The Woman in white E-Book

Wilkie Collins

• Herausgeber: anna ruggieri
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Wilkie Collins's classic thriller took the world by storm on its first appearance in 1859, with everything from dances to perfumes to dresses named in honor of the "woman in white." The novel's continuing fascination stems in part from a distinctive blend of melodrama, comedy, and realism; and in part from the power of its story.

The catalyst for the mystery is Walter Hartright's encounter on a moonlit road with a mysterious woman dressed head to toe in white. She is in a state of confusion and distress, and when Hartright helps her find her way back to London she warns him against an unnamed "man of rank and title." Hartright soon learns that she may have escaped from an asylum and finds to his amazement that her story may be connected to that of the woman he secretly loves. Collins brilliantly uses the device of multiple narrators to weave a story in which no one can be trusted, and he also famously creates, in the figure of Count Fosco, the prototype of the suave, sophisticated evil genius. The Woman in White is still passed as a masterpiece of narrative drive and excruciating suspense.

Leseprobe

Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White

First digital edition 2017 by Anna Ruggieri

THE FIRST EPOCH

THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT

(of Clement's Inn, Teacher of Drawing)

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, andwhat a Man's resolution can achieve.

If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom everycase of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, withmoderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil ofgold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed theirshare of the public attention in a Court of Justice.

But the Law is still, in certain inevitable cases, thepre-engaged servant of the long purse; and the story is left to betold, for the first time, in this place. As the Judge might oncehave heard it, so the Reader shall hear it now. No circumstance ofimportance, from the beginning to the end of the disclosure, shallbe related on hearsay evidence. When the writer of theseintroductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be moreclosely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, hewill describe them in his own person. When his experience fails, hewill retire from the position of narrator; and his task will becontinued, from the point at which he has left it off, by otherpersons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from theirown knowledge, just as clearly and positively as he has spokenbefore them.

Thus, the story here presented will be told by more than onepen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Courtby more than one witness—with the same object, in both cases,to present the truth always in its most direct and mostintelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete seriesof events, by making the persons who have been most closelyconnected with them, at each successive stage, relate their ownexperience, word for word.

Let Walter Hartright, teacher of drawing, aged twenty-eightyears, be heard first.

II

It was the last day of July. The long hot summer was drawing toa close; and we, the weary pilgrims of the London pavement, werebeginning to think of the cloud-shadows on the corn-fields, andtheautumn breezes on the sea-shore.

For my own poor part, the fading summer left me out of health,out of spirits, and, if the truth must be told, out of money aswell. During the past year I had not managed my professionalresources as carefully as usual; and my extravagance now limited meto the prospect of spending the autumn economically between mymother's cottage at Hampstead and my own chambers in town.

The evening, I remember, was still and cloudy; the London airwas at its heaviest; the distant hum of the street-traffic was atits faintest; the small pulse of the life within me, and the greatheart of the city around me, seemed to be sinking in unison,languidly and more languidly, with the sinking sun. I roused myselffrom the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, andleft my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs. It wasone of the two evenings in every week which I was accustomed tospend with my mother and my sister. So I turned my steps northwardin the direction of Hampstead.

Events which I have yet to relate make it necessary to mentionin this place that my father had been dead some years at the periodof which I am now writing; and that my sister Sarah and I were thesole survivors of a family of five children. My father was adrawing-master before me. His exertions had made him highlysuccessful in his profession; and his affectionate anxiety toprovide for the future of those who were dependent on his labourshad impelled him, from the time of his marriage, to devote to theinsuring of his life a much larger portion of his income than mostmen consider it necessary to set aside for that purpose. Thanks tohis admirable prudence and self-denial my mother and sister wereleft, after his death, as independent of the world as they had beenduring his lifetime. I succeeded to his connection, and had everyreason to feel grateful for the prospect that awaited me at mystarting in life.

The quiet twilight was still trembling on the topmost ridges ofthe heath; and the viewof London below me had sunk into a blackgulf in the shadow of the cloudy night, when I stood before thegate of my mother's cottage. I had hardly rung the bell before thehouse door was opened violently; my worthy Italian friend,Professor Pesca, appearedin the servant's place; and darted outjoyously to receive me, with a shrill foreign parody on an Englishcheer.

On his own account, and, I must be allowed to add, on mine also,the Professor merits the honour of a formal introduction. Accidenthas made him the starting-point of the strange family story whichit is the purpose of these pages to unfold.

I had first become acquainted with my Italian friend by meetinghim at certain great houses where he taught his own language and Itaught drawing. All I then knew of the history of his life was,that he had once held a situation in the University of Padua; thathe had left Italy for political reasons (the nature of which heuniformly declined to mention to any one); and that he had been formany years respectably established in London as a teacher oflanguages.

Without being actually a dwarf—for he was perfectly wellproportioned from head to foot—Pesca was, I think, thesmallest human being I ever saw out of a show-room. Remarkableanywhere, by his personal appearance, he was still furtherdistinguished among the rank and file of mankind by the harmlesseccentricity of his character. The ruling idea of his life appearedto be, that he was bound to show his gratitude to the country whichhad afforded him an asylum and a means of subsistence by doing hisutmost to turn himself into an Englishman. Not content with payingthe nation in general the compliment of invariably carrying anumbrella, and invariably wearing gaiters and a white hat, theProfessor further aspired to become an Englishman in his habits andamusements, as well as in his personal appearance. Finding usdistinguished, as a nation, by our love of athletic exercises, thelittle man, in the innocence of his heart, devoted himselfimpromptu to all ourEnglish sports and pastimes whenever he had theopportunity of joining them; firmly persuaded that he could adoptour national amusements of the field by an effort of will preciselyas he had adopted our national gaiters and our national whitehat.

I hadseen him risk his limbs blindly at a fox-hunt and in acricket-field; and soon afterwards I saw him risk his life, just asblindly, in the sea at Brighton.

We had met there accidentally, and were bathing together. If wehad been engaged in any exercise peculiar to my own nation Ishould, of course, have looked after Pesca carefully; but asforeigners are generally quite as well able to take care ofthemselves in the water as Englishmen, it never occurred to me thatthe art of swimming might merely add one more to the list of manlyexercises which the Professor believed that he could learnimpromptu. Soon after we had both struck out from shore, I stopped,finding my friend did not gain on me, and turned round to look forhim. To my horror and amazement, I saw nothing between me and thebeach but two little white arms which struggled for an instantabove the surface of the water, and then disappeared from view.When I dived for him, the poor little man was lying quietly coiledup at the bottom, in a hollow ofshingle, looking by many degreessmaller than I had ever seen him look before. During the fewminutes that elapsed while I was taking him in, the air revivedhim, and he ascended the steps of the machine with my assistance.With the partial recovery of hisanimation came the return of hiswonderful delusion on the subject of swimming. As soon as hischattering teeth would let him speak, he smiled vacantly, and saidhe thought it must have been the Cramp.

When he had thoroughly recovered himself, and had joined me onthe beach, his warm Southern nature broke through all artificialEnglish restraints in a moment. He overwhelmed me with the wildestexpressions of affection—exclaimed passionately, in hisexaggerated Italian way, that he would hold his life henceforth atmy disposal—and declared that he should never be happy againuntil he had found an opportunity of proving his gratitude byrendering me some service which I might remember, on my side, tothe end of my days.

I did my best to stop the torrent of his tears and protestationsby persisting in treating the whole adventure as a good subject fora joke; and succeeded at last, as I imagined, in lessening Pesca'soverwhelming sense of obligation to me. Little did I thinkthen—little did I think afterwards when our pleasant holidayhad drawn to an end—that the opportunity of serving me forwhich my grateful companion so ardently longed was soon to come;that he was eagerlyto seize it on the instant; and that by so doinghe was to turn the whole current of myexistence into a new channel,and to alter me to myself almost past recognition.