Man and Wife

by Wilkie Collins

own face.

  The voluble Lady Jane interrupted him before he could open his

  lips.

  "Might I ask one question? Is the aspect south? Of course it is!

  I ought to see by the sun that the aspect is south. These and the

  other two are, I suppose, the only rooms on the ground-floor? And

  is it quiet? Of course it's quiet! A charming house. Far more

  likely to suit my friend than any I have seen yet. Will you give

  me the refusal of it till to-morrow?" There she stopped for

  breath, and gave Mr. Delamayn his first opportunity of speaking

  to her.

  "I beg your ladyship's pardon," he began. "I really can't--"

  Mr. Vanborough--passing close behind him and whispering as he

  passed--stopped the lawyer before he could say a word more.

  "For God's sake, don't contradict me! My wife is coming this

  way!"

  At the same moment (still supposing that Mr. Delamayn was the

  master of the house) Lady Jane returned to the charge.

  "You appear to feel some hesitation," she said. "Do you want a

  reference?" She smiled satirically, and summoned her friend to

  her aid. "Mr. Vanborough!"

  Mr. Vanborough, stealing step by step nearer to the

  window--intent, come what might of it, on keeping his wife out of

  the room--neither heeded nor heard her. Lady Jane followed him,

  and tapped him briskly on the shoulder with her parasol.

  At that moment Mrs. Vanborough appeared on the garden side of the

  window.

  "Am I in the way?" she asked, addressing her husband, after one

  steady look at Lady Jane. "This lady appears to be an old friend

  of yours." There was a tone of sarcasm in that allusion to the

  parasol, which might develop into a tone of jealousy at a

  moment's notice.

  Lady Jane was not in the least disconcerted. She had her double

  privilege of familiarity with the men whom she liked--her

  privilege as a woman of high rank, and her privilege as a young

  widow. She bowed to Mrs. Vanborough, with all the highly-finished

  politeness of the order to which she belonged.

  "The lady of the house, I presume?" she said, with a gracious

  smile.

  Mrs. Vanborough returned the bow coldly--entered the room

  first--and then answered, "Yes."

  Lady Jane turned to Mr. Vanborough.

  "Present me!" she said, submitting resignedly to the formalities

  of the middle classes.

  Mr. Vanborough obeyed, without looking at his wife, and without

  mentioning his wife's name.

  "Lady Jane Parnell," he said, passing over the introduction as

  rapidly as possible. "Let me see you to your carriage," he added,

  offering his arm. "I will take care that you have the refusal of

  the house. You may trust it all to me."

  No! Lady Jane was accustomed to leave a favorable impression

  behind her wherever she went. It was a habit with her to be

  charming (in widely different ways) to both sexes. The social

  experience of the upper classes is, in England, an experience of

  universal welcome. Lady Jane declined to leave until she had

  thawed the icy reception of the lady of the house.

  "I must repeat my apologies," she said to Mrs. Vanborough, "for

  coming at this inconvenient time. My intrusion appears to have

  sadly disturbed the two gentlemen. Mr. Vanborough looks as if he

  wished me a hundred miles away. And as for your husband--" She

  stopped and glanced toward Mr. Delamayn. "Pardon me for speaking

  in that familiar way. I have not the pleasure of knowing your

  husband's name."

  In speechless amazement Mrs. Vanborough's eyes followed the

  direction of Lady Jane's eyes--and rested on the lawyer,

  personally a total stranger to her.

  Mr. Delamayn, resolutely waiting his opportunity to speak, seized

  it once more--and held it this time.

  "I beg your pardon," he said. "There is some misapprehension

  here, for which I am in no way responsible. I am _not_ that

  lady's husband."

  It was Lady Jane's turn to be astonished. She looked at the

  lawyer. Useless! Mr. Delamayn had set himself right--Mr. Delamayn

  declined to interfere further. He silently took a chair at the

  other end of the room. Lady Jane addressed Mr. Vanborough.

  "Whatever the mistake may be," she said, "you are responsible for

  it. You certainly told me this lady was your friend's wife."

  "What!!!" cried Mrs. Vanborough--loudly, sternly, incredulously.

  The inbred pride of the great lady began to appear behind the

  thin outer veil of politeness that covered it.

  "I will speak louder if you wish it," she said. "Mr. Vanborough

  told me you were that gentleman's wife."

  Mr. Vanborough whispered fiercely to his wife through his

  clenched teeth.

  "The whole thing is a mistake. Go into the garden again!"

  Mrs. Vanborough's indignation was suspended for the moment in

  dread, as she saw the passion and the terror struggling in her

  husband's face.

  "How you look at me!" she said. "How you speak to me!"

  He only repeated, "Go into the garden!"

  Lady Jane began to perceive, what the lawyer had discovered some

  minutes previously--that there was something wrong in the villa

  at Hampstead. The lady of the house was a lady in an anomalous

  position of some kind. And as the house, to all appearance,

  belonged to Mr. Vanborough's friend, Mr. Vanborough's friend must

  (in spite of his recent disclaimer) be in some way responsible

  for it. Arriving, naturally enough, at this erroneous conclusion,

  Lady Jane's eyes rested for an instant on Mrs. Vanborough with a

  finely contemptuous expression of inquiry which would have roused

  the spirit of the tamest woman in existence. The implied insult

  stung the wife's sensitive nature to the quick. She turned once

  more to her husband--this time without flinching.

  "Who is that woman?" she asked.

  Lady Jane was equal to the emergency. The manner in which she

  wrapped herself up in her own virtue, without the slightest

  pretension on the one hand, and without the slightest compromise

  on the other, was a sight to see.

  "Mr. Vanborough," she said, "you offered to take me to my

  carriage just now. I begin to understand that I had better have

  accepted the offer at once. Give me your arm."

  "Stop!" said Mrs. Vanborough, "your ladyship's looks are looks of

  contempt; your ladyship's words can bear but one interpretation.

  I am innocently involved in some vile deception which I don't

  understand. But this I do know--I won't submit to be insulted in

  my own house. After what you have just said I forbid my husband

  to give you his arm.

  Her husband!

  Lady Jane looked at Mr. Vanborough--at Mr. Vanborough, whom she

  loved; whom she had honestly believed to be a single man; whom

  she had suspected, up to that moment, of nothing worse than of

  trying to screen the frailties of his friend. She dropped her

  highly-bred tone; she lost her highly-bred manners. The sense of

  her injury (if this was true), the pang of her jealousy (if that

  woman was his wife), strippe
d the human nature in her bare of all

  disguises, raised the angry color in her cheeks, and struck the

  angry fire out of her eyes.

  "If you can tell the truth, Sir," she said, haughtily, "be so

  good as to tell it now. Have you been falsely presenting yourself

  to the world--falsely presenting yourself to _me_--in the

  character and with the aspirations of a single man? Is that lady

  your wife?"

  "Do you hear her? do you see her?" cri ed Mrs. Vanborough,

  appealing to her husband, in her turn. She suddenly drew back

  from him, shuddering from head to foot. "He hesitates!" she said

  to herself, faintly. "Good God! he hesitates!"

  Lady Jane sternly repeated her question.

  "Is that lady your wife?"

  He roused his scoundrel-courage, and said the fatal word:

  "No!"

  Mrs. Vanborough staggered back. She caught at the white curtains

  of the window to save herself from falling, and tore them. She

  looked at her husband, with the torn curtain clenched fast in her

  hand. She asked herself, "Am I mad? or is he?"

  Lady Jane drew a deep breath of relief. He was not married! He

  was only a profligate single man. A profligate single man is

  shocking--but reclaimable. It is possible to blame him severely,

  and to insist on his reformation in the most uncompromising

  terms. It is also possible to forgive him, and marry him. Lady

  Jane took the necessary position under the circumstances with

  perfect tact. She inflicted reproof in the present without

  excluding hope in the future.

  "I have made a very painful discovery," she said, gravely, to Mr.

  Vanborough. "It rests with _you_ to persuade me to forget it!

  Good-evening!"

  She accompanied the last words by a farewell look which aroused

  Mrs. Vanborough to frenzy. She sprang forward and prevented Lady

  Jane from leaving the room.

  "No!" she said. "You don't go yet!"

  Mr. Vanborough came forward to interfere. His wife eyed him with

  a terrible look, and turned from him with a terrible contempt.

  "That man has lied!" she said. "In justice to myself, I insist on

  proving it!" She struck a bell on a table near her. The servant

  came in. "Fetch my writing-desk out of the next room." She

  waited--with her back turned on her husband, with her eyes fixed

  on Lady Jane. Defenseless and alone she stood on the wreck of her

  married life, superior to the husband's treachery, the lawyer's

  indifference, and her rival's contempt. At that dreadful moment

  her beauty shone out again with a gleam of its old glory. The

  grand woman, who in the old stage days had held thousands

  breathless over the mimic woes of the scene, stood there grander

  than ever, in her own woe, and held the three people who looked

  at her breathless till she spoke again.

  The servant came in with the desk. She took out a paper and

  handed it to Lady Jane.

  "I was a singer on the stage," she said, "when I was a single

  woman. The slander to which such women are exposed doubted my

  marriage. I provided myself with the paper in your hand. It

  speaks for itself. Even the highest society, madam, respects

  _that!_"

  Lady Jane examined the paper. It was a marriage-certificate. She

  turned deadly pale, and beckoned to Mr. Vanborough. "Are you

  deceiving me?" she asked.

  Mr. Vanborough looked back into the far corner of the room, in

  which the lawyer sat, impenetrably waiting for events. "Oblige me

  by coming here for a moment," he said.

  Mr. Delamayn rose and complied with the request. Mr. Vanborough

  addressed himself to Lady Jane.

  "I beg to refer you to my man of business. _He_ is not interested

  in deceiving you."

  "Am I required simply to speak to the fact?" asked Mr. Delamayn.

  "I decline to do more."

  "You are not wanted to do more."

  Listening intently to that interchange of question and answer,

  Mrs. Vanborough advanced a step in silence. The high courage that

  had sustained her against outrage which had openly declared

  itself shrank under the sense of something coming which she had

  not foreseen. A nameless dread throbbed at her heart and crept

  among the roots of her hair.

  Lady Jane handed the certificate to the lawyer.

  "In two words, Sir," she said, impatiently, "what is this?"

  "In two words, madam," answered Mr. Delamayn; "waste paper."

  "He is _not_ married?"

  "He is _not_ married."

  After a moment's hesitation Lady Jane looked round at Mrs.

  Vanborough, standing silent at her side--looked, and started back

  in terror. "Take me away!" she cried, shrinking from the ghastly

  face that confronted her with the fixed stare of agony in the

  great, glittering eyes. "Take me away! That woman will murder

  me!"

  Mr. Vanborough gave her his arm and led her to the door. There

  was dead silence in the room as he did it. Step by step the

  wife's eyes followed them with the same dreadful stare, till the

  door closed and shut them out. The lawyer, left alone with the

  disowned and deserted woman, put the useless certificate silently

  on the table. She looked from him to the paper, and dropped,

  without a cry to warn him, without an effort to save herself,

  senseless at his feet.

  He lifted her from the floor and placed her on the sofa, and

  waited to see if Mr. Vanborough would come back. Looking at the

  beautiful face--still beautiful, even in the swoon--he owned it

  was hard on her. Yes! in his own impenetrable way, the rising

  lawyer owned it was hard on her.

  But the law justified it. There was no doubt in this case. The

  law justified it.

  The trampling of horses and the grating of wheels sounded

  outside. Lady Jane's carriage was driving away. Would the husband

  come back? (See what a thing habit is! Even Mr. Delamayn still

  mechanically thought of him as the husband--in the face of the

  law! in the face of the facts!)

  No. Then minutes passed. And no sign of the husband coming back.

  It was not wise to make a scandal in the house. It was not

  desirable (on his own sole responsibility) to let the servants

  see what had happened. Still, there she lay senseless. The cool

  evening air came in through the open window and lifted the light

  ribbons in her lace cap, lifted the little lock of hair that had

  broken loose and drooped over her neck. Still, there she lay--the

  wife who had loved him, the mother of his child--there she lay.

  He stretched out his hand to ring the bell and summon help.

  At the same moment the quiet of the summer evening was once more

  disturbed. He held his hand suspended over the bell. The noise

  outside came nearer. It was again the trampling of horses and the

  grating of wheels. Advancing--rapidly advancing--stopping at the

  house.

  Was Lady Jane coming back?

  Was the husband coming back?

  There was a loud ring at the bell--a quick opening of the

  house-door--a rustling of a woman's dress in the passage. The

  door of the room
opened, and the woman appeared--alone. Not Lady

  Jane. A stranger--older, years older, than Lady Jane. A plain

  woman, perhaps, at other times. A woman almost beautiful now,

  with the eager happiness that beamed in her face.

  She saw the figure on the sofa. She ran to it with a cry--a cry

  of recognition and a cry of terror in one. She dropped on her

  knees--and laid that helpless head on her bosom, and kissed, with

  a sister's kisses, that cold, white cheek.

  "Oh, my darling!" she said. "Is it thus we meet again?"

  Yes! After all the years that had passed since the parting in the

  cabin of the ship, it was thus the two school-friends met again.

  Part the Second.

  THE MARCH OF TIME.

  V.

  ADVANCING from time past to time present, the Prologue leaves the

  date last attained (the summer of eighteen hundred and

  fifty-five), and travels on through an interval of twelve

  years--tells who lived, who died, who prospered, and who failed

  among the persons concerned in the tragedy at the Hampstead

  villa--and, this done, leaves the reader at the opening of THE

  STORY in the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight.

  The record begins with a marriage--the marriage of Mr. Vanborough

  and Lady Jane Parnell.

  In three months from the memorable day when his solicitor had

  informed him that he was a free man, Mr. Vanborough possessed the

  wife he desired, to grace the head of his table and to push his

  fortunes in the world--the Legislature of Great Britain being the

  humble servant of his treachery, and the respectable accomplice

  of his crime.

  He entered Parliament. He gave (thanks to his wife) six of the

  grandest dinners, and two of the most crowded balls of the

  season. He made a successful first speech in the House of

  Commons. He endowed a church in a poor neighborhood. He wrote an

  article which attracted attention in a quarterly review. He

  discovered, denounced, and remedied a crying abuse in the

  administration of a public charity. He r eceived (thanks once

  more to his wife) a member of the Royal family among the visitors

  at his country house in the autumn recess. These were his

  triumphs, and this his rate of progress on the way to the

  peerage, during the first year of his life as the husband of Lady

  Jane.

  There was but one more favor that Fortune could confer on her

  spoiled child--and Fortune bestowed it. There was a spot on Mr.

  Vanborough's past life as long as the woman lived whom he had

  disowned and deserted. At the end of the first year Death took

  her--and the spot was rubbed out.

  She had met the merciless injury inflicted on her with a rare

  patience, with an admirable courage. It is due to Mr. Vanborough

  to admit that he broke her heart, with the strictest attention to

  propriety. He offered (through his lawyer ) a handsome provision

  for her and for her child. It was rejected, without an instant's

  hesitation. She repudiated his money--she repudiated his name. By

  the name which she had borne in her maiden days--the name which

  she had made illustrious in her Art--the mother and daughter were

  known to all who cared to inquire after them when they had sunk

  in the world.

  There was no false pride in the resolute attitude which she thus

  assumed after her husband had forsaken her. Mrs. Silvester (as

  she was now called) gratefully accepted for herself, and for Miss

  Silvester, the assistance of the dear old friend who had found

  her again in her affliction, and who remained faithful to her to

  the end. They lived with Lady Lundie until the mother was strong

  enough to carry out the plan of life which she had arranged for

  the future, and to earn her bread as a teacher of singing. To all

  appearance she rallied, and became herself again, in a few

  months' time. She was making her way; she was winning sympathy,