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

How to be rid of them? There was the difficulty. He had made up his mind to be rid of them that day. How was he to begin?

There was no picking a quarrel with Arnold, and so beginning with him. This course of proceeding, in Arnold’s position toward Blanche, would lead to a scandal at the outset⁠—a scandal which would stand in the way of his making the right impression on Mrs. Glenarm. The woman⁠—lonely and friendless, with her sex and her position both against her if she tried to make a scandal of it⁠—the woman was the one to begin with. Settle it at once and forever with Anne; and leave Arnold to hear of it and deal with it, sooner or later, no matter which.

How was he to break it to her before the day was out?

By going to the inn and openly addressing her to her face as Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth? No! He had had enough, at Windygates, of meeting her face to face. The easy way was to write to her, and send the letter, by the first messenger he could find, to the inn. She might appear afterward at Windygates; she might follow him to his brother’s; she might appeal to his father. It didn’t matter; he had got the whip-hand of her now. “You are a married woman.” There was the one sufficient answer, which was strong enough to back him in denying anything!

He made out the letter in his own mind. “Something like this would do,” he thought, as he went round and round the walnut-tree: “You may be surprised not to have seen me. You have only yourself to thank for it. I know what took place between you and him at the inn. I have had a lawyer’s advice. You are Arnold Brinkworth’s wife. I wish you joy, and goodbye forever.” Address those lines: “To Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth;” instruct the messenger to leave the letter late that night, without waiting for an answer; start the first thing the next morning for his brother’s house; and behold, it was done!

But even here there was an obstacle⁠—one last exasperating obstacle⁠—still in the way.

If she was known at the inn by any name at all, it was by the name of Mrs. Silvester. A letter addressed to “Mrs. Arnold Brinkworth” would probably not be taken in at the door; or if it was admitted and if it was actually offered to her, she might decline to receive it, as a letter not addressed to herself. A man of readier mental resources would have seen that the name on the outside of the letter mattered little or nothing, so long as the contents were read by the person to whom they were addressed. But Geoffrey’s was the order of mind which expresses disturbance by attaching importance to trifles. He attached an absurd importance to preserving absolute consistency in his letter, outside and in. If he declared her to be Arnold Brinkworth’s wife, he must direct to her as Arnold Brinkworth’s wife; or who could tell what the law might say, or what scrape he might not get himself into by a mere scratch of the pen! The more he thought of it, the more persuaded he felt of his own cleverness here, and the hotter and the angrier he grew.

There is a way out of everything. And there was surely a way out of this, if he could only see it.

He failed to see it. After dealing with all the great difficulties, the small difficulty proved too much for him. It struck him that he might have been thinking too long about it⁠—considering that he was not accustomed to thinking long about anything. Besides, his head was getting giddy, with going mechanically round and round the tree. He irritably turned his back on the tree and struck into another path: resolved to think of something else, and then to return to his difficulty, and see it with a new eye.

Leaving his thoughts free to wander where they liked, his thoughts naturally busied themselves with the next subject that was uppermost in his mind, the subject of the footrace. In a week’s time his arrangements ought to be made. Now, as to the training, first.

He decided on employing two trainers this time. One to travel to Scotland, and begin with him at his brother’s house. The other to take him up, with a fresh eye to him, on his return to London. He turned over in his mind the performances of the formidable rival against whom he was to be matched. That other man was the swiftest runner of the two. The betting in Geoffrey’s favor was betting which calculated on the unparalleled length of the race, and on Geoffrey’s prodigious powers of endurance. How long he should “wait on” the man? Whereabouts it would be safe to “pick the man up?” How near the end to calculate the man’s exhaustion to a nicety, and “put on the spurt,” and pass him? These were nice points to decide. The deliberations of a pedestrian-privy-council would be required to help him under this heavy responsibility. What men could he trust? He could trust A. and B.⁠—both of them authorities: both of them staunch. Query about C.? As an authority, unexceptionable; as a man, doubtful. The problem relating to C. brought him to a standstill⁠—and declined to be solved, even then. Never mind! he could always take the advice of A. and B. In the meantime devote C. to the infernal regions; and, thus dismissing him, try and think of something else. What else? Mrs. Glenarm? Oh, bother the women! one of them is the same as another. They all waddle when they run; and they all fill their stomachs before dinner with sloppy tea. That’s the only difference between women and men⁠—the rest is nothing but a weak imitation of us. Devote the women to the infernal regions; and, so dismissing them, try and think of