第42章 Chapter 7 (2)

‘Mr Fairlie's compliments to Mr Hartright. Mr Fairlie is more surprised and disappointed than he can say (in the present state of his health) by Mr Hartright's application. Mr Fairlie is not a man of business, but he has consulted his steward, who is, and that person confirms Mr Fairlie's opinion that Mr Hartright's request to be allowed to break his engagement cannot be justified by any necessity whatever, excepting perhaps a case of life and death. If the highly-appreciative feeling towards Art and its professors, which it is the consolation and happiness of Mr Fairlie's suffering existence to cultivate, could be easily shaken, Mr Hartright's present proceeding would have shaken it. It has not done so -- except in the instance of Mr Hartright himself.

‘Having stated his opinion -- so far, that is to say, as acute nervous suffering will allow him to state anything -- Mr Fairlie has nothing to add but the expression of his decision, in reference to the highly irregular application that has been made to him. Perfect repose of body and mind being to the last degree important in his case, Mr Fairlie will not suffer Mr Hartright to disturb that repose by remaining in the house under circumstances of an essentially irritating nature to both sides. Accordingly, Mr Fairlie waives his right of refusal, purely with a view to the preservation of his own tranquillity -- and informs Mr Hartright that he may go.'

I folded the letter up, and put it away with my other papers. The time had been when I should have resented it as an insult -- I accepted it now as a written release from my engagement. It was off my mind, it was almost out of my memory, when I went downstairs to the breakfast-room, and informed Miss Halcombe that I was ready to walk with her to the farm.

‘Has Mr Fairlie given you a satisfactory answer?' she asked as we left the house.

‘He has allowed me to go, Miss Halcombe.'

She looked up at me quickly, and then, for the first time since I had known her, took my arm of her own accord. No words could have expressed so delicately that she understood how the permission to leave my employment had been granted, and that she gave me her sympathy, not as my superior, but as my friend. I had not felt the man's insolent letter, but I felt deeply the woman's atoning kindness.

On our way to the farm we arranged that Miss Halcombe was to enter the house alone, and that I was to wait outside, within call. We adopted this mode of proceeding from an apprehension that my presence, after what had happened in the churchyard the evening before, might have the effect of renewing Anne Catherick's nervous dead, 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. rust before supper-time, 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 any one. I asked leave, however, to look it over in my turn, ad 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 any one 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.