The Woman in White (5 page)

A little before nine o'clock, I descended to the ground-floor of
the house. The solemn man-servant of the night before met me
wandering among the passages, and compassionately showed me the
way to the breakfast-room.

My first glance round me, as the man opened the door, disclosed a
well-furnished breakfast-table, standing in the middle of a long
room, with many windows in it. I looked from the table to the
window farthest from me, and saw a lady standing at it, with her
back turned towards me. The instant my eyes rested on her, I was
struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace
of her attitude. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely
and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders
with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes
of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its
natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed by
stays. She had not heard my entrance into the room; and I allowed
myself the luxury of admiring her for a few moments, before I
moved one of the chairs near me, as the least embarrassing means
of attracting her attention. She turned towards me immediately.
The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon
as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a
flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the
window—and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward
a few steps—and I said to myself, The lady is young. She
approached nearer—and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise
which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!

Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more
flatly contradicted—never was the fair promise of a lovely figure
more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that
crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the
dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a
large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing,
resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually
low down on her forehead. Her expression—bright, frank, and
intelligent—appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether
wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and
pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive
is beauty incomplete. To see such a face as this set on shoulders
that a sculptor would have longed to model—to be charmed by the
modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs
betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost
repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features
in which the perfectly shaped figure ended—was to feel a
sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all
in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and
contradictions of a dream.

"Mr. Hartright?" said the lady interrogatively, her dark face
lighting up with a smile, and softening and growing womanly the
moment she began to speak. "We resigned all hope of you last
night, and went to bed as usual. Accept my apologies for our
apparent want of attention; and allow me to introduce myself as
one of your pupils. Shall we shake hands? I suppose we must come
to it sooner or later—and why not sooner?"

These odd words of welcome were spoken in a clear, ringing,
pleasant voice. The offered hand—rather large, but beautifully
formed—was given to me with the easy, unaffected self-reliance of
a highly-bred woman. We sat down together at the breakfast-table
in as cordial and customary a manner as if we had known each other
for years, and had met at Limmeridge House to talk over old times
by previous appointment.

"I hope you come here good-humouredly determined to make the best
of your position," continued the lady. "You will have to begin
this morning by putting up with no other company at breakfast than
mine. My sister is in her own room, nursing that essentially
feminine malady, a slight headache; and her old governness, Mrs.
Vesey, is charitably attending on her with restorative tea. My
uncle, Mr. Fairlie, never joins us at any of our meals: he is an
invalid, and keeps bachelor state in his own apartments. There is
nobody else in the house but me. Two young ladies have been
staying here, but they went away yesterday, in despair; and no
wonder. All through their visit (in consequence of Mr. Fairlie's
invalid condition) we produced no such convenience in the house as
a flirtable, danceable, small-talkable creature of the male sex;
and the consequence was, we did nothing but quarrel, especially at
dinner-time. How can you expect four women to dine together alone
every day, and not quarrel? We are such fools, we can't entertain
each other at table. You see I don't think much of my own sex,
Mr. Hartright—which will you have, tea or coffee?—no woman does
think much of her own sex, although few of them confess it as
freely as I do. Dear me, you look puzzled. Why? Are you
wondering what you will have for breakfast? or are you surprised
at my careless way of talking? In the first case, I advise you, as
a friend, to have nothing to do with that cold ham at your elbow,
and to wait till the omelette comes in. In the second case, I
will give you some tea to compose your spirits, and do all a woman
can (which is very little, by-the-bye) to hold my tongue."

She handed me my cup of tea, laughing gaily. Her light flow of
talk, and her lively familiarity of manner with a total stranger,
were accompanied by an unaffected naturalness and an easy inborn
confidence in herself and her position, which would have secured
her the respect of the most audacious man breathing. While it was
impossible to be formal and reserved in her company, it was more
than impossible to take the faintest vestige of a liberty with
her, even in thought. I felt this instinctively, even while I
caught the infection of her own bright gaiety of spirits—even
while I did my best to answer her in her own frank, lively way.

"Yes, yes," she said, when I had suggested the only explanation I
could offer, to account for my perplexed looks, "I understand.
You are such a perfect stranger in the house, that you are puzzled
by my familiar references to the worthy inhabitants. Natural
enough: I ought to have thought of it before. At any rate, I can
set it right now. Suppose I begin with myself, so as to get done
with that part of the subject as soon as possible? My name is
Marian Halcombe; and I am as inaccurate as women usually are, in
calling Mr. Fairlie my uncle, and Miss Fairlie my sister. My
mother was twice married: the first time to Mr. Halcombe, my
father; the second time to Mr. Fairlie, my half-sister's father.
Except that we are both orphans, we are in every respect as unlike
each other as possible. My father was a poor man, and Miss
Fairlie's father was a rich man. I have got nothing, and she has
a fortune. I am dark and ugly, and she is fair and pretty.
Everybody thinks me crabbed and odd (with perfect justice); and
everybody thinks her sweet-tempered and charming (with more
justice still). In short, she is an angel; and I am—- Try
some of that marmalade, Mr. Hartright, and finish the sentence, in
the name of female propriety, for yourself. What am I to tell you
about Mr. Fairlie? Upon my honour, I hardly know. He is sure to
send for you after breakfast, and you can study him for yourself.
In the meantime, I may inform you, first, that he is the late Mr.
Fairlie's younger brother; secondly, that he is a single man; and
thirdly, that he is Miss Fairlie's guardian. I won't live without
her, and she can't live without me; and that is how I come to be
at Limmeridge House. My sister and I are honestly fond of each
other; which, you will say, is perfectly unaccountable, under the
circumstances, and I quite agree with you—but so it is. You must
please both of us, Mr. Hartright, or please neither of us: and,
what is still more trying, you will be thrown entirely upon our
society. Mrs. Vesey is an excellent person, who possesses all the
cardinal virtues, and counts for nothing; and Mr. Fairlie is too
great an invalid to be a companion for anybody. I don't know what
is the matter with him, and the doctors don't know what is the
matter with him, and he doesn't know himself what is the matter
with him. We all say it's on the nerves, and we none of us know
what we mean when we say it. However, I advise you to humour his
little peculiarities, when you see him to-day. Admire his
collection of coins, prints, and water-colour drawings, and you
will win his heart. Upon my word, if you can be contented with a
quiet country life, I don't see why you should not get on very
well here. From breakfast to lunch, Mr. Fairlie's drawings will
occupy you. After lunch, Miss Fairlie and I shoulder our sketch-
books, and go out to misrepresent Nature, under your directions.
Drawing is her favourite whim, mind, not mine. Women can't draw—
their minds are too flighty, and their eyes are too inattentive.
No matter—my sister likes it; so I waste paint and spoil paper,
for her sake, as composedly as any woman in England. As for the
evenings, I think we can help you through them. Miss Fairlie
plays delightfully. For my own poor part, I don't know one note
of music from the other; but I can match you at chess, backgammon,
ecarte, and (with the inevitable female drawbacks) even at
billiards as well. What do you think of the programme? Can you
reconcile yourself to our quiet, regular life? or do you mean to
be restless, and secretly thirst for change and adventure, in the
humdrum atmosphere of Limmeridge House?"

She had run on thus far, in her gracefully bantering way, with no
other interruptions on my part than the unimportant replies which
politeness required of me. The turn of the expression, however,
in her last question, or rather the one chance word, "adventure,"
lightly as it fell from her lips, recalled my thoughts to my
meeting with the woman in white, and urged me to discover the
connection which the stranger's own reference to Mrs. Fairlie
informed me must once have existed between the nameless fugitive
from the Asylum, and the former mistress of Limmeridge House.

"Even if I were the most restless of mankind," I said, "I should
be in no danger of thirsting after adventures for some time to
come. The very night before I arrived at this house, I met with
an adventure; and the wonder and excitement of it, I can assure
you, Miss Halcombe, will last me for the whole term of my stay in
Cumberland, if not for a much longer period."

"You don't say so, Mr. Hartright! May I hear it?"

"You have a claim to hear it. The chief person in the adventure
was a total stranger to me, and may perhaps be a total stranger to
you; but she certainly mentioned the name of the late Mrs. Fairlie
in terms of the sincerest gratitude and regard."

"Mentioned my mother's name! You interest me indescribably. Pray
go on."

I at once related the circumstances under which I had met the
woman in white, exactly as they had occurred; and I repeated what
she had said to me about Mrs. Fairlie and Limmeridge House, word
for word.

Miss Halcombe's bright resolute eyes looked eagerly into mine,
from the beginning of the narrative to the end. Her face
expressed vivid interest and astonishment, but nothing more. She
was evidently as far from knowing of any clue to the mystery as I
was myself.

"Are you quite sure of those words referring to my mother?" she
asked.

"Quite sure," I replied. "Whoever she may be, the woman was once
at school in the village of Limmeridge, was treated with especial
kindness by Mrs. Fairlie, and, in grateful remembrance of that
kindness, feels an affectionate interest in all surviving members
of the family. She knew that Mrs. Fairlie and her husband were
both dead; and she spoke of Miss Fairlie as if they had known each
other when they were children."

"You said, I think, that she denied belonging to this place?"

"Yes, she told me she came from Hampshire."

"And you entirely failed to find out her name?"

"Entirely."

"Very strange. I think you were quite justified, Mr. Hartright,
in giving the poor creature her liberty, for she seems to have
done nothing in your presence to show herself unfit to enjoy it.
But I wish you had been a little more resolute about finding out
her name. We must really clear up this mystery, in some way. You
had better not speak of it yet to Mr. Fairlie, or to my sister.
They are both of them, I am certain, quite as ignorant of who the
woman is, and of what her past history in connection with us can
be, as I am myself. But they are also, in widely different ways,
rather nervous and sensitive; and you would only fidget one and
alarm the other to no purpose. As for myself, I am all aflame
with curiosity, and I devote my whole energies to the business of
discovery from this moment. When my mother came here, after her
second marriage, she certainly established the village school just
as it exists at the present time. But the old teachers are all
dead, or gone elsewhere; and no enlightenment is to be hoped for
from that quarter. The only other alternative I can think of—-"

At this point we were interrupted by the entrance of the servant,
with a message from Mr. Fairlie, intimating that he would be glad
to see me, as soon as I had done breakfast.

"Wait in the hall," said Miss Halcombe, answering the servant for
me, in her quick, ready way. "Mr. Hartright will come out
directly. I was about to say," she went on, addressing me again,
"that my sister and I have a large collection of my mother's
letters, addressed to my father and to hers. In the absence of
any other means of getting information, I will pass the morning in
looking over my mother's correspondence with Mr. Fairlie. He was
fond of London, and was constantly away from his country home; and
she was accustomed, at such times, to write and report to him how
things went on at Limmeridge. Her letters are full of references
to the school in which she took so strong an interest; and I think
it more than likely that I may have discovered something when we
meet again. The luncheon hour is two, Mr. Hartright. I shall
have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister by that time,
and we will occupy the afternoon in driving round the
neighbourhood and showing you all our pet points of view. Till
two o'clock, then, farewell."