The Woman in White
Cumberland, 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; 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 the 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, 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.
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 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