The Woman in White Page #15

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

								

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
								Rate this book:5.0 / 1 vote