The Woman in White (3 page)

Neither my mother's evident astonishment at my behaviour, nor
Pesca's fervid enumeration of the advantages offered to me by the
new employment, had any effect in shaking my unreasonable
disinclination to go to Limmeridge House. After starting all the
petty objections that I could think of to going to Cumberland, and
after hearing them answered, one after another, to my own complete
discomfiture, I tried to set up a last obstacle by asking what was
to become of my pupils in London while I was teaching Mr.
Fairlie's young ladies to sketch from nature. The obvious answer
to this was, that the greater part of them would be away on their
autumn travels, and that the few who remained at home might be
confided to the care of one of my brother drawing-masters, whose
pupils I had once taken off his hands under similar circumstances.
My sister reminded me that this gentleman had expressly placed his
services at my disposal, during the present season, in case I
wished to leave town; my mother seriously appealed to me not to
let an idle caprice stand in the way of my own interests and my
own health; and Pesca piteously entreated that I would not wound
him to the heart by rejecting the first grateful offer of service
that he had been able to make to the friend who had saved his
life.

The evident sincerity and affection which inspired these
remonstrances would have influenced any man with an atom of good
feeling in his composition. Though I could not conquer my own
unaccountable perversity, I had at least virtue enough to be
heartily ashamed of it, and to end the discussion pleasantly by
giving way, and promising to do all that was wanted of me.

The rest of the evening passed merrily enough in humorous
anticipations of my coming life with the two young ladies in
Cumberland. Pesca, inspired by our national grog, which appeared
to get into his head, in the most marvellous manner, five minutes
after it had gone down his throat, asserted his claims to be
considered a complete Englishman by making a series of speeches in
rapid succession, proposing my mother's health, my sister's
health, my health, and the healths, in mass, of Mr. Fairlie and
the two young Misses, pathetically returning thanks himself,
immediately afterwards, for the whole party. "A secret, Walter,"
said my little friend confidentially, as we walked home together.
"I am flushed by the recollection of my own eloquence. My soul
bursts itself with ambition. One of these days I go into your
noble Parliament. It is the dream of my whole life to be
Honourable Pesca, M.P.!"

The next morning I sent my testimonials to the Professor's
employer in Portland Place. Three days passed, and I concluded,
with secret satisfaction, that my papers had not been found
sufficiently explicit. On the fourth day, however, an answer
came. It announced that Mr. Fairlie accepted my services, and
requested me to start for Cumberland immediately. All the
necessary instructions for my journey were carefully and clearly
added in a postscript.

I made my arrangements, unwillingly enough, for leaving London
early the next day. Towards evening Pesca looked in, on his way
to a dinner-party, to bid me good-bye.

"I shall dry my tears in your absence," said the Professor gaily,
"with this glorious thought. It is my auspicious hand that has
given the first push to your fortune in the world. Go, my friend!
When your sun shines in Cumberland (English proverb), in the name
of heaven make your hay. Marry one of the two young Misses;
become Honourable Hartright, M.P.; and when you are on the top of
the ladder remember that Pesca, at the bottom, has done it all!"

I tried to laugh with my little friend over his parting jest, but
my spirits were not to be commanded. Something jarred in me
almost painfully while he was speaking his light farewell words.

When I was left alone again nothing remained to be done but to
walk to the Hampstead cottage and bid my mother and Sarah good-
bye.

The heat had been painfully oppressive all day, and it was now a
close and sultry night.

My mother and sister had spoken so many last words, and had begged
me to wait another five minutes so many times, that it was nearly
midnight when the servant locked the garden-gate behind me. I
walked forward a few paces on the shortest way back to London,
then stopped and hesitated.

The moon was full and broad in the dark blue starless sky, and the
broken ground of the heath looked wild enough in the mysterious
light to be hundreds of miles away from the great city that lay
beneath it. The idea of descending any sooner than I could help
into the heat and gloom of London repelled me. The prospect of
going to bed in my airless chambers, and the prospect of gradual
suffocation, seemed, in my present restless frame of mind and
body, to be one and the same thing. I determined to stroll home
in the purer air by the most roundabout way I could take; to
follow the white winding paths across the lonely heath; and to
approach London through its most open suburb by striking into the
Finchley Road, and so getting back, in the cool of the new
morning, by the western side of the Regent's Park.

I wound my way down slowly over the heath, enjoying the divine
stillness of the scene, and admiring the soft alternations of
light and shade as they followed each other over the broken ground
on every side of me. So long as I was proceeding through this
first and prettiest part of my night walk my mind remained
passively open to the impressions produced by the view; and I
thought but little on any subject—indeed, so far as my own
sensations were concerned, I can hardly say that I thought at all.

But when I had left the heath and had turned into the by-road,
where there was less to see, the ideas naturally engendered by the
approaching change in my habits and occupations gradually drew
more and more of my attention exclusively to themselves. By the
time I had arrived at the end of the road I had become completely
absorbed in my own fanciful visions of Limmeridge House, of Mr.
Fairlie, and of the two ladies whose practice in the art of water-
colour painting I was so soon to superintend.

I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four
roads met—the road to Hampstead, along which I had returned, the
road to Finchley, the road to West End, and the road back to
London. I had mechanically turned in this latter direction, and
was strolling along the lonely high-road—idly wondering, I
remember, what the Cumberland young ladies would look like—when,
in one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a
stop by the touch of a hand laid lightly and suddenly on my
shoulder from behind me.

I turned on the instant, with my fingers tightening round the
handle of my stick.

There, in the middle of the broad bright high-road—there, as if
it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the
heaven—stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to
foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine,
her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.

I was far too seriously startled by the suddenness with which this
extraordinary apparition stood before me, in the dead of night and
in that lonely place, to ask what she wanted. The strange woman
spoke first.

"Is that the road to London?" she said.

I looked attentively at her, as she put that singular question to
me. It was then nearly one o'clock. All I could discern
distinctly by the moonlight was a colourless, youthful face,
meagre and sharp to look at about the cheeks and chin; large,
grave, wistfully attentive eyes; nervous, uncertain lips; and
light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue. There was nothing
wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was quiet and self-
controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by suspicion;
not exactly the manner of a lady, and, at the same time, not the
manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life. The voice, little
as I had yet heard of it, had something curiously still and
mechanical in its tones, and the utterance was remarkably rapid.
She held a small bag in her hand: and her dress—bonnet, shawl,
and gown all of white—was, so far as I could guess, certainly not
composed of very delicate or very expensive materials. Her figure
was slight, and rather above the average height—her gait and
actions free from the slightest approach to extravagance. This
was all that I could observe of her in the dim light and under the
perplexingly strange circumstances of our meeting. What sort of a
woman she was, and how she came to be out alone in the high-road,
an hour after midnight, I altogether failed to guess. The one
thing of which I felt certain was, that the grossest of mankind
could not have misconstrued her motive in speaking, even at that
suspiciously late hour and in that suspiciously lonely place.

"Did you hear me?" she said, still quietly and rapidly, and
without the least fretfulness or impatience. "I asked if that was
the way to London."

"Yes," I replied, "that is the way: it leads to St. John's Wood
and the Regent's Park. You must excuse my not answering you
before. I was rather startled by your sudden appearance in the
road; and I am, even now, quite unable to account for it."

"You don't suspect me of doing anything wrong, do you? have done
nothing wrong. I have met with an accident—I am very unfortunate
in being here alone so late. Why do you suspect me of doing
wrong?"

She spoke with unnecessary earnestness and agitation, and shrank
back from me several paces. I did my best to reassure her.

"Pray don't suppose that I have any idea of suspecting you," I
said, "or any other wish than to be of assistance to you, if I
can. I only wondered at your appearance in the road, because it
seemed to me to be empty the instant before I saw you."

She turned, and pointed back to a place at the junction of the
road to London and the road to Hampstead, where there was a gap in
the hedge.

"I heard you coming," she said, "and hid there to see what sort of
man you were, before I risked speaking. I doubted and feared
about it till you passed; and then I was obliged to steal after
you, and touch you."

Steal after me and touch me? Why not call to me? Strange, to say
the least of it.

"May I trust you?" she asked. "You don't think the worse of me
because I have met with an accident?" She stopped in confusion;
shifted her bag from one hand to the other; and sighed bitterly.

The loneliness and helplessness of the woman touched me. The
natural impulse to assist her and to spare her got the better of
the judgment, the caution, the worldly tact, which an older,
wiser, and colder man might have summoned to help him in this
strange emergency.

"You may trust me for any harmless purpose," I said. "If it
troubles you to explain your strange situation to me, don't think
of returning to the subject again. I have no right to ask you for
any explanations. Tell me how I can help you; and if I can, I
will."

"You are very kind, and I am very, very thankful to have met you."
The first touch of womanly tenderness that I had heard from her
trembled in her voice as she said the words; but no tears
glistened in those large, wistfully attentive eyes of hers, which
were still fixed on me. "I have only been in London once before,"
she went on, more and more rapidly, "and I know nothing about that
side of it, yonder. Can I get a fly, or a carriage of any kind?
Is it too late? I don't know. If you could show me where to get a
fly—and if you will only promise not to interfere with me, and to
let me leave you, when and how I please—I have a friend in London
who will be glad to receive me—I want nothing else—will you
promise?"

She looked anxiously up and down the road; shifted her bag again
from one hand to the other; repeated the words, "Will you
promise?" and looked hard in my face, with a pleading fear and
confusion that it troubled me to see.

What could I do? Here was a stranger utterly and helplessly at my
mercy—and that stranger a forlorn woman. No house was near; no
one was passing whom I could consult; and no earthly right existed
on my part to give me a power of control over her, even if I had
known how to exercise it. I trace these lines, self-
distrustfully, with the shadows of after-events darkening the very
paper I write on; and still I say, what could I do?

What I did do, was to try and gain time by questioning her. "Are
you sure that your friend in London will receive you at such a
late hour as this?" I said.

"Quite sure. Only say you will let me leave you when and how I
please—only say you won't interfere with me. Will you promise?"

As she repeated the words for the third time, she came close to me
and laid her hand, with a sudden gentle stealthiness, on my bosom—
a thin hand; a cold hand (when I removed it with mine) even on
that sultry night. Remember that I was young; remember that the
hand which touched me was a woman's.

"Will you promise?"

"Yes."

One word! The little familiar word that is on everybody's lips,
every hour in the day. Oh me! and I tremble, now, when I write
it.

We set our faces towards London, and walked on together in the
first still hour of the new day—I, and this woman, whose name,
whose character, whose story, whose objects in life, whose very
presence by my side, at that moment, were fathomless mysteries to
me. It was like a dream. Was I Walter Hartright? Was this the
well-known, uneventful road, where holiday people strolled on
Sundays? Had I really left, little more than an hour since, the
quiet, decent, conventionally domestic atmosphere of my mother's
cottage? I was too bewildered—too conscious also of a vague sense
of something like self-reproach—to speak to my strange companion
for some minutes. It was her voice again that first broke the
silence between us.