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

“Have you proposed a separation between us?” she asked.

“Yes⁠—on terms of the utmost advantage to my son; arranged with every possible consideration toward you. Is there any objection on your side?”

“Oh, Lady Holchester! is it necessary to ask me? What does he say?”

“He has refused.”

“Refused!”

“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I don’t go back from my word; I stick to what I said this morning. It’s my endeavor to make you a good husband. It’s my wish to make it up.” He paused, and then added his last reason: “I’m fond of you.”

Their eyes met as he said it to her. Julius felt Anne’s hand suddenly tighten round his. The desperate grasp of the frail cold fingers, the imploring terror in the gentle sensitive face as it slowly turned his way, said to him as if in words, “Don’t leave me friendless tonight!”

“If you both stop here till domesday,” said Geoffrey, “you’ll get nothing more out of me. You have had my reply.”

With that, he seated himself doggedly in a corner of the room; waiting⁠—ostentatiously waiting⁠—for his mother and his brother to take their leave. The position was serious. To argue the matter with him that night was hopeless. To invite Sir Patrick’s interference would only be to provoke his savage temper to a new outbreak. On the other hand, to leave the helpless woman, after what had passed, without another effort to befriend her, was, in her situation, an act of downright inhumanity, and nothing less. Julius took the one way out of the difficulty that was left⁠—the one way worthy of him as a compassionate and an honorable man.

“We will drop it for tonight, Geoffrey,” he said. “But I am not the less resolved, in spite of all that you have said, to return to the subject tomorrow. It would save me some inconvenience⁠—a second journey here from town, and then going back again to my engagements⁠—if I stayed with you tonight. Can you give me a bed?”

A look flashed on him from Anne, which thanked him as no words could have thanked him.

“Give you a bed?” repeated Geoffrey. He checked himself, on the point of refusing. His mother was watching him; his wife was watching him⁠—and his wife knew that the room above them was a room to spare. “All right!” he resumed, in another tone, with his eye on his mother. “There’s my empty room upstairs. Have it, if you like. You won’t find I’ve changed my mind tomorrow⁠—but that’s your lookout. Stop here, if the fancy takes you. I’ve no objection. It don’t matter to me.⁠—Will you trust his lordship under my roof?” he added, addressing his mother. “I might have some motive that I’m hiding from you, you know!” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Anne. “Go and tell old Dummy to put the sheets on the bed. Say there’s a live lord in the house⁠—she’s to send in something devilish good for supper!” He burst fiercely into a forced laugh. Lady Holchester rose at the moment when Anne was leaving the room. “I shall not be here when you return,” she said. “Let me bid you good night.”

She shook hands with Anne⁠—giving her Sir Patrick’s note, unseen, at the same moment. Anne left the room. Without addressing another word to her second son, Lady Holchester beckoned to Julius to give her his arm. “You have acted nobly toward your brother,” she said to him. “My one comfort and my one hope, Julius, are in you.” They went out together to the gate, Geoffrey following them with the key in his hand. “Don’t be too anxious,” Julius whispered to his mother. “I will keep the drink out of his way tonight⁠—and I will bring you a better account of him tomorrow. Explain everything to Sir Patrick as you go home.”

He handed Lady Holchester into the carriage; and re-entered, leaving Geoffrey to lock the gate. The brothers returned in silence to the cottage. Julius had concealed it from his mother⁠—but he was seriously uneasy in secret. Naturally prone to look at all things on their brighter side, he could place no hopeful interpretation on what Geoffrey had said and done that night. The conviction that he was deliberately acting a part, in his present relations with his wife, for some abominable purpose of his own, had rooted itself firmly in Julius. For the first time in his experience of his brother, the pecuniary consideration was not the uppermost consideration in Geoffrey’s mind. They went back into the drawing-room. “What will you have to drink?” said Geoffrey.

“Nothing.”

“You won’t keep me company over a drop of brandy-and-water?”

“No. You have had enough brandy-and-water.”

After a moment of frowning self-consideration in the glass, Geoffrey abruptly agreed with Julius “I look like it,” he said. “I’ll soon put that right.” He disappeared, and returned with a wet towel tied round his head. “What will you do while the women are getting your bed ready? Liberty Hall here. I’ve taken to cultivating my mind⁠—I’m a reformed character, you know, now I’m a married man. You do what you like. I shall read.”

He turned to the side-table, and, producing the volumes of the Newgate Calendar, gave one to his brother. Julius handed it back again.

“You won’t cultivate your mind,” he said, “with such a book as that. Vile actions recorded in vile English, make vile reading, Geoffrey, in every sense of the word.”

“It will do for me. I don’t know good English when I see it.”

With that frank acknowledgment⁠—to which the great majority of his companions at school and college might have subscribed without doing the slightest injustice to the present state of English education⁠—Geoffrey drew his chair to the table, and opened one of the volumes of his record of crime.

The evening newspaper was lying on the sofa. Julius took it up, and seated himself opposite to his brother. He noticed, with some surprise, that Geoffrey appeared to have a special object in consulting his book. Instead of beginning