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

had looked, in bygone days, at the man who had disowned her, so the daughter looked at Geoffrey Delamayn⁠—with the same terrible composure, and the same terrible contempt.

“Well?” he asked. “What have you got to say to me?”

“Mr. Delamayn,” she answered, “you are one of the fortunate people of this world. You are a nobleman’s son. You are a handsome man. You are popular at your college. You are free of the best houses in England. Are you something besides all this? Are you a coward and a scoundrel as well?”

He started⁠—opened his lips to speak⁠—checked himself⁠—and made an uneasy attempt to laugh it off. “Come!” he said, “keep your temper.”

The suppressed passion in her began to force its way to the surface.

“Keep my temper?” she repeated. “Do you of all men expect me to control myself? What a memory yours must be! Have you forgotten the time when I was fool enough to think you were fond of me? and mad enough to believe you could keep a promise?”

He persisted in trying to laugh it off. “Mad is a strongish word to use, Miss Silvester!”

“Mad is the right word! I look back at my own infatuation⁠—and I can’t account for it; I can’t understand myself. What was there in you,” she asked, with an outbreak of contemptuous surprise, “to attract such a woman as I am?”

His inexhaustible good-nature was proof even against this. He put his hands in his pockets, and said, “I’m sure I don’t know.”

She turned away from him. The frank brutality of the answer had not offended her. It forced her, cruelly forced her, to remember that she had nobody but herself to blame for the position in which she stood at that moment. She was unwilling to let him see how the remembrance hurt her⁠—that was all. A sad, sad story; but it must be told. In her mother’s time she had been the sweetest, the most lovable of children. In later days, under the care of her mother’s friend, her girlhood had passed so harmlessly and so happily⁠—it seemed as if the sleeping passions might sleep forever! She had lived on to the prime of her womanhood⁠—and then, when the treasure of her life was at its richest, in one fatal moment she had flung it away on the man in whose presence she now stood.

Was she without excuse? No: not utterly without excuse.

She had seen him under other aspects than the aspect which he presented now. She had seen him, the hero of the river-race, the first and foremost man in a trial of strength and skill which had roused the enthusiasm of all England. She had seen him, the central object of the interest of a nation; the idol of the popular worship and the popular applause. His were the arms whose muscle was celebrated in the newspapers. He was first among the heroes hailed by ten thousand roaring throats as the pride and flower of England. A woman, in an atmosphere of red-hot enthusiasm, witnesses the apotheosis of physical strength. Is it reasonable⁠—is it just⁠—to expect her to ask herself, in cold blood, What (morally and intellectually) is all this worth?⁠—and that, when the man who is the object of the apotheosis, notices her, is presented to her, finds her to his taste, and singles her out from the rest? No. While humanity is humanity, the woman is not utterly without excuse.

Has she escaped, without suffering for it?

Look at her as she stands there, tortured by the knowledge of her own secret⁠—the hideous secret which she is hiding from the innocent girl, whom she loves with a sister’s love. Look at her, bowed down under a humiliation which is unutterable in words. She has seen him below the surface⁠—now, when it is too late. She rates him at his true value⁠—now, when her reputation is at his mercy. Ask her the question: What was there to love in a man who can speak to you as that man has spoken, who can treat you as that man is treating you now? you so clever, so cultivated, so refined⁠—what, in Heaven’s name, could you see in him? Ask her that, and she will have no answer to give. She will not even remind you that he was once your model of manly beauty, too⁠—that you waved your handkerchief till you could wave it no longer, when he took his seat, with the others, in the boat⁠—that your heart was like to jump out of your bosom, on that later occasion when he leaped the last hurdle at the footrace, and won it by a head. In the bitterness of her remorse, she will not even seek for that excuse for herself. Is there no atoning suffering to be seen here? Do your sympathies shrink from such a character as this? Follow her, good friends of virtue, on the pilgrimage that leads, by steep and thorny ways, to the purer atmosphere and the nobler life. Your fellow-creature, who has sinned and has repented⁠—you have the authority of the Divine Teacher for it⁠—is your fellow-creature, purified and ennobled. A joy among the angels of heaven⁠—oh, my brothers and sisters of the earth, have I not laid my hand on a fit companion for you?

There was a moment of silence in the summerhouse. The cheerful tumult of the lawn-party was pleasantly audible from the distance. Outside, the hum of voices, the laughter of girls, the thump of the croquet-mallet against the ball. Inside, nothing but a woman forcing back the bitter tears of sorrow and shame⁠—and a man who was tired of her.

She roused herself. She was her mother’s daughter; and she had a spark of her mother’s spirit. Her life depended on the issue of that interview. It was useless⁠—without father or brother to take her part⁠—to lose the last chance of appealing to him. She dashed away the tears⁠—time enough to cry, is time easily found in a woman’s existence⁠—she dashed away the tears,