I turned on the instant
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 places. 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.
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