Man and Wife

by Wilkie Collins

  "I can not trust myself to speak of it clearly and composedly

  to-night," said Sir Patrick. "Be satisfied if I tell you that I

  have thought it all out--and wait for the rest till to-morrow."

  Other persons concerned in the coming drama had had past

  difficulties to think out, and future movements to consider,

  during the interval occupied by Arnold and Blanche on their

  return journey to England. Between the seventeenth and the

  twentieth of September Geoffrey Delamayn had left Swanhaven, on

  the way to his new training quarters in the neighborhood in which

  the Foot-Race at Fulham was to be run. Between the same dates,

  also, Captain Newenden had taken the opportunity, while passing

  through London on his way south, to consult his solicitors. The

  object of the conference was to find means of discovering an

  anonymous letter-writer in Scotland, who had presumed to cause

  serious annoyance to Mrs. Glenarm.

  Thus, by ones and twos, converging from widely distant quarters,

  they were now beginning to draw together, in the near

  neighborhood of the great city which was soon destined to

  assemble them all, for the first and the last time in this world,

  face to face.

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SEVENTH.

  THE WAY OUT.

  BREAKFAST was just over. Blanche, seeing a pleasantly-idle

  morning before her, proposed to Arnold to take a stroll in the

  grounds.

  The garden was blight with sunshine, and the bride was bright

  with good-humor. She caught her uncle's eye, looking at her

  admiringly, and paid him a little compliment in return. "You have

  no idea," she said, "how nice it is to be back at Ham Farm!"

  "I am to understand then," rejoined Sir Patrick, "that I am

  forgiven for interrupting the honey-moon?"

  "You are more than forgiven for interrupting it," said

  Blanche--"you are thanked. As a married woman," she proceeded,

  with the air of a matron of at least twenty years' standing, "I

  have been thinking the subject over; and I have arrived at the

  conclusion that a honey-moon which takes the form of a tour on

  the Continent, is one of our national abuses which stands in need

  of reform. When you are in love with each other (consider a

  marriage without love to be no marriage at all), what do you want

  with the excitement of seeing strange places? Isn't it excitement

  enough, and isn't it strange enough, to a newly-married woman to

  see such a total novelty as a husband? What is the most

  interesting object on the face of creation to a man in Arnold's

  position? The Alps? Certainly not! The most interesting object is

  the wife. And the proper time for a bridal tour is the time--say

  ten or a dozen years later--when you are beginning (not to get

  tired of each other, that's out of the question) but to get a

  little too well used to each other. Then take your tour to

  Switzerland--and you give the Alps a chance. A succession of

  honey-moon trips, in the autumn of married life--there is my

  proposal for an improvement on the present state of things! Come

  into the garden, Arnold; and let us calculate how long it will be

  before we get weary of each other, and want the beauties of

  nature to keep us company."

  Arnold looked appealingly to Sir Patrick. Not a word had passed

  between them, as yet, on the se rious subject of Anne Silvester's

  letter. Sir Patrick undertook the responsibility of making the

  necessary excuses to Blanche.

  "Forgive me," he said, "if I ask leave to interfere with your

  monopoly of Arnold for a little while. I have something to say to

  him about his property in Scotland. Will you leave him with me,

  if I promise to release him as soon as possible?"

  Blanche smiled graciously. "You shall have him as long as you

  like, uncle. There's your hat," she added, tossing it to her

  husband, gayly. "I brought it in for you when I got my own. You

  will find me on the lawn."

  She nodded, and went out.

  "Let me hear the worst at once, Sir Patrick," Arnold began. "Is

  it serious? Do you think I am to blame?"

  "I will answer your last question first," said Sir Patrick. "Do I

  think you are to blame? Yes--in this way. You committed an act of

  unpardonable rashness when you consented to go, as Geoffrey

  Delamayn's messenger, to Miss Silvester at the inn. Having once

  placed yourself in that false position, you could hardly have

  acted, afterward, otherwise than you did. You could not be

  expected to know the Scotch law. And, as an honorable man, you

  were bound to keep a secret confided to you, in which the

  reputation of a woman was concerned. Your first and last error in

  this matter, was the fatal error of involving yourself in

  responsibilities which belonged exclusively to another man."

  "The man had saved my life." pleaded Arnold--"and I believed I

  was giving service for service to my dearest friend."

  "As to your other question," proceeded Sir Patrick. "Do I

  consider your position to be a serious one? Most assuredly, I do!

  So long as we are not absolutely certain that Blanche is your

  lawful wife, the position is more than serious: it is

  unendurable. I maintain the opinion, mind, out of which (thanks

  to your honorable silence) that scoundrel Delamayn contrived to

  cheat me. I told him, what I now tell you--that your sayings and

  doings at Craig Fernie, do _not_ constitute a marriage, according

  to Scottish law. But," pursued Sir Patrick, holding up a warning

  forefinger at Arnold, "you have read it in Miss Silvester's

  letter, and you may now take it also as a result of my

  experience, that no individual opinion, in a matter of this kind,

  is to be relied on. Of two lawyers, consulted by Miss Silvester

  at Glasgow, one draws a directly opposite conclusion to mine, and

  decides that you and she are married. I believe him to be wrong,

  but in our situation, we have no other choice than to boldly

  encounter the view of the case which he represents. In plain

  English, we must begin by looking the worst in the face."

  Arnold twisted the traveling hat which Blanche had thrown to him,

  nervously, in both hands. "Supposing the worst comes to the

  worst," he asked, "what will happen?"

  Sir Patrick shook his head.

  "It is not easy to tell you," he said, "without entering into the

  legal aspect of the case. I shall only puzzle you if I do that.

  Suppose we look at the matter in its social bearings--I mean, as

  it may possibly affect you and Blanche, and your unborn

  children?"

  Arnold gave the hat a tighter twist than ever. "I never thought

  of the children," he said, with a look of consternation.

  "The children may present themselves," returned Sir Patrick,

  dryly, "for all that. Now listen. It may have occurred to your

  mind that the plain way out of our present dilemma is for you and

  Miss Silvester, respectively, to affirm what we know to be the

  truth--namely, that you never had the slightest intention of

  marrying each other. Beware of founding any hopes on any such<
br />
  remedy as that! If you reckon on it, you reckon without Geoffrey

  Delamayn. He is interested, remember, in proving you and Miss

  Silvester to be man and wife. Circumstances may arise--I won't

  waste time in guessing at what they may be--which will enable a

  third person to produce the landlady and the waiter at Craig

  Fernie in evidence against you--and to assert that your

  declaration and Miss Silvester's declaration are the result of

  collusion between you two. Don't start! Such things have happened

  before now. Miss Silvester is poor; and Blanche is rich. You may

  be made to stand in the awkward position of a man who is denying

  his marriage with a poor woman, in order to establish his

  marriage with an heiress: Miss Silvester presumably aiding the

  fraud, with two strong interests of her own as inducements--the

  interest of asserting the claim to be the wife of a man of rank,

  and the interest of earning her reward in money for resigning you

  to Blanche. There is a case which a scoundrel might set up--and

  with some appearance of truth too--in a court of justice!"

  "Surely, the law wouldn't allow him to do that?"

  "The law will argue any thing, with any body who will pay the law

  for the use of its brains and its time. Let that view of the

  matter alone now. Delamayn can set the case going, if he likes,

  without applying to any lawyer to help him. He has only to cause

  a report to reach Blanche's ears which publicly asserts that she

  is not your lawful wife. With her temper, do you suppose she

  would leave us a minute's peace till the matter was cleared up?

  Or take it the other way. Comfort yourself, if you will, with the

  idea that this affair will trouble nobody in the present. How are

  we to know it may not turn up in the future under circumstances

  which may place the legitimacy of your children in doubt? We have

  a man to deal with who sticks at nothing. We have a state of the

  law which can only be described as one scandalous uncertainty

  from beginning to end. And we have two people (Bishopriggs and

  Mrs. Inchbare) who can, and will, speak to what took place

  between you and Anne Silvester at the inn. For Blanche's sake,

  and for the sake of your unborn children, we must face this

  matter on the spot--and settle it at once and forever. The

  question before us now is this. Shall we open the proceedings by

  communicating with Miss Silvester or not?"

  At that important point in the conversation they were interrupted

  by the reappearance of Blanche. Had she, by any accident, heard

  what they had been saying?

  No; it was the old story of most interruptions. Idleness that

  considers nothing, had come to look at Industry that bears every

  thing. It is a law of nature, apparently, that the people in this

  world who have nothing to do can not support the sight of an

  uninterrupted occupation in the hands of their neighbors. Blanche

  produced a new specimen from Arnold's collection of hats. "I have

  been thinking about it in the garden," she said, quite seriously.

  "Here is the brown one with the high crown. You look better in

  this than in the white one with the low crown. I have come to

  change them, that's all." She changed the hats with Arnold, and

  went on, without the faintest suspicion that she was in the way.

  "Wear the brown one when you come out--and come soon, dear. I

  won't stay an instant longer, uncle--I wouldn't interrupt you for

  the world." She kissed her hand to Sir Patrick, and smiled at her

  husband, and went out.

  "What were we saying?" asked Arnold. "It's awkward to be

  interrupted in this way, isn't it?"

  "If I know any thing of female human nature," returned Sir

  Patrick, composedly, "your wife will be in and out of the room,

  in that way, the whole morning. I give her ten minutes, Arnold,

  before she changes her mind again on the serious and weighty

  subject of the white hat and the brown. These little

  interruptions--otherwise quite charming--raised a doubt in my

  mind. Wouldn't it be wise (I ask myself), if we made a virtue of

  necessity, and took Blanche into the conversation? What do you

  say to calling her back and telling her the truth?"

  Arnold started, and changed color.

  "There are difficulties in the way," he said.

  "My good fellow! at every step of this business there are

  difficulties in the way. Sooner or later, your wife must know

  what has happened. The time for telling her is, no doubt, a

  matter for your decision, not mine. All I say is this. Consider

  whether the disclosure won't come from you with a better grace,

  if you make it before you are fairly driven to the wall, and

  obliged to open your lips."

  Arnold rose to his fee t--took a turn in the room--sat down

  again--and looked at Sir Patrick, with the expression of a

  thoroughly bewildered and thoroughly helpless man.

  "I don't know what to do," he said. "It beats me altogether. The

  truth is, Sir Patrick, I was fairly forced, at Craig Fernie, into

  deceiving Blanche--in what might seem to her a very unfeeling,

  and a very unpardonable way."

  "That sounds awkward! What do you mean?"

  "I'll try and tell you. You remember when you went to the inn to

  see Miss Silvester? Well, being there privately at the time, of

  course I was obliged to keep out of your way."

  "I see! And, when Blanche came afterward, you were obliged to

  hide from Blanche, exactly as you had hidden from me?"

  "Worse even than that! A day or two later, Blanche took me into

  her confidence. She spoke to me of her visit to the inn, as if I

  was a perfect stranger to the circumstances. She told me to my

  face, Sir Patrick, of the invisible man who had kept so strangely

  out of her way--without the faintest suspicion that I was the

  man. And I never opened my lips to set her right! I was obliged

  to be silent, or I must have betrayed Miss Silvester. What will

  Blanche think of me, if I tell her now? That's the question!"

  Blanche's name had barely passed her husband's lips before

  Blanche herself verified Sir Patrick's prediction, by reappearing

  at the open French window, with the superseded white hat in her

  hand.

  "Haven't you done yet!" she exclaimed. "I am shocked, uncle, to

  interrupt you again--but these horrid hats of Arnold's are

  beginning to weigh upon my mind. On reconsideration, I think the

  white hat with the low crown is the most becoming of the two.

  Change again, dear. Yes! the brown hat is hideous. There's a

  beggar at the gate. Before I go quite distracted, I shall give

  him the brown hat, and have done with the difficulty in that

  manner. Am I very much in the way of business? I'm afraid I must

  appear restless? Indeed, I _am_ restless. I can't imagine what is

  the matter with me this morning."

  "I can tell you," said Sir Patrick, in his gravest and dryest

  manner. "You are suffering, Blanche, from a malady which is

  exceedingly common among the young ladies of England. As a

  disease it is quite incurable--and the nam
e of it is

  Nothing-to-Do."

  Blanche dropped her uncle a smart little courtesy. "You might

  have told me I was in the way in fewer words than that." She

  whisked round, kicked the disgraced brown hat out into the

  veranda before her, and left the two gentlemen alone once more.

  "Your position with your wife, Arnold," resumed Sir Patrick,

  returning gravely to the matter in hand, "is certainly a

  difficult one." He paused, thinking of the evening when he and

  Blanche had illustrated the vagueness of Mrs. Inchbare's

  description of the man at the inn, by citing Arnold himself as

  being one of the hundreds of innocent people who answered to it!

  "Perhaps," he added, "the situation is even more difficult than

  you suppose. It would have been certainly easier for _you_--and

  it would have looked more honorable in _her_ estimation--if you

  had made the inevitable confession before your marriage. I am, in

  some degree, answerable for your not having done this--as well as

  for the far more serious dilemma with Miss Silvester in which you

  now stand. If I had not innocently hastened your marriage with

  Blanche, Miss Silvester's admirable letter would have reached us

  in ample time to prevent mischief. It's useless to dwell on that

  now. Cheer up, Arnold! I am bound to show you the way out of the

  labyrinth, no matter what the difficulties may be--and, please

  God, I will do it!"

  He pointed to a table at the other end of the room, on which

  writing materials were placed. "I hate moving the moment I have

  had my breakfast," he said. "We won't go into the library. Bring

  me the pen and ink here."

  "Are you going to write to Miss Silvester?"

  "That is the question before us which we have not settled yet.

  Before I decide, I want to be in possession of the facts--down to

  the smallest detail of what took place between you and Miss

  Silvester at the inn. There is only one way of getting at those

  facts. I am going to examine you as if I had you before me in the

  witness-box in court."

  With that preface, and with Arnold's letter from Baden in his

  hand as a brief to speak from, Sir Patrick put his questions in

  clear and endless succession; and Arnold patiently and faithfully

  answered them all.

  The examination proceeded uninterruptedly until it had reached

  that point in the progress of events at which Anne had crushed

  Geoffrey Delamayn's letter in her hand, and had thrown it from

  her indignantly to the other end of the room. There, for the

  first time, Sir Patrick dipped his pen in the ink, apparently

  intending to take a note. "Be very careful here," he said; "I

  want to know every thing that you can tell me about that letter."

  "The letter is lost," said Arnold.

  "The letter has been stolen by Bishopriggs," returned Sir

  Patrick, "and is in the possession of Bishopriggs at this

  moment."

  "Why, you know more about it than I do!" exclaimed Arnold.

  "I sincerely hope not. I don't know what was inside the letter.

  Do you?"

  "Yes. Part of it at least."

  "Part of it?"

  "There were two letters written, on the same sheet of paper,"

  said Arnold. "One of them was written by Geoffrey Delamayn--and

  that is the one I know about."

  Sir Patrick started. His face brightened; he made a hasty note.

  "Go on," he said, eagerly. "How came the letters to be written on

  the same sheet? Explain that!"

  Arnold explained that Geoffrey, in the absence of any thing else

  to write his excuses on to Anne, had written to her on the fourth

  or blank page of a letter which had been addressed to him by Anne

  herself.

  "Did you read that letter?" asked Sir Patrick.

  "I might have read it if I had liked."

  "And you didn't read it?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "Out of delicacy."

  Even Sir Patrick's carefully trained temper was not proof against

  this. "That is the most misplaced act of delicacy I ever heard of