Woman in White (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Wilkie Collins

  My mother rose the moment he had done, with flushed cheeks and brightened eyes. She caught the little man warmly by both hands.

  ‘My dear, good Pesca,’ she said, ‘I never doubted your true affection for Walter—but I am more than ever persuaded of it now!’

  ‘I am sure we are very much obliged to Professor Pesca, for Walter’s sake,’ added Sarah. She half rose, while she spoke, as if to approach the arm-chair, in her turn; but, observing that Pesca was rapturously kissing my mother’s hands, looked serious, and resumed her seat. ‘If the familiar little man treats my mother in that way, how will he treat me?’ Faces sometimes tell truth; and that was unquestionably the thought in Sarah’s mind, as she sat down again.

  Although I myself was gratefully sensible of the kindness of Pesca’s motives, my spirits were hardly so much elevated as they ought to have been by the prospect of future employment now placed before me. When the Professor had quite done with my mother’s hand, and when I had warmly thanked him for his interference on my behalf, I asked to be allowed to look at the note of terms which his respectable patron had drawn up for my inspection.

  Pesca handed me the paper, with a triumphant flourish of the hand.

  ‘Read!’ said the little man, majestically. ‘I promise you, my friend, the writing of the golden Papa speaks with a tongue of trumpets for itself.’

  The note of terms was plain, straightforward, and comprehensive, at any rate. It informed me,

  First, That Frederick Fairlie, Esquire, of Limmeridge House, Cumberland, i wanted to engage the services of a thoroughly competent drawing-master, for a period of four months certain.

  Secondly, That the duties which the master was expected to perform would be of a twofold kind. He was to superintend the instruction of two young ladies in the art of painting in water-colours; and he was to devote his leisure time, afterwards, to the business of repairing and mounting a valuable collection of drawings, which had been suffered to fall into a condition of total neglect.

  Thirdly, That the terms offered to the person who should undertake and properly perform these duties, were four guineas a week;j that he was to reside at Limmeridge House; and that he was to be treated there on the footing of a gentleman.

  Fourthly, and lastly, That no person need think of applying for this situation, unless he could furnish the most unexceptionable references to character and abilities. The references were to be sent to Mr. Fairlie’s friend in London, who was empowered to conclude all necessary arrangements. These instructions were followed by the name and address of Pesca’s employer in Portland-place—and there the note, or memorandum, ended.

  The prospect which this offer of an engagement held out was certainly an attractive one. The employment was likely to be both easy and agreeable; it was proposed to me at the autumn time of the year when I was least occupied; and the terms, judging by my personal experience in my profession, were surprisingly liberal. I knew this; I knew that I ought to consider myself very fortunate if I succeeded in securing the offered employment—and yet, no sooner had I read the memorandum than I felt an inexplicable unwillingness within me to stir in the matter. I had never in the whole of my previous experience found my duty and my inclination so painfully and so unaccountably at variance as I found them now.

  ‘Oh, Walter, your father never had such a chance as this!’ said my mother, when she had read the note of terms and had handed it back to me.

  ‘Such distinguished people to know,’ remarked Sarah, straightening herself in her chair; ‘and on such gratifying terms of equality, too!’

  ‘Yes, yes; the terms, in every sense, are tempting enough,’ I replied, impatiently. ‘But before I send in my testimonials, I should like a little time to consider—’

  ‘Consider!’ exclaimed my mother. ‘Why, Walter, what is the matter with you?’

  ‘Consider!’ echoed my sister. ‘What a very extraordinary thing to say, under the circumstances!’

  ‘Consider!’ chimed in the Professor. ‘What is there to consider about? Answer me this! Have you not been complaining of your health, and have you not been longing for what you call a smack of the country breeze? Well! there in your hand is the paper that offers you perpetual choking mouthfuls of country breeze, for four months’ time. Is it not so? Ha? Again—you want money. Well! Is four golden guineas a week nothing? My-soul-bless-my-soul! only give it to me—and my boots shall creak like the golden Papa’s, with a sense of the overpowering richness of the man who walks in them! Four guineas a week, and, more than that, the charming society of two young Misses; and, more than that, your bed, your breakfast, your dinner, your gorging English teas and lunches and drinks of foaming beer, all for nothing—why, Walter, my dear good friend—deuce-what-the-deuce! —for the first time in my life I have not eyes enough in my head to look, and wonder at you!’

  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,k 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.E!’

  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-by.

  ‘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 (Englis
h 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-by.

  IV

  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 round-about 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 Re-gent’s Park.l

  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;m 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,n 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 Woodo 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? I 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 to 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,p 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?