The Woman in White Page #13

The Woman in White is Wilkie Collins's fifth published novel, written in 1859. It is a mystery novel and falls under the genre of "sensation novels". The story is an early example of detective fiction with protagonist Walter Hartright employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives

• Mystery

								

take pains with her.  Yes.  Is there anything else? No.  We quite
understand each other--don't we? I have no right to detain you any
longer from your delightful pursuit--have I? So pleasant to have
settled everything--such a sensible relief to have done business.  Do
you mind ringing for Louis to carry the portfolio to your own room?"

"I will carry it there myself, Mr. Fairlie, if you will allow me."

"Will you really? Are you strong enough? How nice to be so strong! Are
you sure you won't drop it? So glad to possess you at Limmeridge, Mr.
Hartright.  I am such a sufferer that I hardly dare hope to enjoy much
of your society.  Would you mind taking great pains not to let the
doors bang, and not to drop the portfolio? Thank you.  Gently with the
curtains, please--the slightest noise from them goes through me like a
knife.  Yes. GOOD morning!"

When the sea-green curtains were closed, and when the two baize doors
were shut behind me, I stopped for a moment in the little circular hall
beyond, and drew a long, luxurious breath of relief. It was like coming
to the surface of the water after deep diving, to find myself once more
on the outside of Mr. Fairlie's room.

As soon as I was comfortably established for the morning in my pretty
little studio, the first resolution at which I arrived was to turn my
steps no more in the direction of the apartments occupied by the master
of the house, except in the very improbable event of his honouring me
with a special invitation to pay him another visit.  Having settled
this satisfactory plan of future conduct in reference to Mr. Fairlie, I
soon recovered the serenity of temper of which my employer's haughty
familiarity and impudent politeness had, for the moment, deprived me.
The remaining hours of the morning passed away pleasantly enough, in
looking over the drawings, arranging them in sets, trimming their
ragged edges, and accomplishing the other necessary preparations in
anticipation of the business of mounting them.  I ought, perhaps, to
have made more progress than this; but, as the luncheon-time drew near,
I grew restless and unsettled, and felt unable to fix my attention on
work, even though that work was only of the humble manual kind.

At two o'clock I descended again to the breakfast-room, a little
anxiously.  Expectations of some interest were connected with my
approaching reappearance in that part of the house.  My introduction to
Miss Fairlie was now close at hand; and, if Miss Halcombe's search
through her mother's letters had produced the result which she
anticipated, the time had come for clearing up the mystery of the woman
in white.



VIII

When I entered the room, I found Miss Halcombe and an elderly lady
seated at the luncheon-table.

The elderly lady, when I was presented to her, proved to be Miss
Fairlie's former governess, Mrs. Vesey, who had been briefly described
to me by my lively companion at the breakfast-table, as possessed of
"all the cardinal virtues, and counting for nothing." I can do little
more than offer my humble testimony to the truthfulness of Miss
Halcombe's sketch of the old lady's character.  Mrs. Vesey looked the
personification of human composure and female amiability.  A calm
enjoyment of a calm existence beamed in drowsy smiles on her plump,
placid face.  Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter
through life. Mrs. Vesey SAT through life.  Sat in the house, early and
late; sat in the garden; sat in unexpected window-seats in passages;
sat (on a camp-stool) when her friends tried to take her out walking;
sat before she looked at anything, before she talked of anything,
before she answered Yes, or No, to the commonest question--always with
the same serene smile on her lips, the same vacantly-attentive turn of
the head, the same snugly-comfortable position of her hands and arms,
under every possible change of domestic circumstances.  A mild, a
compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady, who never by
any chance suggested the idea that she had been actually alive since
the hour of her birth.  Nature has so much to do in this world, and is
engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions,
that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to
distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at
the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain
my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when
Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences
of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.

"Now, Mrs. Vesey," said Miss Halcombe, looking brighter, sharper, and
readier than ever, by contrast with the undemonstrative old lady at her
side, "what will you have? A cutlet?"

Mrs. Vesey crossed her dimpled hands on the edge of the table, smiled
placidly, and said, "Yes, dear."

"What is that opposite Mr. Hartright? Boiled chicken, is it not? I
thought you liked boiled chicken better than cutlet, Mrs. Vesey?"

Mrs. Vesey took her dimpled hands off the edge of the table and crossed
them on her lap instead; nodded contemplatively at the boiled chicken,
and said, "Yes, dear."

"Well, but which will you have, to-day? Shall Mr. Hartright give you
some chicken? or shall I give you some cutlet?"

Mrs. Vesey put one of her dimpled hands back again on the edge of the
table; hesitated drowsily, and said, "Which you please, dear."

"Mercy on me! it's a question for your taste, my good lady, not for
mine.  Suppose you have a little of both? and suppose you begin with
the chicken, because Mr. Hartright looks devoured by anxiety to carve
for you."

Mrs. Vesey put the other dimpled hand back on the edge of the table;
brightened dimly one moment; went out again the next; bowed obediently,
and said, "If you please, sir."

Surely a mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old
lady! But enough, perhaps, for the present, of Mrs. Vesey.


All this time, there were no signs of Miss Fairlie.  We finished our
luncheon; and still she never appeared.  Miss Halcombe, whose quick eye
nothing escaped, noticed the looks that I cast, from time to time, in
the direction of the door.

"I understand you, Mr. Hartright," she said; "you are wondering what
has become of your other pupil.  She has been downstairs, and has got
over her headache; but has not sufficiently recovered her appetite to
join us at lunch.  If you will put yourself under my charge, I think I
can undertake to find her somewhere in the garden."

She took up a parasol lying on a chair near her, and led the way out,
by a long window at the bottom of the room, which opened on to the
lawn.  It is almost unnecessary to say that we left Mrs. Vesey still
seated at the table, with her dimpled hands still crossed on the edge
of it; apparently settled in that position for the rest of the
afternoon.

As we crossed the lawn, Miss Halcombe looked at me significantly, and
shook her head.

"That mysterious adventure of yours," she said, "still remains involved
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