Man and Wife

by Wilkie Collins

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 inquiri es 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

&nb
sp; 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.

  "Don't you see what's happened?" cried Blanche. "Are you alive or

  dead? Oh, Hester, I can't bring her to! Look at her! look at

  her!"

  Hester Dethridge looked at her, and shook her head. Looked again,

  thought for a while and wrote on her slate. Held out the slate

  over Anne's body, and showed what she had written:

  "Who has done it?"

  "You stupid creature!" said Blanche. "Nobody has done it."

  The eyes of Hester Dethridge steadily read the worn white face,

  telling its own tale of sorrow mutely on Blanche's breast. The

  mind of Hester Dethridge steadily looked back at her own

  knowledge of her own miserable married life. She again returned

  to writing on her slate--again showed the written words to

  Blanche.

  "Brought to it by a man. Let her be--and God will take her."

  "You horrid unfeeling woman! how dare you write such an

  abominable thing!" With this natural outburst of indignation,

  Blanche looked back at Anne; and, daunted by the death-like

  persistency of the swoon, appealed again to the mercy of the

  immovable woman who was looking down at her. "Oh, Hester! for

  Heaven's sake help me!"

  The cook dropped her slate at her side. and bent her head gravely

  in sign that she submitted. She motioned to Blanche to loosen

  Anne's dress, and then--kneeling on one knee--took Anne to

  support her while it was being done.

  The instant Hester Dethridge touched her, the swooning woman gave

  signs of life.

  A faint shudder ran through her from head to foot--her eyelids

  trembled--half opened for a moment--and closed again. As they

  closed, a low sigh fluttered feebly from her lips.

  Hester Dethridge put her back in Blanche's arms--considered a

  little with herself--returned to writing on her slate--and held

  out the written words once more: