Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (easy novels to read txt) 📕

on the world, and to set himself free—there, plainly and truly stated, was the scheme which he had devised, when he had turned back on the way to Fulham to consult Mr. Moy.

“So much for the case,” resumed the lawyer. “Now for what I have done on receiving your instructions. I have examined the witnesses; and I have had an interview (not a very pleasant one) with Mr. Moy. The result of those two proceedings is briefly this. First discovery: In assuming the character of the lady’s husband Mr. Brinkworth was acting under your directions—which tells dead against you. Second discovery: Not the slightest impropriety of conduct, not an approach even to harmless familiarity, was detected by either of the witnesses, while the lady and gentleman were together at the inn. There is literally no evidence to produce against them, except that they were together—in two rooms. How are you to assume a guilty purpose, when you can’t prove an approach to a guilty act? You can no more take such a case as that into Court than you can jump over the roof of this cottage.”

He looked hard at his client, expecting to receive a violent reply. His client agreeably disappointed him. A very strange impression appeared to have been produced on th is reckless and headstrong man. He got up quietly; he spoke with perfect outward composure of face and manner when he said his next words.

“Have you given up the case?”

“As things are at present, Mr. Delamayn, there is no case.”

“And no hope of my getting divorced from her?”

“Wait a moment. Have your wife and Mr. Brinkworth met nowhere since they were together at the Scotch inn?”

“Nowhere.”

“As to the future, of course I can’t say. As to the past, there is no hope of your getting divorced from her.”

“Thank you. Good-night.”

“Good-night, Mr. Delamayn.”

Fastened to her for life—and the law powerless to cut the knot.

He pondered over that result until he had thoroughly realized it and fixed it in his mind. Then he took out Mrs. Glenarm’s letter, and read it through again, attentively, from beginning to end.

Nothing could shake her devotion to him. Nothing would induce her to marry another man. There she was—in her own words—dedicated to him: waiting, with her fortune at her own disposal, to be his wife. There also was his father, waiting (so far as he knew, in the absence of any tidings from Holchester House) to welcome Mrs. Glenarm as a daughter-in-law, and to give Mrs. Glenarm’s husband an income of his own. As fair a prospect, on all sides, as man could desire. And nothing in the way of it but the woman who had caught him in her trap—the woman up stairs who had fastened herself on him for life.

He went out in the garden in the darkness of the night.

There was open communication, on all sides, between the back garden and the front. He walked round and round the cottage—now appearing in a stream of light from a window; now disappearing again in the darkness. The wind blew refreshingly over his bare head. For some minutes he went round and round, faster and faster, without a pause. When he stopped at last, it was in front of the cottage. He lifted his head slowly, and looked up at the dim light in the window of Anne’s room.

“How?” he said to himself. “That’s the question. How?”

He went indoors again, and rang the bell. The servant-girl who answered it started back at the sight of him. His florid color was all gone. His eyes looked at her without appearing to see her. The perspiration was standing on his forehead in great heavy drops.

“Are you ill, Sir?” said the girl.

He told her, with an oath, to hold her tongue and bring the brandy. When she entered the room for the second time, he was standing with his back to her, looking out at the night. He never moved when she put the bottle on the table. She heard him muttering as if he was talking to himself.

The same difficulty which had been present to his mind in secret under Anne’s window was present to his mind still.

How? That was the problem to solve. How?

He turned to the brandy, and took counsel of that.

CHAPTER THE FIFTIETH.

THE MORNING.

WHEN does the vain regret find its keenest sting? When is the doubtful future blackened by its darkest cloud? When is life least worth having. and death oftenest at the bedside? In the terrible morning hours, when the sun is rising in its glory, and the birds are singing in the stillness of the new-born day.

Anne woke in the strange bed, and looked round her, by the light of the new morning, at the strange room.

The rain had all fallen in the night. The sun was master in the clear autumn sky. She rose, and opened the window. The fresh morning air, keen and fragrant, filled the room. Far and near, the same bright stillness possessed the view. She stood at the window looking out. Her mind was clear again—she could think, she could feel; she could face the one last question which the merciless morning now forced on her—How will it end?

Was there any hope?—hope for instance, in what she might do for herself. What can a married woman do for herself? She can make her misery public—provided it be misery of a certain kind—and can reckon single-handed with Society when she has done it. Nothing more.

Was there hope in what others might do for her? Blanche might write to her—might even come and see her—if her husband allowed it; and that was all. Sir Patrick had pressed her hand at parting, and had told her to rely on him. He was the firmest, the truest of friends. But what could he do? There were outrages which her husband was privileged to commit, under the sanction of marriage, at the bare thought of which her blood ran cold. Could Sir Patrick protect her? Absurd! Law and Society armed her husband with his conjugal rights. Law and Society had but one answer to give, if she appealed to them—You are his wife.

No hope in herself; no hope in her friends; no hope any where on earth. Nothing to be done but to wait for the end—with faith in the Divine Mercy; with faith in the better world.

She took out of her trunk a little book of Prayers and Meditations—worn with much use—which had once belonged to her mother. She sat by the window reading it. Now and then she looked up from it—thinking. The parallel between her mother’s position and her own position was now complete. Both married to husbands who hated them; to husbands whose interests pointed to mercenary alliances with other women; to husbands whose one want and one purpose was to be free from their wives. Strange, what different ways had led mother and daughter both to the same fate! Would the parallel hold to the end? “Shall I die,” she wondered, thinking of her mother’s last moments, “in Blanche’s arms?”

The time had passed unheeded. The morning movement in the house had failed to catch her ear. She was first called out of herself to the sense of the present and passing events by the voice of the servant-girl outside the door.

“The master wants you, ma’am, down stairs.”

She rose instantly and put away the little book.

“Is that all the message?” she asked, opening the door.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She followed the girl down stairs; recalling to her memory the strange words addressed to her by Geoffrey, in the presence of the servants, on the evening before. Was she now to know what those words really meant? The doubt would soon be set at rest. “Be the trial what it may,” she thought to herself, “let me bear it as my mother would have borne it.”

The servant opened the door of the dining-room. Breakfast was on the table. Geoffrey was standing at the window. Hester Dethridge was waiting, posted near the door. He came forward—with the nearest approach to gentleness in his manner which she had ever yet seen in it—he came forward, with a set smile on his lips, and offered her his hand!

She had entered the room, prepared (as she believed) for any thing that could happen. She was not prepared for this. She stood speechless, looking at him.

After one glance at her, when she came in, Hester Dethridge looked at him, too—and from that moment never looked away again, as long as Anne remained in the room.

He broke the silence—in a voice that was not like his own; with a furtive restraint in his manner which she had never noticed in it before.

“Won’t you shake hands with your husband,” he asked, “when your husband asks you?”

She mechanically put her hand in his. He dropped it instantly, with a start. “God! how cold!” he exclaimed. His own hand was burning hot, and shook incessantly.

He pointed to a chair at the head of the table.

“Will you make the tea?” he asked.

She had given him her hand mechanically; she advanced a step mechanically—and then stopped.

“Would you prefer breakfasting by yourself?” he said.

“If you please,” she answered, faintly.

“Wait a minute. I have something to say before you go.”

She waited. He considered with himself; consulting his memory—visibly, unmistakably, consulting it before he spoke again.

“I have had the night to think in,” he said. “The night has made a new man of me. I beg your pardon for what I said yesterday. I was not myself yesterday. I talked nonsense yesterday. Please to forget it, and forgive it. I wish to turn over a new leaf. and make amends—make amends for my past conduct. It shall be my endeavor to be a good husband. In the presence of Mrs. Dethridge, I request you to give me a chance. I won’t force your inclinati ons. We are married—what’s the use of regretting it? Stay here, as you said yesterday, on your own terms. I wish to make it up. In the presence of Mrs. Dethridge, I say I wish to make it up. I won’t detain you. I request you to think of it. Good-morning.”

He said those extraordinary words like a slow boy saying a hard lesson—his eyes on the ground, his fingers restlessly fastening and unfastening a button on his waistcoat.

Anne left the room. In the passage she was obliged to wait, and support herself against the wall. His unnatural politeness was horrible; his carefully asserted repentance chilled her to the soul with dread. She had never felt—in the time of his fiercest anger and his foulest language—the unutterable horror of him that she felt now.

Hester Dethridge came out, closing the door behind her. She looked attentively at Anne—then wrote on her slate, and held it out, with these words on it:

“Do you believe him?”

Anne pushed the slate away, and ran up stairs. She fastened the door—and sank into a chair.

“He is plotting something against me,” she said to herself. “What?”

A sickening, physical sense of dread—entirely new in her experience of herself—made her shrink from pursuing the question. The sinking at her heart turned her faint. She went to get the air at the open window.

At the same moment there was a ring at the gate bell. Suspicious of any thing and every thing. she felt a sudden distrust of letting herself be seen. She drew back behind the curtain and looked out.

A man-servant, in livery, was let in. He had a letter in his hand. He said