The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

ornaments, and toys and
curiosities that sparkled at all points with gold, silver, and
precious stones. At the lower end of the room, opposite to me,
the windows were concealed and the sunlight was tempered by large
blinds of the same pale sea-green colour as the curtains over the
door. The light thus produced was deliciously soft, mysterious,
and subdued; it fell equally upon all the objects in the room; it
helped to intensify the deep silence, and the air of profound
seclusion that possessed the place; and it surrounded, with an
appropriate halo of repose, the solitary figure of the master of
the house, leaning back, listlessly composed, in a large easy-
chair, with a reading-easel fastened on one of its arms, and a
little table on the other.
    If a man's personal appearance, when he is out of his dressing-
room, and when he has passed forty, can be accepted as a safe
guide to his time of life—which is more than doubtful—Mr.
Fairlie's age, when I saw him, might have been reasonably computed
at over fifty and under sixty years. His beardless face was thin,
worn, and transparently pale, but not wrinkled; his nose was high
and hooked; his eyes were of a dim greyish blue, large, prominent,
and rather red round the rims of the eyelids; his hair was scanty,
soft to look at, and of that light sandy colour which is the last
to disclose its own changes towards grey. He was dressed in a
dark frock-coat, of some substance much thinner than cloth, and in
waistcoat and trousers of spotless white. His feet were
effeminately small, and were clad in buff-coloured silk stockings,
and little womanish bronze-leather slippers. Two rings adorned
his white delicate hands, the value of which even my inexperienced
observation detected to be all but priceless. Upon the whole, he
had a frail, languidly-fretful, over-refined look—something
singularly and unpleasantly delicate in its association with a
man, and, at the same time, something which could by no
possibility have looked natural and appropriate if it had been
transferred to the personal appearance of a woman. My morning's
experience of Miss Halcombe had predisposed me to be pleased with
everybody in the house; but my sympathies shut themselves up
resolutely at the first sight of Mr. Fairlie.
    On approaching nearer to him, I discovered that he was not so
entirely without occupation as I had at first supposed. Placed
amid the other rare and beautiful objects on a large round table
near him, was a dwarf cabinet in ebony and silver, containing
coins of all shapes and sizes, set out in little drawers lined
with dark purple velvet. One of these drawers lay on the small
table attached to his chair; and near it were some tiny jeweller's
brushes, a wash-leather "stump," and a little bottle of liquid,
all waiting to be used in various ways for the removal of any
accidental impurities which might be discovered on the coins. His
frail white fingers were listlessly toying with something which
looked, to my uninstructed eyes, like a dirty pewter medal with
ragged edges, when I advanced within a respectful distance of his
chair, and stopped to make my bow.
    "So glad to possess you at Limmeridge, Mr. Hartright," he said in
a querulous, croaking voice, which combined, in anything but an
agreeable manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily languid
utterance. "Pray sit down. And don't trouble yourself to move
the chair, please. In the wretched state of my nerves, movement
of any kind is exquisitely painful to me. Have you seen your
studio? Will it do?"
    "I have just come from seeing the room, Mr. Fairlie; and I assure
you—-"
    He stopped me in the middle of the sentence, by closing his eyes,
and holding up one of his white hands imploringly. I paused in
astonishment; and the croaking voice honoured me with this
explanation—
    "Pray excuse me. But could you contrive to speak in a lower key?
In the wretched state of my nerves, loud sound of any kind is
indescribable torture to me. You will pardon an