The Woman in White
and pale a brown—not flaxen, and yet almost as light; not golden, and
yet almost as glossy—that it nearly melts, here and there, into the
shadow of the hat. It is plainly parted and drawn back over her ears,
and the line of it ripples naturally as it crosses her forehead. The
eyebrows are rather darker than the hair; and the eyes are of that
soft, limpid, turquoise blue, so often sung by the poets, so seldom
seen in real life. Lovely eyes in colour, lovely eyes in form—large
and tender and quietly thoughtful—but beautiful above all things in
the clear truthfulness of look that dwells in their inmost depths, and
shines through all their changes of expression with the light of a
purer and a better world. The charm—most gently and yet most distinctly
expressed—which they shed over the whole face, so covers and transforms
its little natural human blemishes elsewhere, that it is difficult
to estimate the relative merits and defects of the other features.
It is hard to see that the lower part of the face is too delicately
refined away towards the chin to be in full and fair proportion with
the upper part; that the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend (always
hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly perfect it may
be), has erred a little in the other extreme, and has missed the ideal
straightness of line; and that the sweet, sensitive lips are subject
to a slight nervous contraction, when she smiles, which draws them
upward a little at one corner, towards the cheek. It might be possible
to note these blemishes in another woman’s face but it is not easy
to dwell on them in hers, so subtly are they connected with all that
is individual and characteristic in her expression, and so closely
does the expression depend for its full play and life, in every other
feature, on the moving impulse of the eyes.
Does my poor portrait of her, my fond, patient labour of long and
happy days, show me these things? Ah, how few of them are in the dim
mechanical drawing, and how many in the mind with which I regard it!
A fair, delicate girl, in a pretty light dress, trifling with the
leaves of a sketch-book, while she looks up from it with truthful,
innocent blue eyes—that is all the drawing can say; all, perhaps, that
even the deeper reach of thought and pen can say in their language,
either. The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy
conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has
remained unknown to us till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep
for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by
other charms than those which the senses feel and which the resources
of expression can realise. The mystery which underlies the beauty of
women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has
claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls. Then, and
then only, has it passed beyond the narrow region on which light falls,
in this world, from the pencil and the pen.
Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses
within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir. Let the kind,
candid blue eyes meet yours, as they met mine, with the one matchless
look which we both remember so well. Let her voice speak the music that
you once loved best, attuned as sweetly to your ear as to mine. Let her
footstep, as she comes and goes, in these pages, be like that other
footstep to whose airy fall your own heart once beat time. Take her as
the visionary nursling of your own fancy; and she will grow upon you,
all the more clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine.
Among the sensations that crowded on me, when my eyes first looked upon
her—familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to life in most
of our hearts, die again in so many, and renew their bright existence
in so few—there was one that troubled and perplexed me: one that seemed
strangely inconsistent and unaccountably out of place in Miss Fairlie’s
presence.
Mingling with the vivid impression produced by the charm of her fair
face and head, her sweet expression, and her winning simplicity of
manner, was another impression, which, in a shadowy way, suggested to
me the idea of something wanting. At one time it seemed like something
wanting in HER: at another, like something wanting in myself, which
hindered me from understanding her as I ought. The impression was
always strongest in the most contradictory manner, when she looked
at me; or, in other words, when I was most conscious of the harmony
and charm of her face, and yet, at the same time, most troubled by
the sense of an incompleteness which it was impossible to discover.
Something wanting, something wanting—and where it was, and what it was,
I could not say.
The effect of this curious caprice of fancy (as I thought it then) was
not of a nature to set me at my ease, during a first interview with
Miss Fairlie. The few kind words of welcome which she spoke found me
hardly self-possessed enough to thank her in the customary phrases of
reply. Observing my hesitation, and no doubt attributing it, naturally
enough, to some momentary shyness on my part, Miss Halcombe took the
business of talking, as easily and readily as usual, into her own hands.
“Look there, Mr. Hartright,” she said, pointing to the sketch-book on
the table, and to the little delicate wandering hand that was still
trifling with it. “Surely you will acknowledge that your model pupil
is found at last? The moment she hears that you are in the house, she
seizes her inestimable sketch-book, looks universal Nature straight in
the face, and longs to begin!”
Miss Fairlie laughed with a ready good-humour, which broke out as
brightly as if it had been part of the sunshine above us, over her
lovely face.
“I must not take credit to myself where no credit is due,” she said,
her clear, truthful blue eyes looking alternately at Miss Halcombe and
at me. “Fond as I am of drawing, I am so conscious of my own ignorance
that I am more afraid than anxious to begin. Now I know you are here,
Mr. Hartright, I find myself looking over my sketches, as I used to
look over my lessons when I was a little girl, and when I was sadly
afraid that I should turn out not fit to be heard.”
She made the confession very prettily and simply, and, with quaint,
childish earnestness, drew the sketch-book away close to her own side
of the table. Miss Halcombe cut the knot of the little embarrassment
forthwith, in her resolute, downright way.
“Good, bad, or indifferent,” she said, “the pupil’s sketches must
pass through the fiery ordeal of the master’s judgment—and there’s an
end of it. Suppose we take them with us in the carriage, Laura, and
let Mr. Hartright see them, for the first time, under circumstances
of perpetual jolting and interruption? If we can only confuse him
all through the drive, between Nature as it is, when he looks up at
the view, and Nature as it is not when he looks down again at our
sketch-books, we shall drive him into the last desperate refuge of
paying us compliments, and shall slip through his professional fingers
with our pet feathers of vanity all unruffled.”
“I hope Mr. Hartright will pay ME no compliments,” said Miss Fairlie,
as we all left the summer-house.
“May I venture to inquire why you express that hope?” I asked.
“Because I shall believe all that you say to me,” she answered simply.
In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole
character: to that generous trust in others which, in her nature,
grew innocently out of the sense of her own truth. I only knew it
intuitively then. I know it by experience now.
We merely waited to rouse good Mrs. Vesey from the place which she
still occupied at the deserted luncheon-table, before we entered the
open carriage for our promised drive. The old lady and Miss Halcombe
occupied the back seat, and Miss Fairlie and I sat together in front,
with the sketch-book open between us, fairly exhibited at last to my
professional eyes. All serious criticism on the drawings, even if I
had been disposed to volunteer it, was rendered impossible by Miss
Halcombe’s lively resolution to see nothing but the ridiculous side
of the Fine Arts, as practised by herself, her sister, and ladies in
general. I can remember the conversation that passed far more easily
than the sketches that I mechanically looked over. That part of the
talk, especially, in which Miss Fairlie took any share, is still as
vividly impressed on my memory as if I had heard it only a few hours
ago.
Yes! let me acknowledge that on this first day I let the charm of her
presence lure me from the recollection of myself and my position. The
most trifling of the questions that she put to me, on the subject of
using her pencil and mixing her colours; the slightest alterations
of expression in the lovely eyes that looked into mine with such an
earnest desire to learn all that I could teach, and to discover all
that I could show, attracted more of my attention than the finest view
we passed through, or the grandest changes of light and shade, as they
flowed into each other over the waving moorland and the level beach.
At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not
strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world
amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature
for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration
of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so
largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us,
one of the original instincts of our nature. As children, we none of
us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it. Those whose
lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-changing wonders of
sea and land are also those who are most universally insensible to
every aspect of Nature not directly associated with the human interest
of their calling. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the
earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments
which we all learn as an Art; and, more, that very capacity is rarely
practised by any of us except when our minds are most indolent and
most unoccupied. How much share have the attractions of Nature ever
had in the pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves
or our friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little
narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of
mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass, all
that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished with equal certainty,
equal profit, and equal satisfaction to ourselves, in the poorest as
in the richest prospect that the face of the earth can show. There is
surely a reason for this want of inborn sympathy between the creature
and the creation around it, a reason which may perhaps be found in
the widely-differing destinies of man and his earthly sphere. The
grandest mountain prospect that the eye can range over is appointed to
annihilation. The smallest human interest that the pure heart can feel
is appointed to immortality.
We had been out nearly three hours, when the carriage again passed
through the gates of Limmeridge House.
On our way back I had let the ladies settle for themselves the first
point of view which they were to sketch, under my instructions, on the
afternoon of the next day. When they withdrew to dress for dinner, and
when I was alone again in my little sitting-room, my spirits seemed to
leave me on a sudden. I felt ill at ease and dissatisfied with myself,
I hardly knew why. Perhaps I was now conscious for the first time of
having enjoyed our drive too much in the character of a guest, and
too little in the character of a drawing-master. Perhaps that strange