Free The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

ordeal of the master's judgment—and
there's an end of it. Suppose we take them with us in the
carriage, Laura, and let Mr. Hartright see them, for the first
time, under circumstances of perpetual jolting and interruption?
If we can only confuse him all through the drive, between Nature
as it is, when he looks up at the view, and Nature as it is not
when he looks down again at our sketch-books, we shall drive him
into the last desperate refuge of paying us compliments, and shall
slip through his professional fingers with our pet feathers of
vanity all unruffled."
    "I hope Mr. Hartright will pay ME no compliments," said Miss
Fairlie, as we all left the summer-house.
    "May I venture to inquire why you express that hope?" I asked.
    "Because I shall believe all that you say to me," she answered
simply.
    In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole
character: to that generous trust in others which, in her nature,
grew innocently out of the sense of her own truth. I only knew it
intuitively then. I know it by experience now.
    We merely waited to rouse good Mrs. Vesey from the place which she
still occupied at the deserted luncheon-table, before we entered
the open carriage for our promised drive. The old lady and Miss
Halcombe occupied the back seat, and Miss Fairlie and I sat
together in front, with the sketch-book open between us, fairly
exhibited at last to my professional eyes. All serious criticism
on the drawings, even if I had been disposed to volunteer it, was
rendered impossible by Miss Halcombe's lively resolution to see
nothing but the ridiculous side of the Fine Arts, as practised by
herself, her sister, and ladies in general. I can remember the
conversation that passed far more easily than the sketches that I
mechanically looked over. That part of the talk, especially, in
which Miss Fairlie took any share, is still as vividly impressed
on my memory as if I had heard it only a few hours ago.
    Yes! let me acknowledge that on this first day I let the charm of
her presence lure me from the recollection of myself and my
position. The most trifling of the questions that she put to me,
on the subject of using her pencil and mixing her colours; the
slightest alterations of expression in the lovely eyes that looked
into mine with such an earnest desire to learn all that I could
teach, and to discover all that I could show, attracted more of my
attention than the finest view we passed through, or the grandest
changes of light and shade, as they flowed into each other over
the waving moorland and the level beach. At any time, and under
any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how
little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we
live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort
in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of
those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so
largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of
us, one of the original instincts of our nature. As children, we
none of us possess it. No uninstructed man or woman possesses it.
Those whose lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-
changing wonders of sea and land are also those who are most
universally insensible to every aspect of Nature not directly
associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity
of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth,
one of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn as an Art;
and, more, that very capacity is rarely practised by any of us
except when our minds are most indolent and most unoccupied. How
much share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the
pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? What space do they ever occupy in the thousand little
narratives of personal experience which pass every day by word of
mouth from one of us to the other? All that our minds can compass,
all that our hearts can learn, can be accomplished