第52章 Chapter 8 (5)

Short, sharp, and to the point; in form rather a business-like letter for a woman to write -- in substance as plain a confirmation as could be desired of Sir Percival Glyde's statement. This was my opinion, and with certain minor reservations, Miss Halcombe's opinion also. Sir Percival, when the letter was shown to him, did not appear to be struck by the sharp, short tone of it. He told us that Mrs Catherick was a woman of few words, a clear-headed, straightforward, unimaginative person, who wrote briefly and plainly, just as she spoke.

The next duty to be accomplished, now that the answer had been received, was to acquaint Miss Fairlie with Sir Percival's explanation. Miss Halcombe had undertaken to do this, and had left the room to go to her sister, when she suddenly returned again, and sat down by the easy-chair in which I was reading the newspaper. Sir Percival had gone out a minute before to look at the stables, and no one was in the room but ourselves.

‘I suppose we have really and truly done all we can?' she said, turning and twisting Mrs Catherick's letter in her hand.

‘If we are friends of Sir Percival's, who know him and trust him, we have done all, and more than all, that is necessary,' I answered, a little annoyed by this return of her hesitation. ‘But if we are enemies who suspect him --'

‘That alternative is not even to be thought of,' she interposed. ‘We are Sir Percival's friends, and if generosity and forbearance can add to our regard for him, we ought to be Sir Percival's admirers as well. You know that he saw Mr Fairlie yesterday, and that he afterwards went out with me.'

‘Yes. I saw you riding away together.'

‘We began the ride by talking about Anne Catherick, and about the singular manner in which Mr Hartright met with her. But we soon dropped that subject, and Sir Percival spoke next, in the most unselfish terms, of his engagement with Laura. He said he had observed that she was out of spirits, and he was willing, if not informed to the contrary, to attribute to that cause the alteration in her manner towards him during his present visit. If, however, there was any more serious reason for the change, he would entreat that no constraint might be placed on her inclinations either by Mr Fairlie or by me. All he asked, in that case, was that she would recall to mind, for the last time, what the circumstances were under which the engagement between them was made, and what his conduct had been from the beginning of the courtship to the present time. If, after due reflection on those two subjects, she seriously desired that he should withdraw his pretensions to the honour of becoming her husband -- and if she would tell him so plainly with her own lips -- he would sacrifice himself by leaving her perfectly free to withdraw from the engagement.'

‘No man could say more than that, Miss Halcombe. As to my experience, few men in his situation would have said as much.'

She paused after I had spoken those words, and looked at me with a singular expression of perplexity and distress.

‘I accuse nobody, and I suspect nothing,' she broke out abruptly. ‘But I cannot and will not accept the responsibility of persuading Laura to this marriage.'

‘That is exactly the course which Sir Percival Glyde has himself requested you to take,' I replied in astonishment. ‘He has begged you not to force her inclinations.'

‘And he indirectly obliges me to force them, if I give her his message.'

‘How can that possibly be?'

‘Consult your own knowledge of Laura, Mr Gilmore. If I tell her to reflect on the circumstances of her engagement, I at once appeal to two of the strongest feelings in her nature -- to her love for her father's memory, and to her strict regard for truth. You know that she never broke a promise in her life -- you know that she entered on this engagement at the beginning of her father's fatal illness, and that he spoke hopefully and happily of her marriage to Sir Percival Glyde on his deathbed.'

I own that I was a little shocked at this view of the case.

‘Surely,' I said, ‘you don't mean to infer that when Sir Percival spoke to you yesterday he speculated on such a result as you have just mentioned?'

Her frank, fearless face answered for her before she spoke.

‘Do you think I would remain an instant in the company of any man whom I suspected of such baseness as that?' she asked angrily.

I liked to feel her hearty indignation flash out on me in that way.

We see so much malice and so little indignation in my profession.

‘In that case,' I said, ‘excuse me if I tell you, in our legal phrase, that you are travelling out of the record. Whatever the consequences may be, Sir Percival has a right to expect that your sister should carefully consider her engagement from every reasonable point of view before she claims her release from it. If that unlucky letter has prejudiced her against him, go at once, and tell her that he has cleared himself in your eyes and in mine. What objection can she urge against him after that? What excuse can she possibly have for changing her mind about a man whom she had virtually accepted for her husband more than two years ago?'

‘In the eyes of law and reason, Mr Gilmore, no excuse, I daresay. If she still hesitates, and if I still hesitate, you must attribute our strange conduct, if you like, to caprice in both cases, and we must bear the imputation as well as we can.'

With those words she suddenly rose and left me. When a sensible woman has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she has something to conceal. I returned to the perusal of the newspaper, strongly suspecting that Miss Halcombe and Miss Fairlie had a secret between them which they were keeping from Sir Percival, and keeping from me. I thought this hard on both of us, especially on Sir Percival.