The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (portable ebook reader txt) ๐
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The Woman in White tells the story of Walter Hartright, a young and impoverished drawing teacher who falls in love with his aristocratic pupil, Laura Fairlie. He cannot hope to marry her, however, and she is married off against her will to a baronet, Sir Percival Glyde, who is seeking her fortune. The terms of her marriage settlement prevent Glyde accessing her money while she lives, so together with his deceptively charming and cunning friend, Count Fosco, they hatch an unscrupulous deception to do so nonetheless. In an early 19th Century version of โidentity theft,โ they contrive to fake Lauraโs death and confine her to a mental asylum. Their plot is eventually uncovered and exposed by Hartright with the help of Lauraโs resourceful half-sister, Marian Halcombe.
The Woman in White was the most popular of Wilkie Collinsโ novels in the genre then known as โsensation fiction.โ It has never been out of print and is frequently included in lists of the best novels of all time. Published initially in serial form in 1859โ60, it achieved an early and remarkable following, probably because of the strength of its characters, in particular the smooth and charming but utterly wicked villain Count Fosco, and the intelligent and steadfast Marian Halcombe opposed to him.
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- Author: Wilkie Collins
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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 motherโs health, my sisterโs 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. โA secret, Walter,โ said my little friend confidentially, as we walked home together. โI 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.!โ
The next morning I sent my testimonials to the Professorโs 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 goodbye.
โI shall dry my tears in your absence,โ said the Professor gaily, โwith 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!โ
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 goodbye.
IVThe 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 Regentโs 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 subjectโ โindeed, 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 byroad, 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 watercolour painting I was so soon to superintend.
I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four roads metโ โthe 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 highroadโ โidly wondering, I remember, what the Cumberland young ladies would look likeโ โwhen, 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 highroadโ โthere, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heavenโ โstood the figure of a solitary woman, dressed from head to foot
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