The Woman in White Page #6

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

								

that the grossest of mankind could not have misconstrued her motive in
speaking, even at that suspiciously late hour and in that suspiciously
lonely place.

"Did you hear me?" she said, still quietly and rapidly, and without the
least fretfulness or impatience.  "I asked if that was the way to
London."

"Yes," I replied, "that is the way: it leads to St. John's Wood and the
Regent's Park.  You must excuse my not answering you before.  I was
rather startled by your sudden appearance in the road; and I am, even
now, quite unable to account for it."

"You don't suspect me of doing anything wrong, do you? I have done
nothing wrong.  I have met with an accident--I am very unfortunate in
being here alone so late.  Why do you suspect me of doing wrong?"

She spoke with unnecessary earnestness and agitation, and shrank back
from me several paces.  I did my best to reassure her.

"Pray don't suppose that I have any idea of suspecting you," I said,
"or any other wish than to be of assistance to you, if I can.  I only
wondered at your appearance in the road, because it seemed to me to be
empty the instant before I saw you."

She turned, and pointed back to a place at the junction of the road to
London and the road to Hampstead, where there was a gap in the hedge.

"I heard you coming," she said, "and hid there to see what sort of man
you were, before I risked speaking.  I doubted and feared about it till
you passed; and then I was obliged to steal after you, and touch you."

Steal after me and touch me? Why not call to me? Strange, to say the
least of it.

"May I trust you?" she asked.  "You don't think the worse of me because
I have met with an accident?" She stopped in confusion; shifted her bag
from one hand to the other; and sighed bitterly.

The loneliness and helplessness of the woman touched me.  The natural
impulse to assist her and to spare her got the better of the judgment,
the caution, the worldly tact, which an older, wiser, and colder man
might have summoned to help him in this strange emergency.

"You may trust me for any harmless purpose," I said.  "If it troubles
you to explain your strange situation to me, don't think of returning
to the subject again.  I have no right to ask you for any explanations.
Tell me how I can help you; and if I can, I will."

"You are very kind, and I am very, very thankful to have met you." The
first touch of womanly tenderness that I had heard from her trembled in
her voice as she said the words; but no tears glistened in those large,
wistfully attentive eyes of hers, which were still fixed on me.  "I
have only been in London once before," she went on, more and more
rapidly, "and I know nothing about that side of it, yonder.  Can I get
a fly, or a carriage of any kind? Is it too late? I don't know.  If you
could show me where to get a fly--and if you will only promise not to
interfere with me, and to let me leave you, when and how I please--I
have a friend in London who will be glad to receive me--I want nothing
else--will you promise?"

She looked anxiously up and down the road; shifted her bag again from
one hand to the other; repeated the words, "Will you promise?" and
looked hard in my face, with a pleading fear and confusion that it
troubled me to see.

What could I do? Here was a stranger utterly and helplessly at my
mercy--and that stranger a forlorn woman.  No house was near; no one
was passing whom I could consult; and no earthly right existed on my
part to give me a power of control over her, even if I had known how to
exercise it.  I trace these lines, self-distrustfully, with the shadows
of after-events darkening the very paper I write on; and still I say,
what could I do?

What I did do, was to try and gain time by questioning her.  "Are you
sure that your friend in London will receive you at such a late hour as
this?" I said.

"Quite sure.  Only say you will let me leave you when and how I
please--only say you won't interfere with me.  Will you promise?"

As she repeated the words for the third time, she came close to me and
laid her hand, with a sudden gentle stealthiness, on my bosom--a thin
hand; a cold hand (when I removed it with mine) even on that sultry
night.  Remember that I was young; remember that the hand which touched
me was a woman's.

"Will you promise?"

"Yes."

One word! The little familiar word that is on everybody's lips, every
hour in the day.  Oh me! and I tremble, now, when I write it.

We set our faces towards London, and walked on together in the first
still hour of the new day--I, and this woman, whose name, whose
character, whose story, whose objects in life, whose very presence by
my side, at that moment, were fathomless mysteries to me.  It was like
a dream.  Was I Walter Hartright? Was this the well-known, uneventful
road, where holiday people strolled on Sundays? Had I really left,
little more than an hour since, the quiet, decent, conventionally
domestic atmosphere of my mother's cottage? I was too bewildered--too
conscious also of a vague sense of something like self-reproach--to
speak to my strange companion for some minutes.  It was her voice again
that first broke the silence between us.

"I want to ask you something," she said suddenly.  "Do you know many
people in London?"

"Yes, a great many."

"Many men of rank and title?" There was an unmistakable tone of
suspicion in the strange question.  I hesitated about answering it.

"Some," I said, after a moment's silence.

"Many"--she came to a full stop, and looked me searchingly in the
face--"many men of the rank of Baronet?"

Too much astonished to reply, I questioned her in my turn.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I hope, for my own sake, there is one Baronet that you don't
know."

"Will you tell me his name?"

"I can't--I daren't--I forget myself when I mention it." She spoke
loudly and almost fiercely, raised her clenched hand in the air, and
shook it passionately; then, on a sudden, controlled herself again, and
added, in tones lowered to a whisper "Tell me which of them YOU know."

I could hardly refuse to humour her in such a trifle, and I mentioned
three names.  Two, the names of fathers of families whose daughters I
taught; one, the name of a bachelor who had once taken me a cruise in
his yacht, to make sketches for him.

"Ah! you DON'T know him," she said, with a sigh of relief.  "Are you a
man of rank and title yourself?"

"Far from it.  I am only a drawing-master."

As the reply passed my lips--a little bitterly, perhaps--she took my
arm with the abruptness which characterised all her actions.

"Not a man of rank and title," she repeated to herself.  "Thank God! I
may trust HIM."

I had hitherto contrived to master my curiosity out of consideration
for my companion; but it got the better of me now.

"I am afraid you have serious reason to complain of some man of rank
and title?" I said.  "I am afraid the baronet, whose name you are
unwilling to mention to me, has done you some grievous wrong? Is he the
cause of your being out here at this strange time of night?"
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