The Woman in White
sense of something wanting, either in Miss Fairlie or in myself, which
had perplexed me when I was first introduced to her, haunted me still.
Anyhow, it was a relief to my spirits when the dinner-hour called me
out of my solitude, and took me back to the society of the ladies of
the house.
I was struck, on entering the drawing-room, by the curious contrast,
rather in material than in colour, of the dresses which they now wore.
While Mrs. Vesey and Miss Halcombe were richly clad (each in the manner
most becoming to her age), the first in silver-grey, and the second
in that delicate primrose-yellow colour which matches so well with a
dark complexion and black hair, Miss Fairlie was unpretendingly and
almost poorly dressed in plain white muslin. It was spotlessly pure:
it was beautifully put on; but still it was the sort of dress which
the wife or daughter of a poor man might have worn, and it made her,
so far as externals went, look less affluent in circumstances than her
own governess. At a later period, when I learnt to know more of Miss
Fairlie’s character, I discovered that this curious contrast, on the
wrong side, was due to her natural delicacy of feeling and natural
intensity of aversion to the slightest personal display of her own
wealth. Neither Mrs. Vesey nor Miss Halcombe could ever induce her to
let the advantage in dress desert the two ladies who were poor, to lean
to the side of the one lady who was rich.
When the dinner was over we returned together to the drawing-room.
Although Mr. Fairlie (emulating the magnificent condescension of the
monarch who had picked up Titian’s brush for him) had instructed his
butler to consult my wishes in relation to the wine that I might
prefer after dinner, I was resolute enough to resist the temptation
of sitting in solitary grandeur among bottles of my own choosing, and
sensible enough to ask the ladies’ permission to leave the table with
them habitually, on the civilised foreign plan, during the period of my
residence at Limmeridge House.
The drawing-room, to which we had now withdrawn for the rest of the
evening, was on the ground-floor, and was of the same shape and size as
the breakfast-room. Large glass doors at the lower end opened on to a
terrace, beautifully ornamented along its whole length with a profusion
of flowers. The soft, hazy twilight was just shading leaf and blossom
alike into harmony with its own sober hues as we entered the room, and
the sweet evening scent of the flowers met us with its fragrant welcome
through the open glass doors. Good Mrs. Vesey (always the first of
the party to sit down) took possession of an arm-chair in a corner,
and dozed off comfortably to sleep. At my request Miss Fairlie placed
herself at the piano. As I followed her to a seat near the instrument,
I saw Miss Halcombe retire into a recess of one of the side windows, to
proceed with the search through her mother’s letters by the last quiet
rays of the evening light.
How vividly that peaceful home-picture of the drawing-room comes
back to me while I write! From the place where I sat I could see
Miss Halcombe’s graceful figure, half of it in soft light, half in
mysterious shadow, bending intently over the letters in her lap; while,
nearer to me, the fair profile of the player at the piano was just
delicately defined against the faintly-deepening background of the
inner wall of the room. Outside, on the terrace, the clustering flowers
and long grasses and creepers waved so gently in the light evening air,
that the sound of their rustling never reached us. The sky was without
a cloud, and the dawning mystery of moonlight began to tremble already
in the region of the eastern heaven. The sense of peace and seclusion
soothed all thought and feeling into a rapt, unearthly repose; and the
balmy quiet, that deepened ever with the deepening light, seemed to
hover over us with a gentler influence still, when there stole upon it
from the piano the heavenly tenderness of the music of Mozart. It was
an evening of sights and sounds never to forget.
We all sat silent in the places we had chosen—Mrs. Vesey still
sleeping, Miss Fairlie still playing, Miss Halcombe still reading—till
the light failed us. By this time the moon had stolen round to the
terrace, and soft, mysterious rays of light were slanting already
across the lower end of the room. The change from the twilight
obscurity was so beautiful that we banished the lamps, by common
consent, when the servant brought them in, and kept the large room
unlighted, except by the glimmer of the two candles at the piano.
For half an hour more the music still went on. After that the beauty of
the moonlight view on the terrace tempted Miss Fairlie out to look at
it, and I followed her. When the candles at the piano had been lighted
Miss Halcombe had changed her place, so as to continue her examination
of the letters by their assistance. We left her, on a low chair, at one
side of the instrument, so absorbed over her reading that she did not
seem to notice when we moved.
We had been out on the terrace together, just in front of the glass
doors, hardly so long as five minutes, I should think; and Miss Fairlie
was, by my advice, just tying her white handkerchief over her head
as a precaution against the night air—when I heard Miss Halcombe’s
voice—low, eager, and altered from its natural lively tone—pronounce my
name.
“Mr. Hartright,” she said, “will you come here for a minute? I want to
speak to you.”
I entered the room again immediately. The piano stood about half-way
down along the inner wall. On the side of the instrument farthest from
the terrace Miss Halcombe was sitting with the letters scattered on her
lap, and with one in her hand selected from them, and held close to the
candle. On the side nearest to the terrace there stood a low ottoman,
on which I took my place. In this position I was not far from the glass
doors, and I could see Miss Fairlie plainly, as she passed and repassed
the opening on to the terrace, walking slowly from end to end of it in
the full radiance of the moon.
“I want you to listen while I read the concluding passages in this
letter,” said Miss Halcombe. “Tell me if you think they throw any
light upon your strange adventure on the road to London. The letter
is addressed by my mother to her second husband, Mr. Fairlie, and the
date refers to a period of between eleven and twelve years since. At
that time Mr. and Mrs. Fairlie, and my half-sister Laura, had been
living for years in this house; and I was away from them completing my
education at a school in Paris.”
She looked and spoke earnestly, and, as I thought, a little uneasily
as well. At the moment when she raised the letter to the candle before
beginning to read it, Miss Fairlie passed us on the terrace, looked in
for a moment, and seeing that we were engaged, slowly walked on.
Miss Halcombe began to read as follows:—
“‘You will be tired, my dear Philip, of hearing perpetually about my
schools and my scholars. Lay the blame, pray, on the dull uniformity of
life at Limmeridge, and not on me. Besides, this time I have something
really interesting to tell you about a new scholar.
“‘You know old Mrs. Kempe at the village shop. Well, after years of
ailing, the doctor has at last given her up, and she is dying slowly
day by day. Her only living relation, a sister, arrived last week to
take care of her. This sister comes all the way from Hampshire—her name
is Mrs. Catherick. Four days ago Mrs. Catherick came here to see me,
and brought her only child with her, a sweet little girl about a year
older than our darling Laura——’”
As the last sentence fell from the reader’s lips, Miss Fairlie passed
us on the terrace once more. She was softly singing to herself one of
the melodies which she had been playing earlier in the evening. Miss
Halcombe waited till she had passed out of sight again, and then went
on with the letter—
“‘Mrs. Catherick is a decent, well-behaved, respectable woman;
middle-aged, and with the remains of having been moderately, only
moderately, nice-looking. There is something in her manner and in her
appearance, however, which I can’t make out. She is reserved about
herself to the point of downright secrecy, and there is a look in her
face—I can’t describe it—which suggests to me that she has something on
her mind. She is altogether what you would call a walking mystery. Her
errand at Limmeridge House, however, was simple enough. When she left
Hampshire to nurse her sister, Mrs. Kempe, through her last illness,
she had been obliged to bring her daughter with her, through having no
one at home to take care of the little girl. Mrs. Kempe may die in a
week’s time, or may linger on for months; and Mrs. Catherick’s object
was to ask me to let her daughter, Anne, have the benefit of attending
my school, subject to the condition of her being removed from it to go
home again with her mother, after Mrs. Kempe’s death. I consented at
once, and when Laura and I went out for our walk, we took the little
girl (who is just eleven years old) to the school that very day.’”
Once more Miss Fairlie’s figure, bright and soft in its snowy muslin
dress—her face prettily framed by the white folds of the handkerchief
which she had tied under her chin—passed by us in the moonlight. Once
more Miss Halcombe waited till she was out of sight, and then went on—
“‘I have taken a violent fancy, Philip, to my new scholar, for a reason
which I mean to keep till the last for the sake of surprising you.
Her mother having told me as little about the child as she told me of
herself, I was left to discover (which I did on the first day when we
tried her at lessons) that the poor little thing’s intellect is not
developed as it ought to be at her age. Seeing this I had her up to the
house the next day, and privately arranged with the doctor to come and
watch her and question her, and tell me what he thought. His opinion is
that she will grow out of it. But he says her careful bringing-up at
school is a matter of great importance just now, because her unusual
slowness in acquiring ideas implies an unusual tenacity in keeping
them, when they are once received into her mind. Now, my love, you must
not imagine, in your off-hand way, that I have been attaching myself
to an idiot. This poor little Anne Catherick is a sweet, affectionate,
grateful girl, and says the quaintest, prettiest things (as you
shall judge by an instance), in the most oddly sudden, surprised,
half-frightened way. Although she is dressed very neatly, her clothes
show a sad want of taste in colour and pattern. So I arranged,
yesterday, that some of our darling Laura’s old white frocks and white
hats should be altered for Anne Catherick, explaining to her that
little girls of her complexion looked neater and better all in white
than in anything else. She hesitated and seemed puzzled for a minute,
then flushed up, and appeared to understand. Her little hand clasped
mine suddenly. She kissed it, Philip, and said (oh, so earnestly!), “I
will always wear white as long as I live. It will help me to remember
you, ma’am, and to think that I am pleasing you still, when I go away
and see you no more.” This is only one specimen of the quaint things
she says so prettily. Poor little soul! She shall have a stock of white
frocks, made with good deep tucks, to let out for her as she grows——’”
Miss Halcombe paused, and looked at me across the piano.
“Did the forlorn woman whom you met in the high-road seem young?” she
asked. “Young enough to be two- or three-and-twenty?”
“Yes, Miss Halcombe, as young as that.”
“And she was strangely dressed, from head to foot, all in white?”
“All in white.”
While the answer was passing my lips Miss Fairlie glided into view on