Man and Wife

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Man and Wife


In the latter part of her illness her mind gave way. The friend of her
old school-days, sitting at the bedside, heard her talking as if she
thought herself back again in the cabin of the ship. The poor soul found
the tone, almost the look, that had been lost for so many years--the
tone of the past time when the two girls had gone their different ways
in the world. She said, "we will meet, darling, with all the old love
between us," just as she had said almost a lifetime since. Before the
end her mind rallied. She surprised the doctor and the nurse by begging
them gently to leave the room. When they had gone she looked at Lady
Lundie, and woke, as it seemed, to consciousness from a dream.

"Blanche," she said, "you will take care of my child?"

"She shall be _my_ child, Anne, when you are gone."

The dying woman paused, and thought for a little. A sudden trembling
seized her.

"Keep it a secret!" she said. "I am afraid for my child."

"Afraid? After what I have promised you?"

She solemnly repeated the words, "I am afraid for my child."

"Why?"

"My Anne is my second self--isn't she?"

"Yes."

"She is as fond of your child as I was of you?"

"Yes."

"She is not called by her father's name--she is called by mine. She is
Anne Silvester as I was. Blanche! _Will she end like Me?_"

The question was put with the laboring breath, with the heavy accents
which tell that death is near. It chilled the living woman who heard it
to the marrow of her bones.

"Don't think that!" she cried, horror-struck. "For God's sake, don't
think that!"

The wildness began to appear again in Anne Silvester's eyes. She made
feebly impatient signs with her hands. Lady Lundie bent over her, and
heard her whisper, "Lift me up."

She lay in her friend's arms; she looked up in her friend's face; she
went back wildly to her fear for her child.

"Don't bring her up like Me! She must be a governess--she must get her
bread. Don't let her act! don't let her sing! don't let her go on the
stage!" She stopped--her voice suddenly recovered its sweetness of
tone--she smiled faintly--she said the old girlish words once more,
in the old girlish way, "Vow it, Blanche!" Lady Lundie kissed her, and
answered, as she had answered when they parted in the ship, "I vow it,
Anne!"

The head sank, never to be lifted more. The last look of life flickered
in the filmy eyes and went out. For a moment afterward her lips moved.
Lady Lundie put her ear close to them, and heard the dreadful question
reiterated, in the same dreadful words: "She is Anne Silvester--as I
was. _Will she end like Me?_"

VI.

Five years passed--and the lives of the three men who had sat at the
dinner-table in the Hampstead villa began, in their altered aspects, to
reveal the progress of time and change.

Mr. Kendrew; Mr. Delamayn; Mr. Vanborough. Let the order in which they
are here named be the order in which their lives are reviewed, as seen
once more after a lapse of five years.

How the husband's friend marked his sense of the husband's treachery has
been told already. How he felt the death of the deserted wife is still
left to tell. Report, which sees the inmost hearts of men, and delights
in turning them outward to the public view, had always declared that
Mr. Kendrew's life had its secret, and that the secret was a hopeless
passion for the beautiful woman who had married his friend. Not a hint
ever dropped to any living soul, not a word ever spoken to the woman
herself, could be produced in proof of the assertion while the woman
lived. When she died Report started up again more confidently than ever,
and appealed to the man's own conduct as proof against the man himself.

He attended the funeral--though he was no relation. He took a few
blades of grass from the turf with which they covered her grave--when he
thought that nobody was looking at him. He disappeared from his club.
He traveled. He came back. He admitted that he was weary of England.
He applied for, and obtained, an appointment in one of the colonies.
To what conclusion did all this point? Was it not plain that his usual
course of life had lost its attraction for him, when the object of his
infatuation had ceased to exist? It might have been so--guesses less
likely have been made at the truth, and have hit the mark. It is, at any
rate, certain that he left England, never to return again. Another man
lost, Report said. Add to that, a man in ten thousand--and, for once,
Report might claim to be right.

Mr. Delamayn comes next.

The rising solicitor was struck off the roll, at his own request--and
entered himself as a student at one of the Inns of Court. For three
years nothing was known of him but that he was reading hard and keeping
his terms. He was called to the Bar. His late partners in the firm knew
they could trust him, and put business into his hands. In two years he
made himself a position in Court. At the end of the two years he made
himself a position out of Court. He appeared as "Junior" in "a famous
case," in which the honor of a great family, and the title to a great
estate were concerned. His "Senior" fell ill on the eve of the trial.
He conducted the case for the defendant and won it. The defendant
said, "What can I do for you?" Mr. Delamayn answered, "Put me into
Parliament." Being a landed gentleman, the defendant had only to issue
the necessary orders--and behold, Mr. Delamayn was in Parliament!

In the House of Commons the new member and Mr. Vanborough met again.

They sat on the same bench, and sided with the same party. Mr. Delamayn
noticed that Mr. Vanborough was looking old and worn and gray. He put a
few questions to a well-informed person. The well-informed person shook
his head. Mr. Vanborough was rich; Mr. Vanborough was well-connected
(through his wife); Mr. Van borough was a sound man in every sense of
the word; _but_--nobody liked him. He had done very well the first year,
and there it had ended. He was undeniably clever, but he produced a
disagreeable impression in the House. He gave splendid entertainments,
but he wasn't popular in society. His party respected him, but when they
had any thing to give they passed him over. He had a temper of his
own, if the truth must be told; and with nothing against him--on the
contrary, with every thing in his favor--he didn't make friends. A
soured man. At home and abroad, a soured man.

VII.

Five years more passed, dating from the day when the deserted wife was
laid in her grave. It was now the year eighteen hundred and sixty six.

On a certain day in that year two special items of news appeared in
the papers--the news of an elevation to the peerage, and the news of a
suicide.

Getting on well at the Bar, Mr. Delamayn got on better still in
Parliament. He became one of the prominent men in the House. Spoke
clearly, sensibly, and modestly, and was never too long. Held the House,
where men of higher abilities "bored" it. The chiefs of his party said
openly, "We must do something for Delamayn," The opportunity offered,
and the chiefs kept their word. Their Solicitor-General was advanced
a step, and they put Delamayn in his place. There was an outcry on the
part of the older members of the Bar. The Ministry answered, "We want
a man who is listened to in the House, and we have got him." The papers
supported the new nomination. A great debate came off, and the new
Solicitor-General justified the Ministry and the papers. His enemies
said, derisively, "He will be Lord Chancellor in a year or two!" His
friends made genial jokes in his domestic circle, which pointed to the
same conclusion. They warned his two sons, Julius and Geoffrey (then at
college), to be careful what acquaintances they made, as they might find
themselves the sons of a lord at a moment's notice. It really began to
look like something of the sort. Always rising, Mr. Delamayn rose next
to be Attorney-General. About the same time--so true it is that "nothing
succeeds like success"--a childless relative died and left him a
fortune. In the summer of 'sixty-six a Chief Judgeship fell vacant.
The Ministry had made a previous appointment which had been universally
unpopular. They saw their way to supplying the place of their
Attorney-General, and they offered the judicial appointment to Mr.
Delamayn. He preferred remaining in the House of Commons, and refused
to accept it. The Ministry declined to take No for an answer. They
whispered confidentially, "Will you take it with a peerage?" Mr.
Delamayn consulted his wife, and took it with a peerage. The London
_Gazette_ announced him to the world as Baron Holchester of Holchester.
And the friends of the family rubbed their hands and said, "What did we
tell you? Here are our two young friends, Julius and Geoffrey, the sons
of a lord!"

And where was Mr. Vanborough all this time? Exactly where we left him
five years since.

He was as rich, or richer, than ever. He was as well-connected as ever.
He was as ambitious as ever. But there it ended. He stood still in the
House; he stood still in society; nobody liked him; he made no friends.
It was all the old story over again, with this difference, that the
soured man was sourer; the gray head, grayer; and the irritable temper
more unendurable than ever. His wife had her rooms in the house and he
had his, and the confidential servants took care that they never met
on the stairs. They had no children. They only saw each other at their
grand dinners and balls. People ate at their table, and danced on their
floor, and compared notes afterward, and said how dull it was. Step by
step the man who had once been Mr. Vanborough's lawyer rose, till the
peerage received him, and he could rise no longer; while Mr. Vanborough,
on the lower round of the ladder, looked up, and noted it, with no more
chance (rich as he was and well-connected as he was) of climbing to the
House of Lords than your chance or mine.

The man's career was ended; and on the day when the nomination of the
new peer was announced, the man ended with it.

He laid the newspaper aside without making any remark, and went out.
His carriage set him down, where the green fields still remain, on the
northwest of London, near the foot-path which leads to Hampstead. He
walked alone to the villa where he had once lived with the woman whom he
had so cruelly wronged. New houses had risen round it, part of the old
garden had been sold and built on. After a moment's hesitation he
went to the gate and rang the bell. He gave the servant his card. The
servant's master knew the name as the name of a man of great wealth,
and of a Member of Parliament. He asked politely to what fortunate
circumstance he owed the honor of that visit. Mr. Vanborough answered,
briefly and simply, "I once lived here; I have associations with the
place with which it is not necessary for me to trouble you. Will you
excuse what must seem to you a very strange request? I should like
to see the dining-room again, if there is no objection, and if I am
disturbing nobody."

The "strange requests" of rich men are of the nature of "privileged
communications," for this excellent reason, that they are sure not to be
requests for money. Mr. Vanborough was shown into the dining-room. The
master of the house, secretly wondering, watched him.

He walked straight to a certain spot on the carpet, not far from the
window that led into the garden, and nearly opposite the door. On that
spot he stood silently, with his head on his breast--thinking. Was it
_there_ he had seen her for the last time, on the day when he left the
room forever? Yes; it was there. After a minute or so he roused himself,
but in a dreamy, absent manner. He said it was a pretty place, and
expressed his thanks, and looked back before the door closed, and then
went his way again. His carriage picked him up where it had set him
down. He drove to the residence of the new Lord Holchester, and left
a card for him. Then he went home. Arrived at his house, his secretary
reminded him that he had an appointment in ten minutes' time. He thanked
the secretary in the same dreamy, absent manner in which he had thanked
the owner of the villa, and went into his dressing-room. The person with
whom he had made the appointment came, and the secretary sent the valet
up stairs to knock at the door. There was no answer. On trying the lock
it proved to be turned inside. They broke open the door, and saw him
lying on the sofa. They went close to look--and found him dead by his
own hand.

VIII.

Drawing fast to its close, the Prologue reverts to the two girls--and
tells, in a few words, how the years passed with Anne and Blanche.

Lady Lundie more than redeemed the solemn pledge that she had given to
her friend. Preserved from every temptation which might lure her into
a longing to follow her mother's career; trained for a teacher's life,
with all the arts and all the advantages that money could procure,
Anne's first and only essays as a governess were made, under Lady
Lundie's own roof, on Lady Lundie's own child. The difference in the
ages of the girls--seven years--the love between them, which seemed,
as time went on, to grow with their growth, favored the trial of the
experiment. In the double relation of teacher and friend to little
Blanche, the girlhood of Anne Silvester the younger passed safely,
happily, uneventfully, in the modest sanctuary of home. Who could
imagine a contrast more complete than the contrast between her early
life and her mother's? Who could see any thing but a death-bed delusion
in the terrible question which had tortured the mother's last moments:
"Will she end like Me?"

But two events of importance occurred in the quiet family circle during
the lapse of years which is now under review. In eighteen hundred and
fifty-eight the household was enlivened by the arrival of Sir Thomas
Lundie. In eighteen hundred and sixty-five the household was broken up
by the return of Sir Thomas to India, accompanied by his wife.

Lady Lundie's health had b een failing for some time previously. The
medical men, consulted on the case, agreed that a sea-voyage was the one
change needful to restore their patient's wasted strength--exactly at
the time, as it happened, when Sir Thomas was due again in India. For
his wife's sake, he agreed to defer his return, by taking the sea-voyage
with her. The one difficulty to get over was the difficulty of leaving
Blanche and Anne behind in England.

Appealed to on this point, the doctors had declared that at Blanche's
critical time of life they could not sanction her going to India with
her mother. At the same time, near and dear relatives came forward, who
were ready and anxious to give Blanche and her governess a home--Sir
Thomas, on his side, engaging to bring his wife back in a year and a
half, or, at most, in two years' time. Assailed in all directions, Lady
Lundie's natural unwillingness to leave the girls was overruled. She
consented to the parting--with a mind secretly depressed, and secretly
doubtful of the future.

At the last moment she drew Anne Silvester on one side, out of hearing
of the rest. Anne was then a young woman of twenty-two, and Blanche a
girl of fifteen.

"My dear," she said, simply, "I must tell _you_ what I can not tell Sir
Thomas, and what I am afraid to tell Blanche. I am going away, with
a mind that misgives me. I am persuaded I shall not live to return to
England; and, when I am dead, I believe my husband will marry again.
Years ago your mother was uneasy, on her death-bed, about _your_ future.
I am uneasy, now, about Blanche's future. I promised my dear dead friend
that you should be like my own child to me--and it quieted her
mind. Quiet my mind, Anne, before I go. Whatever happens in years to
come--promise me to be always, what you are now, a sister to Blanche."

She held out her hand for the last time. With a full heart Anne
Silvester kissed it, and gave the promise.

IX.

In two months from that time one of the forebodings which had weighed on
Lady Lundie's mind was fulfilled. She died on the voyage, and was buried
at sea.

In a year more the second misgiving was confirmed. Sir Thomas Lundie
married again. He brought his second wife to England toward the close of
eighteen hundred and sixty six.

Time, in the new household, promised to pass as quietly as in the old.
Sir Thomas remembered and respected the trust which his first wife had
placed in Anne. The second Lady Lundie, wisely guiding her conduct in
this matter by the conduct of her husband, left things as she found them
in the new house. At the opening of eighteen hundred and sixty-seven the
relations between Anne and Blanche were relations of sisterly sympathy
and sisterly love. The prospect in the future was as fair as a prospect
could be.

At this date, of the persons concerned in the tragedy of twelve years
since at the Hampstead villa, three were dead; and one was self-exiled
in a foreign land. There now remained living Anne and Blanche, who had
been children at the time; and the rising solicitor who had discovered
the flaw in the Irish marriage--once Mr. Delamayn: now Lord Holchester.




THE STORY.




FIRST SCENE.--THE SUMMER-HOUSE.



CHAPTER THE FIRST.


THE OWLS.

IN the spring of the year eighteen hundred and sixty-eight there lived,
in a certain county of North Britain, two venerable White Owls.

The Owls inhabited a decayed and deserted summer-house. The summer-house
stood in grounds attached to a country seat in Perthshire, known by the
name of Windygates.

The situation of Windygates had been skillfully chosen in that part
of the county where the fertile lowlands first begin to merge into the
mountain region beyond. The mansion-house was intelligently laid out,
and luxuriously furnished. The stables offered a model for ventilation
and space; and the gardens and grounds were fit for a prince.

Possessed of these advantages, at starting, Windygates, nevertheless,
went the road to ruin in due course of time. The curse of litigation
fell on house and lands. For more than ten years an interminable lawsuit
coiled itself closer and closer round the place, sequestering it from
human habitation, and even from human approach. The mansion was closed.
The garden became a wilderness of weeds. The summer-house was choked up
by creeping plants; and the appearance of the creepers was followed by
the appearance of the birds of night.

For years the Owls lived undisturbed on the property which they had
acquired by the oldest of all existing rights--the right of taking.
Throughout the day they sat peaceful and solemn, with closed eyes, in
the cool darkness shed round them by the ivy. With the twilight they
roused themselves softly to the business of life. In sage and silent
companionship of two, they went flying, noiseless, along the quiet lanes
in search of a meal. At one time they would beat a field like a setter
dog, and drop down in an instant on a mouse unaware of them. At another
time--moving spectral over the black surface of the water--they would
try the lake for a change, and catch a perch as they had caught the
mouse. Their catholic digestions were equally tolerant of a rat or an
insect. And there were moments, proud moments, in their lives, when they
were clever enough to snatch a small bird at roost off his perch. On
those occasions the sense of superiority which the large bird feels
every where over the small, warmed their cool blood, and set them
screeching cheerfully in the stillness of the night.

So, for years, the Owls slept their happy sleep by day, and found their
comfortable meal when darkness fell. They had come, with the creepers,
into possession of the summer-house. Consequently, the creepers were a
part of the constitution of the summer-house. And consequently the Owls
were the guardians of the Constitution. There are some human owls who
reason as they did, and who are, in this respect--as also in respect of
snatching smaller birds off their roosts--wonderfully like them.

The constitution of the summer-house had lasted until the spring of the
year eighteen hundred and sixty-eight, when the unhallowed footsteps
of innovation passed that way; and the venerable privileges of the Owls
were assailed, for the first time, from the world outside.

Two featherless beings appeared, uninvited, at the door of the
summer-house, surveyed the constitutional creepers, and said, "These
must come down"--looked around at the horrid light of noonday, and
said, "That must come in"--went away, thereupon, and were heard, in the
distance, agreeing together, "To-morrow it shall be done."

And the Owls said, "Have we honored the summer-house by occupying it all
these years--and is the horrid light of noonday to be let in on us at
last? My lords and gentlemen, the Constitution is destroyed!"

They passed a resolution to that effect, as is the manner of their kind.
And then they shut their eyes again, and felt that they had done their
duty.

The same night, on their way to the fields, they observed with dismay a
light in one of the windows of the house. What did the light mean?

It meant, in the first place, that the lawsuit was over at last. It
meant, in the second place that the owner of Windygates, wanting money,
had decided on letting the property. It meant, in the third place, that
the property had found a tenant, and was to be renovated immediately out
of doors and in. The Owls shrieked as they flapped along the lanes in
the darkness, And that night they struck at a mouse--and missed him.

The next morning, the Owls--fast asleep in charge of the
Constitution--were roused by voices of featherless beings all round
them. They opened their eyes, under protest, and saw instruments of
destruction attacking the creepers. Now in one direction, and now in
another, those instruments let in on the summer-house the horrid light
of day. But the Owls were equal to the occasion. They ruffled their
feathers, and cried, "No surrender!" The featherless beings plied their
work cheerfully, and answered, "Reform!" The creepers were torn down
this way and that. The horrid daylight poured in brighter and brighter.
The Owls had barely time to pass a new resolution, namely, "That we do
stand by the Constitution," when a ray of the outer sunlight flashed
into their eyes, and sent them flying headlong to the nearest shade.
There they sat winking, while the summer-house was cleared of the rank
growth that had choked it up, while the rotten wood-work was renewed,
while all the murky place was purified with air and light. And when the
world saw it, and said, "Now we shall do!" the Owls shut their eyes
in pious remembrance of the darkness, and answered, "My lords and
gentlemen, the Constitution is destroyed!"


CHAPTER THE SECOND.

THE GUESTS.

Who was responsible for the reform of the summer-house? The new tenant
at Windygates was responsible.

And who was the new tenant?

Come, and see.



In the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight the summer-house had
been the dismal dwelling-place of a pair of owls. In the autumn of the
same year the summer-house was the lively gathering-place of a crowd
of ladies and gentlemen, assembled at a lawn party--the guests of the
tenant who had taken Windygates.

The scene--at the opening of the party--was as pleasant to look at as
light and beauty and movement could make it.

Inside the summer-house the butterfly-brightness of the women in their
summer dresses shone radiant out of the gloom shed round it by the
dreary modern clothing of the men. Outside the summer-house, seen
through three arched openings, the cool green prospect of a lawn led
away, in the distance, to flower-beds and shrubberies, and, farther
still, disclosed, through a break in the trees, a grand stone house
which closed the view, with a fountain in front of it playing in the
sun.

They were half of them laughing, they were all of them talking--the
comfortable hum of their voices was at its loudest; the cheery pealing
of the laughter was soaring to its highest notes--when one dominant
voice, rising clear and shrill above all the rest, called imperatively
for silence. The moment after, a young lady stepped into the vacant
space in front of the summer-house, and surveyed the throng of guests as
a general in command surveys a regiment under review.

She was young, she was pretty, she was plump, she was fair. She was not
the least embarrassed by her prominent position. She was dressed in the
height of the fashion. A hat, like a cheese-plate, was tilted over her
forehead. A balloon of light brown hair soared, fully inflated, from the
crown of her head. A cataract of beads poured over her bosom. A pair of
cock-chafers in enamel (frightfully like the living originals) hung at
her ears. Her scanty skirts shone splendid with the blue of heaven. Her
ankles twinkled in striped stockings. Her shoes were of the sort called
"Watteau." And her heels were of the height at which men shudder, and
ask themselves (in contemplating an otherwise lovable woman), "Can this
charming person straighten her knees?"