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

and spoke to him again, more gently than she had spoken yet.

“You have been three weeks, Geoffrey, at your brother Julius’s place, not ten miles from here; and you have never once ridden over to see me. You would not have come today, if I had not written to you to insist on it. Is that the treatment I have deserved?”

She paused. There was no answer.

“Do you hear me?” she asked, advancing and speaking in louder tones.

He was still silent. It was not in human endurance to bear his contempt. The warning of a coming outbreak began to show itself in her face. He met it, beforehand, with an impenetrable front. Feeling nervous about the interview, while he was waiting in the rose-garden⁠—now that he stood committed to it, he was in full possession of himself. He was composed enough to remember that he had not put his pipe in its case⁠—composed enough to set that little matter right before other matters went any farther. He took the case out of one pocket, and the pipe out of another.

“Go on,” he said, quietly. “I hear you.”

She struck the pipe out of his hand at a blow. If she had had the strength she would have struck him down with it on the floor of the summerhouse.

“How dare you use me in this way?” she burst out, vehemently. “Your conduct is infamous. Defend it if you can!”

He made no attempt to defend it. He looked, with an expression of genuine anxiety, at the fallen pipe. It was beautifully colored⁠—it had cost him ten shillings. “I’ll pick up my pipe first,” he said. His face brightened pleasantly⁠—he looked handsomer than ever⁠—as he examined the precious object, and put it back in the case. “All right,” he said to himself. “She hasn’t broken it.” His attitude as he looked at her again, was the perfection of easy grace⁠—the grace that attends on cultivated strength in a state of repose. “I put it to your own common sense,” he said, in the most reasonable manner, “what’s the good of bullying me? You don’t want them to hear you, out on the lawn there⁠—do you? You women are all alike. There’s no beating a little prudence into your heads, try how one may.”

There he waited, expecting her to speak. She waited, on her side, and forced him to go on.

“Look here,” he said, “there’s no need to quarrel, you know. I don’t want to break my promise; but what can I do? I’m not the eldest son. I’m dependent on my father for every farthing I have; and I’m on bad terms with him already. Can’t you see it yourself? You’re a lady, and all that, I know. But you’re only a governess. It’s your interest as well as mine to wait till my father has provided for me. Here it is in a nutshell: if I marry you now, I’m a ruined man.”

The answer came, this time.

“You villain if you don’t marry me, I am a ruined woman!”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Don’t look at me in that way.”

“How do you expect me to look at a woman who calls me a villain to my face?”

She suddenly changed her tone. The savage element in humanity⁠—let the modern optimists who doubt its existence look at any uncultivated man (no matter how muscular), woman (no matter how beautiful), or child (no matter how young)⁠—began to show itself furtively in his eyes, to utter itself furtively in his voice. Was he to blame for the manner in which he looked at her and spoke to her? Not he! What had there been in the training of his life (at school or at college) to soften and subdue the savage element in him? About as much as there had been in the training of his ancestors (without the school or the college) five hundred years since.

It was plain that one of them must give way. The woman had the most at stake⁠—and the woman set the example of submission.

“Don’t be hard on me,” she pleaded. “I don’t mean to be hard on you. My temper gets the better of me. You know my temper. I am sorry I forgot myself. Geoffrey, my whole future is in your hands. Will you do me justice?”

She came nearer, and laid her hand persuasively on his arm.

“Haven’t you a word to say to me? No answer? Not even a look?” She waited a moment more. A marked change came over her. She turned slowly to leave the summerhouse. “I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Delamayn. I won’t detain you any longer.”

He looked at her. There was a tone in her voice that he had never heard before. There was a light in her eyes that he had never seen in them before. Suddenly and fiercely he reached out his hand, and stopped her.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

She answered, looking him straight in the face, “Where many a miserable woman has gone before me. Out of the world.”

He drew her nearer to him, and eyed her closely. Even his intelligence discovered that he had brought her to bay, and that she really meant it!

“Do you mean you will destroy yourself?” he said.

“Yes. I mean I will destroy myself.”

He dropped her arm. “By Jupiter, she does mean it!”

With that conviction in him, he pushed one of the chairs in the summerhouse to her with his foot, and signed to her to take it. “Sit down!” he said, roughly. She had frightened him⁠—and fear comes seldom to men of his type. They feel it, when it does come, with an angry distrust; they grow loud and brutal, in instinctive protest against it. “Sit down!” he repeated. She obeyed him. “Haven’t you got a word to say to me?” he asked, with an oath. No! there she sat, immovable, reckless how it ended⁠—as only women can be, when women’s minds are made up. He took a turn in the summerhouse and