you about it! She talked to me so strangely⁠—she looked so fearfully ill⁠—she left me so suddenly!”

Her voice rose as the tumult of her recollections pressed upon her mind. The inveterate distrust which weighs, night and day, on my spirits in this house, instantly roused me to warn her⁠—just as the sight of the brooch had roused me to question her, the moment before.

“Speak low,” I said. “The window is open, and the garden path runs beneath it. Begin at the beginning, Laura. Tell me, word for word, what passed between that woman and you.”

“Shall I close the window?”

“No, only speak low⁠—only remember that Anne Catherick is a dangerous subject under your husband’s roof. Where did you first see her?”

“At the boathouse, Marian. I went out, as you know, to find my brooch, and I walked along the path through the plantation, looking down on the ground carefully at every step. In that way I got on, after a long time, to the boathouse, and as soon as I was inside it, I went on my knees to hunt over the floor. I was still searching with my back to the doorway, when I heard a soft, strange voice behind me say, ‘Miss Fairlie.’ ”

“Miss Fairlie!”

“Yes, my old name⁠—the dear, familiar name that I thought I had parted from forever. I started up⁠—not frightened, the voice was too kind and gentle to frighten anybody⁠—but very much surprised. There, looking at me from the doorway, stood a woman, whose face I never remembered to have seen before⁠—”

“How was she dressed?”

“She had a neat, pretty white gown on, and over it a poor worn thin dark shawl. Her bonnet was of brown straw, as poor and worn as the shawl. I was struck by the difference between her gown and the rest of her dress, and she saw that I noticed it. ‘Don’t look at my bonnet and shawl,’ she said, speaking in a quick, breathless, sudden way; ‘if I mustn’t wear white, I don’t care what I wear. Look at my gown as much as you please⁠—I’m not ashamed of that.’ Very strange, was it not? Before I could say anything to soothe her, she held out one of her hands, and I saw my brooch in it. I was so pleased and so grateful, that I went quite close to her to say what I really felt. ‘Are you thankful enough to do me one little kindness?’ she asked. ‘Yes, indeed,’ I answered, ‘any kindness in my power I shall be glad to show you.’ ‘Then let me pin your brooch on for you, now I have found it.’ Her request was so unexpected, Marian, and she made it with such extraordinary eagerness, that I drew back a step or two, not well knowing what to do. ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘your mother would have let me pin on the brooch.’ There was something in her voice and her look, as well as in her mentioning my mother in that reproachful manner, which made me ashamed of my distrust. I took her hand with the brooch in it, and put it up gently on the bosom of my dress. ‘You knew my mother?’ I said. ‘Was it very long ago? have I ever seen you before?’ Her hands were busy fastening the brooch: she stopped and pressed them against my breast. ‘You don’t remember a fine spring day at Limmeridge,’ she said, ‘and your mother walking down the path that led to