Man and Wife, Wilkie Collins [best ebook reader android .TXT] 📗

there, with her hand pressed on her breast, looking out absently on the murky London view of house roof and chimney, while Sir Patrick opened the letter.

It is necessary to the right appreciation of events, that other eyes besides Sir Patrick’s should follow the brief course of the correspondence in this place.

1. From Anne Silvester to Geoffrey Delamayn.

Windygates House. August 19, 1868.

“Geoffrey Delamayn⁠—I have waited in the hope that you would ride over from your brother’s place, and see me⁠—and I have waited in vain. Your conduct to me is cruelty itself; I will bear it no longer. Consider! in your own interests, consider⁠—before you drive the miserable woman who has trusted you to despair. You have promised me marriage by all that is sacred. I claim your promise. I insist on nothing less than to be what you vowed I should be⁠—what I have waited all this weary time to be⁠—what I am, in the sight of Heaven, your wedded wife. Lady Lundie gives a lawn-party here on the 14th. I know you have been asked. I expect you to accept her invitation. If I don’t see you, I won’t answer for what may happen. My mind is made up to endure this suspense no longer. Oh, Geoffrey, remember the past! Be faithful⁠—be just⁠—to your loving wife,

“Anne Silvester.”

2. From Geoffrey Delamayn to Anne Silvester.

“Dear Anne⁠—Just called to London to my father. They have telegraphed him in a bad way. Stop where you are, and I will write you. Trust the bearer. Upon my soul, I’ll keep my promise. Your loving husband that is to be,

“Geoffrey Delamayn.

“Windygates House Augt. 14, 4 p.m.

“In a mortal hurry. The train starts 4:30.”

Sir Patrick read the correspondence with breathless attention to the end. At the last lines of the last letter he did what he had not done for twenty years past⁠—he sprang to his feet at a bound, and he crossed a room without the help of his ivory cane.

Anne started; and turning round from the window, looked at him in silent surprise. He was under the influence of strong emotion; his face, his voice, his manner, all showed it.

“How long had you been in Scotland, when you wrote this?” He pointed to Anne’s letter as he asked the question, putting it so eagerly that he stammered over the first words. “More than three weeks?” he added, with his bright black eyes fixed in absorbing interest on her face.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“I am certain of it.”

“You can refer to persons who have seen you?”

“Easily.”

He turned the sheet of notepaper, and pointed to Geoffrey’s penciled letter on the fourth page.

“How long had he been in Scotland, when he wrote this? More than three weeks, too?”

Anne considered for a moment.

“For God’s sake, be careful!” said Sir Patrick. “You don’t know what depends on this, If your memory is not clear about it, say so.”

“My memory was confused for a moment. It is clear again now. He had been at his brother’s in Perthshire three weeks before he wrote that. And before he went to Swanhaven, he spent three or four days in the valley of the Esk.”

“Are you sure again?”

“Quite sure!”

“Do you know of anyone who saw him in the valley of the Esk?”

“I know of a person who took a note to him, from me.”

“A person easily found?”

“Quite easily.”

Sir Patrick laid aside the letter, and seized in ungovernable agitation on both her hands.

“Listen to me,” he said. “The whole conspiracy against Arnold Brinkworth and you falls to the ground before that correspondence. When you and he met at the inn⁠—”

He paused, and looked at her. Her hands were beginning to tremble in his.

“When you and Arnold Brinkworth met at the inn,” he resumed, “the law of Scotland had made you a married woman. On the day, and at the hour, when he wrote those lines at the back of your letter to him, you were Geoffrey Delamayn’s wedded wife!”

He stopped, and looked at her again.

Without a word in reply, without the slightest movement in her from head to foot, she looked back at him. The blank stillness of horror was in her face. The deadly cold of horror was in her hands.

In silence, on his side, Sir Patrick drew back a step, with a faint reflection of her dismay in his face. Married⁠—to the villain who had not hesitated to calumniate the woman whom he had ruined, and then to cast her helpless on the world. Married⁠—to the traitor who had not shrunk from betraying Arnold’s trust in him, and desolating Arnold’s home. Married⁠—to the ruffian who would have struck her that morning, if the hands of his own friends had not held him back. And Sir Patrick had never thought of it! Absorbed in the one idea of Blanche’s future, he had never thought of it, till that horror-stricken face looked at him, and said, Think of my future, too!

He came back to her. He took her cold hand once more in his.

“Forgive me,” he said, “for thinking first of Blanche.”

Blanche’s name seemed to rouse her. The life came back to her face; the tender brightness began to shine again in her eyes. He saw that he might venture to speak more plainly still: he went on.

“I see the dreadful sacrifice as you see it. I ask myself, have I any right, has Blanche any right⁠—”

She stopped him by a faint pressure of his hand.

“Yes,” she said, softly, “if Blanche’s happiness depends on it.”

Thirteenth Scene Fulham XLV The Footrace

A solitary foreigner, drifting about London, drifted toward Fulham on the day of the footrace.

Little by little, he found himself involved in the current of a throng of impetuous English people, all flowing together toward one given point, and all decorated alike with colors of two prevailing hues⁠—pink and yellow. He drifted along with the stream of passengers on the pavement (accompanied by