Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📖

“I said she was probably afraid—”

“Stop! I can’t be told to my face that I have failed to do my duty by Blanche. No, Sir Patrick! I can bear a great deal; but I can’t bear that. After having been more than a mother to your dear brother’s child; after having been an elder sister to Blanche; after having toiled—I say toiled, Sir Patrick!—to cultivate her intelligence (with the sweet lines of the poet ever present to my memory: ‘Delightful task to rear the tender mind, and teach the young idea how to shoot!’); after having done all I have done—a place in the carriage only yesterday, and a visit to the most interesting relic of feudal times in Perthshire—after having sacrificed all I have sacrificed, to be told that I have behaved in such a manner to Blanche as to frighten her when I ask her to confide in me, is a little too cruel. I have a sensitive—an unduly sensitive nature, dear Sir Patrick. Forgive me for wincing when I am wounded. Forgive me for feeling it when the wound is dealt me by a person whom I revere.”

Her ladyship put her handkerchief to her eyes. Any other man would have taken off the blister. Sir Patrick pressed it harder than ever.

“You quite mistake me,” he replied. “I meant that Blanche was afraid to tell you the true cause of her illness. The true cause is anxiety about Miss Silvester.”

Lady Lundie emitted another scream—a loud scream this time—and closed her eyes in horror.

“I can run out of the house,” cried her ladyship, wildly. “I can fly to the uttermost corners of the earth; but I can not hear that person’s name mentioned! No, Sir Patrick! not in my pre sence! not in my room! not while I am mistress at Windygates House!”

“I am sorry to say any thing that is disagreeable to you, Lady Lundie. But the nature of my errand here obliges me to touch—as lightly as possible—on something which has happened in your house without your knowledge.”

Lady Lundie suddenly opened her eyes, and became the picture of attention. A casual observer might have supposed her ladyship to be not wholly inaccessible to the vulgar emotion of curiosity.

“A visitor came to Windygates yesterday, while we were all at lunch,” proceeded Sir Patrick. “She—”

Lady Lundie seized the scarlet memorandum-book, and stopped her brother-in-law, before he could get any further. Her ladyship’s next words escaped her lips spasmodically, like words let at intervals out of a trap.

“I undertake—as a woman accustomed to self-restraint, Sir Patrick—I undertake to control myself, on one condition. I won’t have the name mentioned. I won’t have the sex mentioned. Say, ‘The Person,’ if you please. ‘The Person,’ ” continued Lady Lundie, opening her memorandum-book and taking up her pen, “committed an audacious invasion of my premises yesterday?”

Sir Patrick bowed. Her ladyship made a note—a fiercely-penned note that scratched the paper viciously—and then proceeded to examine her brother-in-law, in the capacity of witness.

“What part of my house did ‘The Person’ invade? Be very careful, Sir Patrick! I propose to place myself under the protection of a justice of the peace; and this is a memorandum of my statement. The library—did I understand you to say? Just so—the library.”

“Add,” said Sir Patrick, with another pressure on the blister, “that The Person had an interview with Blanche in the library.”

Lady Lundie’s pen suddenly stuck in the paper, and scattered a little shower of ink-drops all round it. “The library,” repeated her ladyship, in a voice suggestive of approaching suffocation. “I undertake to control myself, Sir Patrick! Any thing missing from the library?”

“Nothing missing, Lady Lundie, but The Person herself. She—”

“No, Sir Patrick! I won’t have it! In the name of my own sex, I won’t have it!”

“Pray pardon me—I forgot that ‘she’ was a prohibited pronoun on the present occasion. The Person has written a farewell letter to Blanche, and has gone nobody knows where. The distress produced by these events is alone answerable for what has happened to Blanche this morning. If you bear that in mind—and if you remember what your own opinion is of Miss Silvester—you will understand why Blanche hesitated to admit you into her confidence.”

There he waited for a reply. Lady Lundie was too deeply absorbed in completing her memorandum to be conscious of his presence in the room.

” ‘Carriage to be at the door at two-thirty,’ ” said Lady Lundie, repeating the final words of the memorandum while she wrote them. ” ‘Inquire for the nearest justice of the peace, and place the privacy of Windygates under the protection of the law.’—I beg your pardon!” exclaimed her ladyship, becoming conscious again of Sir Patrick’s presence. “Have I missed any thing particularly painful? Pray mention it if I have!”

“You have missed nothing of the slightest importance,” returned Sir Patrick. “I have placed you in possession of facts which you had a right to know; and we have now only to return to our medical friend’s report on Blanche’s health. You were about to favor me, I think, with the Prognosis?”

“Diagnosis!” said her ladyship, spitefully. “I had forgotten at the time—I remember now. Prognosis is entirely wrong.”

“I sit corrected, Lady Lundie. Diagnosis.”

“You have informed me, Sir Patrick, that you were already acquainted with the Diagnosis. It is quite needless for me to repeat it now.”

“I was anxious to correct my own impression, my dear lady, by comparing it with yours.”

“You are very good. You are a learned man. I am only a poor ignorant woman. Your impression can not possibly require correcting by mine.”

“My impression, Lady Lundie, was that our so friend recommended moral, rather than medical, treatment for Blanche. If we can turn her thoughts from the painful subject on which they are now dwelling, we shall do all that is needful. Those were his own words, as I remember them. Do you confirm me?”

“Can I presume to dispute with you, Sir Patrick? You are a master of refined irony, I know. I am afraid it’s all thrown away on poor me.”

(The law kept its wonderful temper! The law met the most exasperating of living women with a counter-power of defensive aggravation all its own!)

“I take that as confirming me, Lady Lundie. Thank you. Now, as to the method of carrying out our friend’s advice. The method seems plain. All we can do to divert Blanche’s mind is to turn Blanche’s attention to some other subject of reflection less painful than the subject which occupies her now. Do you agree, so far?”

“Why place the whole responsibility on my shoulders?” inquired Lady Lundie.

“Out of profound deference for your opinion,” answered Sir Patrick. “Strictly speaking, no doubt, any serious responsibility rests with me. I am Blanche’s guardian—”

“Thank God!” cried Lady Lundie, with a perfect explosion of pious fervor.

“I hear an outburst of devout thankfulness,” remarked Sir Patrick. “Am I to take it as expressing—let me say—some little doubt, on your part, as to the prospect of managing Blanche successfully, under present circumstances?”

Lady Lundie’s temper began to give way again—exactly as her brother-in-law had anticipated.

“You are to take it,” she said, “as expressing my conviction that I saddled myself with the charge of an incorrigibly heartless, obstinate and perverse girl, when I undertook the care of Blanche.”

“Did you say ‘incorrigibly?’ ”

“I said ‘incorrigibly.’ ”

“If the case is as hopeless as that, my dear Madam—as Blanche’s guardian, I ought to find means to relieve you of the charge of Blanche.”

“Nobody shall relieve me of a duty that I have once undertaken!” retorted Lady Lundie. “Not if I die at my post!”

“Suppose it was consistent with your duty,” pleaded Sir Patrick, “to be relieved at your post? Suppose it was in harmony with that ‘self-sacrifice’ which is ‘the motto of women?’ ”

“I don’t understand you, Sir Patrick. Be so good as to explain yourself.”

Sir Patrick assumed a new character—the character of a hesitating man. He cast a look of respectful inquiry at his sister-in-law, sighed, and shook his head.

“No!” he said. “It would be asking too much. Even with your high standard of duty, it would be asking too much.”

“Nothing which you can ask me in the name of duty is too much.”

“No! no! Let me remind you. Human nature has its limits.”

“A Christian gentlewoman’s sense of duty knows no limits.”

“Oh, surely yes!”

“Sir Patrick! after what I have just said your perseverance in doubting me amounts to something like an insult!”

“Don’t say that! Let me put a case. Let’s suppose the future interests of another person depend on your saying, Yes—when all your own most cherished ideas and opinions urge you to say, No. Do you really mean to tell me that you could trample your own convictions under foot, if it could be shown that the purely abstract consideration of duty was involved in the sacrifice?”

“Yes!” cried Lady Lundie, mounting the pedestal of her virtue on the spot. “Yes—without a moment’s hesitation!”

“I sit corrected, Lady Lundie. You embolden me to proceed. Allow me to ask (after what I just heard)—whether it is not your duty to act on advice given for Blanche’s benefit, by one the highest medical authorities in England?” Her ladyship admitted that it was her duty; pending a more favorable opportunity for contradicting her brother-in-law.

“Very good,” pursued Sir Patrick. “Assuming that Blanche is like most other human beings, and has some prospect of happiness to contemplate, if she could only be made to see it—are we not bound to make her see it, by our moral obligation to act on the medical advice?” He cast a courteously-persuasive look at her ladyship, and paused in the most innocent manner for a reply.

If Lady Lundie had not been bent—thanks to the irritation fomented by her brother-in-law—on disputing the ground with him, inch by inch, she must have seen signs, by this time, of the snare that was being set for her. As it was, she saw nothing but the opportunity of disparaging Blanche and contradicting Sir Patrick.

“If my step-daughter had any such prospect as you describe,” she answered, “I should of course say, Yes. But Blanche’s is an ill-regulated mind. An ill-regulated mind has no prospect of happiness.”

“Pardon me,” said Sir Patrick. “Blanche has a prospect of happiness. In other words, Blanche has a prospect of being married. And what is more, Arnold Brinkworth is ready to marry her as soon as the settlements can be prepared.”

Lady Lundie started in her chair—turned crimson with rage—and opened her lips to speak. Sir Patrick rose to his feet, and went on before she could utter a word.

“I beg to relieve you, Lady Lundie—by means which you have just acknowledged it to be your duty to accept—of all further charge of an incorrigible girl. As Blanche’s guardian, I have the honor of proposing that her marriage be advanced to a day to be hereafter named in the first fortnight of the ensuing month.”

In those words he closed the trap which he had set for his sister-in-law, and waited to see what came of it.

A thoroughly spiteful woman, thoroughly roused, is capable of subordinating every other consideration to the one imperative necessity of gratifying her spite. There was but one way now of turning the tables on Sir Patrick—and Lady Lundie took it. She hated him, at that moment, so intensely, that not even the