The Woman in White / Женщина в белом. Уилки Коллинз

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me of one who was cruel and wicked. Not a word more was said, on either side, as we walked back to the house. Miss Halcombe hastened immediately to her sister’s room, and I went to my studio.

      She was engaged to be married, and her future husband was Sir Percival Glyde. A man of the rank of Baronet, and the owner of property in Hampshire.

      There were hundreds of baronets in England, and dozens of landowners in Hampshire. I had not the shadow of a reason for connecting Sir Percival Glyde with the words that had been spoken to me by the woman in white. And yet, I did connect him with them.

      I had been engaged with the drawings little more than half an hour, when there was a knock at the door. It opened, on my answering; and, to my surprise, Miss Halcombe entered the room.

      Her manner was angry and agitated. She caught up a chair for herself before I could give her one, and sat down in it, close at my side. Marian was holding a letter in her hand and looking extremely angry and upset.

      “Mr. Hartright,” she said, “You saw me send the gardener on to the house, with a letter addressed, in a strange handwriting, to Miss Fairlie?”

      “Certainly.”

      “The letter is an anonymous letter – a vile attempt to injure Sir Percival Glyde in my sister’s estimation.[34] You are the only person in the house who can advise me. Mr. Fairlie, in his state of health and with his horror of difficulties and mysteries of all kinds, is not the right man. The clergyman is a good, weak man, who knows nothing out of the routine of his duties; and our neighbours are just the sort of comfortable acquaintances. I’d like you to read it. Tell me what you think, Mr. Hartright.”

      She gave me the letter. It began abruptly, without any preliminary form of address, as follows —

      “Do you believe in dreams? I hope, for your own sake, that you do. See what Scripture[35] says about dreams, and take the warning I send you before it is too late.

      Last night I dreamed about you, Miss Fairlie. You were standing in a church, waiting to be married. You looked so pretty and innocent in your beautiful white silk dress, and your long white lace veil, that the tears came into my eyes.

      Beside you stood the man who was going to be your husband. He was neither tall nor short – he was a little below the middle size. A light, active, high-spirited man – about five-and-forty years old. He had a pale face, and was bald over the forehead, but had dark hair on the rest of his head. His beard was shaven on his chin. His eyes were brown too, and very bright; his nose straight and handsome and delicate. Have I dreamt of the right man? You know best, Miss Fairlie and you can say if I was deceived or not.

      He had a slight cough, and when he put his hand up to his month, I could see a thin red mark on the back of his hand.

      I could see deep into this mans heart. It was as black as night, and on it were written, in the red flaming letters which are the handwriting of the fallen angel, ‘Without pity and without remorse. This man has done harm to many people, and he will do harm this woman by his side.’ Behind him, stood a devil laughing; and there behind you, stood an angel weeping. And I woke with my eyes full of tears and my heart beating – for I believe in dreams.

      Believe too, Miss Fairlie – I beg of you, for your own sake, believe as I do. Joseph and Daniel[36], and others in Scripture, believed in dreams. Inquire into the past life of that man, before you say the words that make you his miserable wife. Listen to my warning, Miss Fairlie, Miss Fairlie. Don’t marry this man. Your mother was my first, my best, my only friend.”

      There the extraordinary letter ended, without signature of any sort.

      “That is not an illiterate letter,” said Miss Halcombe, “I think it was written by a woman. What do you think, Mr. Hartright?”

      “I think so too. It seems to me to be not only the letter of a woman, but of a woman whose mind must be – ”

      “Deranged?” suggested Miss Halcombe.

      I did not answer. While I was speaking, my eyes rested on the last sentence of the letter: “Your mother was my first, my best, my only friend.”

      “We must use any chance of tracing the person who has written this,” I said, returning the letter to Miss Halcombe, “I think we ought to speak to the gardener again about the elderly woman who gave him the letter, and then to continue our inquiries in the village.”

      “Sir Percival Glyde is anxious that the marriage should take place before the end of the year.”

      “Does Miss Fairlie know of that wish?” I asked eagerly.

      “She has no suspicion of it. Mr. Fairlie has written to London, to the family solicitor,[37] Mr. Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore will arrive tomorrow, and will stay with us a few days. Mr. Gilmore is the old friend of two generations of Fairlies, and we can trust him, as we could trust no one else.”

      “One of the paragraphs of the anonymous letter,” I said, “contains some sentences of personal description. Sir Percival Glyde’s name is not mentioned, I know – but does that description at all resemble him?”

      “Accurately – even in stating his age to be forty-five – ”

      Forty-five; and she was not yet twenty-one! That added to my blind hatred and distrust of him.

      “There can be no doubt,” Miss Halcombe continued, “that every peculiarity of his personal appearance is thoroughly well known to the writer of the letter.”

      “Even a cough that he is troubled with is mentioned, if I remember right?”

      “Yes, and mentioned correctly.”

      I felt the blood rush into my cheeks.

      “But,” she said, “not a whisper, Mr. Hartright, has ever reached me, or my family, against Sir Percival.”

      I opened the door for her in silence, and followed her out. She had not convinced me.

      “We must find out more about the woman who gave this letter to the gardener,” said Marian. “Come on.”

      We found the gardener at work as usual – but he couldn’t give us any more information to help us. The woman who had given him the letter had been wearing a long dark-blue coat and a scarf which covered her hair. She hadn’t spoken a word to him. After giving him the letter, she had hurried away in the direction of the village. That was all the gardener could tell us.

      The village lay southward of the house. So to the village we went next.

      We then went to the village and spent several hours asking people there if they had seen a strange woman that day, but nobody had. Three of the villagers did certainly assure us that they had seen the woman, but they were quite unable to describe her.

      The course of our useless investigations brought us to the end of the village at which the schools established by Mrs. Fairlie were situated.

      We entered the playground enclosure, and walked by the schoolroom window to get round to the door, which was situated at the back of the building. I stopped for a moment at the window and looked in.

      The

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