Man and Wife

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Man and Wife


"Mad!" he thought--and turned his back on the sight of her.

He found himself (hardly knowing how he had got there) under the
walnut-tree once more. In a few minutes his hardy nerves had recovered
themselves--he could laugh over the remembrance of the strange
impression that had been produced on him. "Frightened for the first time
in my life," he thought--"and that by an old woman! It's time I went
into training again, when things have come to this!"

He looked at his watch. It was close on the luncheon hour up at the
house; and he had not decided yet what to do about his letter to Anne.
He resolved to decide, then and there.

The woman--the dumb woman, with the stony face and the horrid
eyes--reappeared in his thoughts, and got in the way of his decision.
Pooh! some crazed old servant, who might once have been cook; who was
kept out of charity now. Nothing more important than that. No more of
her! no more of her!

He laid himself down on the grass, and gave his mind to the serious
question. How to address Anne as "Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth?" and how to
make sure of her receiving the letter?

The dumb old woman got in his way again.

He closed his eyes impatiently, and tried to shut her out in a darkness
of his own making.

The woman showed herself through the darkness. He saw her, as if he
had just asked her a question, writing on her slate. What she wrote he
failed to make out. It was all over in an instant. He started up, with
a feeling of astonishment at himself--and, at the same moment his brain
cleared with the suddenness of a flash of light. He saw his way, without
a conscious effort on his own part, through the difficulty that had
troubled him. Two envelopes, of course: an inner one, unsealed, and
addressed to "Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth;" an outer one, sealed, and
addressed to "Mrs. Silvester:" and there was the problem solved! Surely
the simplest problem that had ever puzzled a stupid head.

Why had he not seen it before? Impossible to say.

How came he to have seen it now?

The dumb old woman reappeared in his thoughts--as if the answer to the
question lay in something connected with _her._

He became alarmed about himself, for the first time in his life. Had
this persistent impression, produced by nothing but a crazy old woman,
any thing to do with the broken health which the surgeon had talked
about? Was his head on the turn? Or had he smoked too much on an empty
stomach, and gone too long (after traveling all night) without his
customary drink of ale?

He left the garden to put that latter theory to the test forthwith. The
betting would have gone dead against him if the public had seen him at
that moment. He looked haggard and anxious--and with good reason too.
His nervous system had suddenly forced itself on his notice, without the
slightest previous introduction, and was saying (in an unknown tongue),
Here I am!

Returning to the purely ornamental part of the grounds, Geoffrey
encountered one of the footmen giving a message to one of the gardeners.
He at once asked for the butler--as the only safe authority to consult
in the present emergency.

Conducted to the butler's pantry, Geoffrey requested that functionary to
produce a jug of his oldest ale, with appropriate solid nourishment in
the shape of "a hunk of bread and cheese."

The butler stared. As a form of condescension among the upper classes
this was quite new to him.

"Luncheon will be ready directly, Sir."

"What is there for lunch?"

The butler ran over an appetizing list of good dishes and rare wines.

"The devil take your kickshaws!" said Geoffrey. "Give me my old ale, and
my hunk of bread and cheese."

"Where will you take them, Sir?"

"Here, to be sure! And the sooner the better."

The butler issued the necessary orders with all needful alacrity. He
spread the simple refreshment demanded, before his distinguished guest,
in a state of blank bewilderment. Here was a nobleman's son, and a
public celebrity into the bargain, filling himself with bread and cheese
and ale, in at once the most voracious and the most unpretending
manner, at _his_ table! The butler ventured on a little complimentary
familiarity. He smiled, and touched the betting-book in his
breast-pocket. "I've put six pound on you, Sir, for the Race." "All
right, old boy! you shall win your money!" With those noble words the
honorable gentleman clapped him on the back, and held out his tumbler
for some more ale. The butler felt trebly an Englishman as he filled the
foaming glass. Ah! foreign nations may have their revolutions! foreign
aristocracies may tumble down! The British aristocracy lives in the
hearts of the people, and lives forever!

"Another!" said Geoffrey, presenting his empty glass. "Here's luck!" He
tossed off his liquor at a draught, and nodded to the butler, and went
out.

Had the experiment succeeded? Had he proved his own theory about himself
to be right? Not a doubt of it! An empty stomach, and a determination of
tobacco to the head--these were the true causes of that strange state of
mind into which he had fallen in the kitchen-garden. The dumb woman
with the stony face vanished as if in a mist. He felt nothing now but
a comfortable buzzing in his head, a genial warmth all over him, and an
unlimited capacity for carrying any responsibility that could rest on
mortal shoulders. Geoffrey was himself again.

He went round toward the library, to write his letter to Anne--and so
have done with that, to begin with. The company had collected in the
library waiting for the luncheon-bell. All were idly talking; and some
would be certain, if he showed himself, to fasten on _him._ He turned
back again, without showing himself. The only way of writing in peace
and quietness would be to wait until they were all at luncheon, and then
return to the library. The same opportunity would serve also for finding
a messenger to take the letter, without exciting attention, and for
going away afterward, unseen, on a long walk by himself. An absence of
two or three hours would cast the necessary dust in Arnold's eyes;
for it would be certainly interpreted by him as meaning absence at an
interview with Anne.

He strolled idly through the grounds, farther and farther away from the
house.



The talk in the library--aimless and empty enough, for the most
part--was talk to the purpose, in one corner of the room, in which Sir
Patrick and Blanche were sitting together.

"Uncle! I have been watching you for the last minute or two."

"At my age, Blanche? that is paying me a very pretty compliment."

"Do you know what I have seen?"

"You have seen an old gentleman in want of his lunch."

"I have seen an old gentleman with something on his mind. What is it?"

"Suppressed gout, my dear."

"That won't do! I am not to be put off in that way. Uncle! I want to
know--"

"Stop there, Blanche! A young lady who says she 'wants to know,'
expresses very dangerous sentiments. Eve 'wanted to know'--and see what
it led to. Faust 'wanted to know'--and got into bad company, as the
necessary result."

"You are feeling anxious about something," persisted Blanche. "And,
what is more, Sir Patrick, you behaved in a most unaccountable manner a
little while since."

"When?"

"When you went and hid yourself with Mr. Delamayn in that snug corner
there. I saw you lead the way in, while I was at work on Lady Lundie's
odious dinner-invitations."

"Oh! you call that being at work, do you? I wonder whether there was
ever a woman yet who could give the whole of her mind to any earthly
thing that she had to do?"

"Never mind the women! What subject in common could you and Mr. Delamayn
possibly have to talk about? And why do I see a wrinkle between your
eyebrows, now you have done with him?--a wrinkle which certainly wasn't
there before you had that private conference together?"

Before answering, Sir Patrick considered whether he should take Blanche
into his confidence or not. The attempt to identify Geoffrey's unnamed
"lady," which he was determined to make, would lead him to Craig Fernie,
and would no doubt end in obliging him to address himself to Anne.
Blanche's intimate knowledge of her friend might unquestionably be made
useful to him under these circumstances; and Blanche's discretion was
to be trusted in any matter in which Miss Silvester's interests were
concerned. On the other hand, caution was imperatively necessary, in
the present imperfect state of his information--and caution, in Sir
Patrick's mind, carried the day. He decided to wait and see what came
first of his investigation at the inn.

"Mr. Delamayn consulted me on a dry point of law, in which a friend of
his was interested," said Sir Patrick. "You have wasted your curiosity,
my dear, on a subject totally unworthy of a lady's notice."

Blanche's penetration was not to be deceived on such easy terms as
these. "Why not say at once that you won't tell me?" she rejoined.
"_You_ shutting yourself up with Mr. Delamayn to talk law! _You_ looking
absent and anxious about it afterward! I am a very unhappy girl!" said
Blanche, with a little, bitter sigh. "There is something in me that
seems to repel the people I love. Not a word in confidence can I get
from Anne. And not a word in confidence can I get from you. And I do so
long to sympathize! It's very hard. I think I shall go to Arnold."

Sir Patrick took his niece's hand.

"Stop a minute, Blanche. About Miss Silvester? Have you heard from her
to-day?"

"No. I am more unhappy about her than words can say."

"Suppose somebody went to Craig Fernie and tried to find out the cause
of Miss Silvester's silence? Would you believe that somebody sympathized
with you then?"

Blanche's face flushed brightly with pleasure and surprise. She raised
Sir Patrick's hand gratefully to her lips.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You don't mean that _you_ would do that?"

"I am certainly the last person who ought to do it--seeing that you went
to the inn in flat rebellion against my orders, and that I only forgave
you, on your own promise of amendment, the other day. It is a miserably
weak proceeding on the part of 'the head of the family' to be turning
his back on his own principles, because his niece happens to be anxious
and unhappy. Still (if you could lend me your little carriage), I
_might_ take a surly drive toward Craig Fernie, all by myself, and I
_might_ stumble against Miss Silvester--in case you have any thing to
say."

"Any thing to say?" repeated Blanche. She put her arm round her uncle's
neck, and whispered in his ear one of the most interminable messages
that ever was sent from one human being to another. Sir Patrick
listened, with a growing interest in the inquiry on which he was
secretly bent. "The woman must have some noble qualities," he thought,
"who can inspire such devotion as this."

While Blanche was whispering to her uncle, a second private
conference--of the purely domestic sort--was taking place between Lady
Lundie and the butler, in the hall outside the library door.

"I am sorry to say, my lady, Hester Dethridge has broken out again."

"What do you mean?"

"She was all right, my lady, when she went into the kitchen-garden, some
time since. She's taken strange again, now she has come back. Wants the
rest of the day to herself, your ladyship. Says she's overworked, with
all the company in the house--and, I must say, does look like a person
troubled and worn out in body and mind."

"Don't talk nonsense, Roberts! The woman is obstinate and idle and
insolent. She is now in the house, as you know, under a month's notice
to leave. If she doesn't choose to do her duty for that month I shall
refuse to give her a character. Who is to cook the dinner to-day if I
give Hester Dethridge leave to go out?"

"Any way, my lady, I am afraid the kitchen-maid will have to do her
best to-day. Hester is very obstinate, when the fit takes her--as your
ladyship says."

"If Hester Dethridge leaves the kitchen-maid to cook the dinner,
Roberts, Hester Dethridge leaves my service to-day. I want no more words
about it. If she persists in setting my orders at defiance, let her
bring her account-book into the library, while we are at lunch, and lay
it out my desk. I shall be back in the library after luncheon--and if I
see the account-book I shall know what it means. In that case, you will
receive my directions to settle with her and send her away. Ring the
luncheon-bell."

The luncheon-bell rang. The guests all took the direction of the dining
-room; Sir Patrick following, from the far end of the library, with
Blanche on his arm. Arrived at the dining-room door, Blanche stopped,
and asked her uncle to excuse her if she left him to go in by himself.

"I will be back directly," she said. "I have forgotten something up
stairs."

Sir Patrick went in. The dining-room door closed; and Blanche returned
alone to the library. Now on one pretense, and now on another, she had,
for three days past, faithfully fulfilled the engagement she had made at
Craig Fernie to wait ten minutes after luncheon-time in the library, on
the chance of seeing Anne. On this, the fourth occasion, the faithful
girl sat down alone in the great room, and waited with her eyes fixed on
the lawn outside.

Five minutes passed, and nothing living appeared but the birds hopping
about the grass.

In less than a minute more Blanche's quick ear caught the faint sound of
a woman's dress brushing over the lawn. She ran to the nearest window,
looked out, and clapped her hands with a cry of delight. There was
the well-known figure, rapidly approaching her! Anne was true to their
friendship--Anne had kept her engagement at last!

Blanche hurried out, and drew her into the library in triumph. "This
makes amends, love for every thing! You answer my letter in the best of
all ways--you bring me your own dear self."

She placed Anne in a chair, and, lifting her veil, saw her plainly in
the brilliant mid-day light.

The change in the whole woman was nothing less than dreadful to the
loving eyes that rested on her. She looked years older than her real
age. There was a dull calm in her face, a stagnant, stupefied submission
to any thing, pitiable to see. Three days and nights of solitude and
grief, three days and nights of unresting and unpartaken suspense, had
crushed that sensitive nature, had frozen that warm heart. The animating
spirit was gone--the mere shell of the woman lived and moved, a mockery
of her former self.

"Oh, Anne! Anne! What _can_ have happened to you? Are you frightened?
There's not the least fear of any body disturbing us. They are all at
luncheon, and the servants are at dinner. We have the room entirely to
ourselves. My darling! you look so faint and strange! Let me get you
something."

Anne drew Blanche's head down and kissed her. It was done in a dull,
slow way--without a word, without a tear, without a sigh.

"You're tired--I'm sure you're tired. Have you walked here? You sha'n't
go back on foot; I'll take care of that!"

Anne roused herself at those words. She spoke for the first time. The
tone was lower than was natural to her; sadder than was natural to
her--but the charm of her voice, the native gentleness and beauty of it,
seemed to have survived the wreck of all besides.

"I don't go back, Blanche. I have left the inn."

"Left the inn? With your husband?"

She answered the first question--not the second.

"I can't go back," she said. "The inn is no place for me. A curse seems
to follow me, Blanche, wherever I go. I am the cause of quarreling
and wretchedness, without meaning it, God knows. The old man who is
head-waiter at the inn has been kind to me, my dear, in his way, and
he and the landlady had hard words together about it. A quarrel, a
shocking, violent quarrel. He has lost his place in consequence. The
woman, his mistress, lays all the blame of it to my door. She is a hard
woman; and she has been harder than ever since Bishopriggs went away. I
have missed a letter at the inn--I must have thrown it aside, I suppose,
and forgotten it. I only know that I remembered about it, and couldn't
find it last night. I told the landlady, and she fastened a quarrel on
me almost before the words were out of my mouth. Asked me if I charged
her with stealing my letter. Said things to me--I can't repeat them.
I am not very well, and not able to deal with people of that sort. I
thought it best to leave Craig Fernie this morning. I hope and pray I
shall never see Craig Fernie again."

She told her little story with a total absence of emotion of any sort,
and laid her head back wearily on the chair when it was done.

Blanche's eyes filled with tears at the sight of her.

"I won't tease you with questions, Anne," she said, gently. "Come up
stairs and rest in my room. You're not fit to travel, love. I'll take
care that nobody comes near us."

The stable-clock at Windygates struck the quarter to two. Anne raised
herself in the chair with a start.

"What time was that?" she asked.

Blanche told her.

"I can't stay," she said. "I have come here to find something out if I
can. You won't ask me questions? Don't, Blanche, don't! for the sake of
old times."

Blanche turned aside, heart-sick. "I will do nothing, dear, to annoy
you," she said, and took Anne's hand, and hid the tears that were
beginning to fall over her cheeks.

"I want to know something, Blanche. Will you tell me?"

"Yes. What is it?"

"Who are the gentlemen staying in the house?"

Blanche looked round at her again, in sudden astonishment and alarm.
A vague fear seized her that Anne's mind had given way under the heavy
weight of trouble laid on it. Anne persisted in pressing her strange
request.

"Run over their names, Blanche. I have a reason for wishing to know who
the gentlemen are who are staying in the house."

Blanche repeated the names of Lady Lundie's guests, leaving to the last
the guests who had arrived last.

"Two more came back this morning," she went on. "Arnold Brinkworth and
that hateful friend of his, Mr. Delamayn."

Anne's head sank back once more on the chair. She had found her way
without exciting suspicion of the truth, to the one discovery which she
had come to Windygates to make. He was in Scotland again, and he had
only arrived from London that morning. There was barely time for him to
have communicated with Craig Fernie before she left the inn--he, too,
who hated letter-writing! The circumstances were all in his favor: there
was no reason, there was really and truly no reason, so far, to believe
that he had deserted her. The heart of the unhappy woman bounded in
her bosom, under the first ray of hope that had warmed it for four days
past. Under that sudden revulsion of feeling, her weakened frame shook
from head to foot. Her face flushed deep for a moment--then turned
deadly pale again. Blanche, anxiously watching her, saw the serious
necessity for giving some restorative to her instantly.

"I am going to get you some wine--you will faint, Anne, if you don't
take something. I shall be back in a moment; and I can manage it without
any body being the wiser."

She pushed Anne's chair close to the nearest open window--a window at
the upper end of the library--and ran out.

Blanche had barely left the room, by the door that led into the hall,
when Geoffrey entered it by one of the lower windows opening from the
lawn.

With his mind absorbed in the letter that he was about to write, he
slowly advanced up the room toward the nearest table. Anne, hearing
the sound of footsteps, started, and looked round. Her failing strength
rallied in an instant, under the sudden relief of seeing him again. She
rose and advanced eagerly, with a faint tinge of color in her cheeks. He
looked up. The two stood face to face together--alone.

"Geoffrey!"

He looked at her without answering--without advancing a step, on his
side. There was an evil light in his eyes; his silence was the brute
silence that threatens dumbly. He had made up his mind never to see her
again, and she had entrapped him into an interview. He had made up his
mind to write, and there she stood forcing him to speak. The sum of
her offenses against him was now complete. If there had ever been the
faintest hope of her raising even a passing pity in his heart, that hope
would have been annihilated now.

She failed to understand the full meaning of his silence. She made her
excuses, poor soul, for venturing back to Windygates--her excuses to the
man whose purpose at that moment was to throw her helpless on the world.

"Pray forgive me for coming here," she said. "I have done nothing to
compromise you, Geoffrey. Nobody but Blanche knows I am at Windygates.
And I have contrived to make my inquiries about you without allowing
her to suspect our secret." She stopped, and began to tremble. She saw
something more in his face than she had read in it at first. "I got your
letter," she went on, rallying her sinking courage. "I don't complain
of its being so short: you don't like letter-writing, I know. But you
promised I should hear from you again. And I have never heard. And oh,
Geoffrey, it was so lonely at the inn!"

She stopped again, and supported herself by resting her hand on the
table. The faintness was stealing back on her. She tried to go on again.
It was useless--she could only look at him now.

"What do you want?" he asked, in the tone of a man who was putting an
unimportant question to a total stranger.

A last gleam of her old energy flickered up in her face, like a dying
flame.

"I am broken by what I have gone through," she said. "Don't insult me by
making me remind you of your promise."

"What promise?"'

"For shame, Geoffrey! for shame! Your promise to marry me."

"You claim my promise after what you have done at the inn?"

She steadied herself against the table with one hand, and put the other
hand to her head. Her brain was giddy. The effort to think was too much
for her. She said to herself, vacantly, "The inn? What did I do at the
inn?"

"I have had a lawyer's advice, mind! I know what I am talking about."

She appeared not to have heard him. She repeated the words, "What did
I do at the inn?" and gave it up in despair. Holding by the table, she
came close to him and laid her hand on his arm.

"Do you refuse to marry me?" she asked.

He saw the vile opportunity, and said the vile words.

"You're married already to Arnold Brinkworth."

Without a cry to warn him, without an effort to save herself, she
dropped senseless at his feet; as her mother had dropped at his father's
feet in the by-gone time.

He disentangled himself from the folds of her dress. "Done!" he said,
looking down at her as she lay on the floor.

As the word fell from his lips he was startled by a sound in the inner
part of the house. One of the library doors had not been completely
closed. Light footsteps were audible, advancing rapidly across the hall.

He turned and fled, leaving the library, as he had entered it, by the
open window at the lower end of the room.


CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.

GONE.

BLANCHE came in, with a glass of wine in her hand, and saw the swooning
woman on the floor.

She was alarmed, but not surprised, as she knelt by Anne, and raised her
head. Her own previous observation of her friend necessarily prevented
her from being at any loss to account for the fainting fit. The
inevitable delay in getting the wine was--naturally to her mind--alone
to blame for the result which now met her view.

If she had been less ready in thus tracing the effect to the cause,
she might have gone to the window to see if any thing had happened,
out-of-doors, to frighten Anne--might have seen Geoffrey before he had
time to turn the corner of the house--and, making that one discovery,
might have altered the whole course of events, not in her coming
life only, but in the coming lives of others. So do we shape our own
destinies, blindfold. So do we hold our poor little tenure of happiness
at the capricious mercy of Chance. It is surely a blessed delusion which
persuades us that we are the highest product of the great scheme of
creation, and sets us doubting whether other planets are inhabited,
because other planets are not surrounded by an atmosphere which _we_ can
breathe!

After trying such simple remedies as were within her reach, and trying
them without success, Blanche became seriously alarmed. Anne lay, to all
outward appearance, dead in her arms. She was on the point of calling
for help--come what might of the discovery which would ensue--when the
door from the hall opened once more, and Hester Dethridge entered the
room.

The cook had accepted the alternative which her mistress's message had
placed before her, if she insisted on having her own time at her own
sole disposal for the rest of that day. Exactly as Lady Lundie had
desired, she intimated her resolution to carry her point by placing her
account-book on the desk in the library. It was only when this had been
done that Blanche received any answer to her entreaties for help. Slowly
and deliberately Hester Dethridge walked up to the spot where the young
girl knelt with Anne's head on her bosom, and looked at the two without
a trace of human emotion in her stern and stony face.