The 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 Regent’s 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
subject—indeed, 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 by-road,
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 water-colour painting I was so
soon to superintend.
I had now arrived at that particular point of my walk where four roads
met—the 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 high-road—idly wondering, I remember, what the Cumberland
young ladies would look like—when, 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 high-road—there, as if it had
that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven—stood
the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white
garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to
the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.
I was far too seriously startled by the suddenness with which this
extraordinary apparition stood before me, in the dead of night and in
that lonely place, to ask what she wanted. The strange woman spoke
first.
“Is that the road to London?” she said.
I looked attentively at her, as she put that singular question to me.
It was then nearly one o’clock. All I could discern distinctly by the
moonlight was a colourless, youthful face, meagre and sharp to look
at about the cheeks and chin; large, grave, wistfully attentive eyes;
nervous, uncertain lips; and light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow
hue. There was nothing wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was
quiet and self-controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by
suspicion; not exactly the manner of a lady, and, at the same time,
not the manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life. The voice,
little as I had yet heard of it, had something curiously still and
mechanical in its tones, and the utterance was remarkably rapid. She
held a small bag in her hand: and her dress—bonnet, shawl, and gown all
of white—was, so far as I could guess, certainly not composed of very
delicate or very expensive materials. Her figure was slight, and rather
above the average height—her gait and actions free from the slightest
approach to extravagance. This was all that I could observe of her
in the dim light and under the perplexingly strange circumstances of
our meeting. What sort of a woman she was, and how she came to be out
alone in the high-road, an hour after midnight, I altogether failed to
guess. The one thing of which I felt certain was, 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?”
“Don’t ask me: don’t make me talk of it,” she answered. “I’m not fit
now. I have been cruelly used and cruelly wronged. You will be kinder
than ever, if you will walk on fast, and not speak to me. I sadly want
to quiet myself, if I can.”
We moved forward again at a quick pace; and for half an hour, at least,
not a word passed on either side. From time to time, being forbidden to
make any more inquiries, I stole a look at her face. It was always the
same; the lips close shut, the brow frowning, the eyes looking straight
forward, eagerly and yet absently. We had reached the first houses, and
were close on the new Wesleyan college, before her set features relaxed
and she spoke once more.
“Do you live in London?” she said.
“Yes.” As I answered, it struck me that she might have formed some
intention of appealing to me for assistance or advice, and that I ought
to spare her a possible disappointment by warning her of my approaching
absence from home. So I added, “But to-morrow I shall be away from
London for some time. I am going into the country.”
“Where?” she asked. “North or south?”
“North—to Cumberland.”
“Cumberland!” she repeated the word tenderly. “Ah! I wish I was going
there too. I was once happy in Cumberland.”