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

submitted. She put away from her the insolence which had tried to sting, and went on, gently and firmly, as if nothing had happened.

“The person who wrote to you anonymously,” she said, “alluded to a correspondence. He is no longer in possession of it. The correspondence has passed into hands which may be trusted to respect it. It will be put to no base use in the future—I answer for that.”

“You answer for that?” repeated Mrs. Glenarm. She suddenly leaned forward over the piano, and fixed her eyes in unconcealed scrutiny on Anne’s face. The violent temper, so often found in combination with the weak nature, began to show itself in her rising color, and her lowering brow. “How do you know what the person wrote?” she asked. “How do you know that the correspondence has passed into other hands? Who are you?” Before Anne could answer her, she sprang to her feet, electrified by a new idea. “The man who wrote to me spoke of something else besides a correspondence. He spoke of a woman. I have found you out!” she exclaimed, with a burst of jealous fury. “You are the woman!”

Anne rose on her side, still in firm possession of her self-control.

“Mrs. Glenarm,” she said, calmly, “I warn—no, I entreat you—not to take that tone with me. Compose yourself; and I promise to satisfy you that you are more interested than you are willing to believe in what I have still to say. Pray bear with me for a little longer. I admit that you have guessed right. I own that I am the miserable woman who has been ruined and deserted by Geoffrey Delamayn.”

“It’s false!” cried Mrs. Glenarm. “You wretch! Do you come to me with your trumped-up story? What does Julius Delamayn mean by exposing me to this?” Her indignation at finding herself in the same room with Anne broke its way through, not the restraints only, but the common decencies of politeness. “I’ll ring for the servants!” she said. “I’ll have you turned out of the house.”

She tried to cross the fire-place to ring the bell. Anne, who was standing nearest to it, stepped forward at the same moment. Without saying a word, she motioned with her hand to the other woman to stand back. There was a pause. The two waited, with their eyes steadily fixed on one another—each with her resolution laid bare to the other’s view. In a moment more, the finer nature prevailed. Mrs. Glenarm drew back a step in silence.

“Listen to me,” said Anne.

“Listen to you?” repeated Mrs. Glenarm. “You have no right to be in this house. You have no right to force yourself in here. Leave the room!”

Anne’s patience—so firmly and admirably preserved thus far—began to fail her at last.

“Take care, Mrs. Glenarm!” she said, still struggling with herself. “I am not naturally a patient woman. Trouble has done much to tame my temper—but endurance has its limits. You have reached the limits of mine. I have a claim to be heard—and after what you have said to me, I will be heard!”

“You have no claim! You shameless woman, you are married already. I know the man’s name. Arnold Brinkworth.”

“Did Geoffrey Delamayn tell you that?”

“I decline to answer a woman who speaks of Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn in that familiar way.”

Anne advanced a step nearer.

“Did Geoffrey Delamayn tell you that?” she repeated.

There was a light in her eyes, there was a ring in her voice, which showed that she was roused at last. Mrs. Glenarm answered her, this time.

“He did tell me.”

“He lied!”

“He did not! He knew. I believe him. I don’t believe you.”

“If he told you that I was any thing but a single woman—if he told you that Arnold Brinkworth was married to any body but Miss Lundie of Windygates—I say again he lied!”

“I say again—I believe him, and not you.”

“You believe I am Arnold Brinkworth’s wife?”

“I am certain of it.”

“You tell me that to my face?”

“I tell you to your face—you may have been Geoffrey Delamayn’s mistress; you are Arnold Brinkworth’s wife.”

At those words the long restrained anger leaped up in Anne—all the more hotly for having been hitherto so steadily controlled. In one breathless moment the whirlwind of her indignation swept away, not only all remembrance of the purpose which had brought her to Swanhaven, but all sense even of the unpardonable wrong which she had suffered at Geoffrey’s hands. If he had been there, at that moment, and had offered to redeem his pledge, she would have consented to marry him, while Mrs. Glenarm s eye was on her—no matter whether she destroyed herself in her first cool moment afterward or not. The small sting had planted itself at last in the great nature. The noblest woman is only a woman, after all!

“I forbid your marriage to Geoffrey Delamayn! I insist on his performing the promise he gave me, to make me his wife! I have got it here in his own words, in his own writing. On his soul, he swears it to me—he will redeem his pledge. His mistress, did you say? His wife, Mrs. Glenarm, before the week is out!”

In those wild words she cast back the taunt—with the letter held in triumph in her hand.

Daunted for the moment by the doubt now literally forced on her, that Anne might really have the claim on Geoffrey which she advanced, Mrs. Glenarm answered nevertheless with the obstinacy of a woman brought to bay—with a resolution not to be convinced by conviction itself.

“I won’t give him up!” she cried. “Your letter is a forgery. You have no proof. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t give him up!” she repeated, with the impotent iteration of an angry child.

Anne pointed disdainfully to the letter that she held. “Here is his pledged and written word,” she said. “While I live, you will never be his wife.”

“I shall be his wife the day after the race. I am going to him in London—to warn him against You!”

“You will find me in London, before you—with this in my hand. Do you know his writing?”

She held up the letter, open. Mrs. Glenarm’s hand flew out with the stealthy rapidity of a cat’s paw, to seize and destroy it. Quick as she was, her rival was quicker still. For an instant they faced each other breathless—one with the letter held behind her; one with her hand still stretched out.

At the same moment—before a word more had passed between them—the glass door opened; and Julius Delamayn appeared in the room.

He addressed himself to Anne.

“We decided, on the terrace,” he said, quietly, “that you should speak to Mrs. Glenarm, if Mrs. Glenarm wished it. Do you think it desirable that the interview should be continued any longer?”

Anne’s head drooped on her breast. The fiery anger in her was quenched in an instant.

“I have been cruelly provoked, Mr. Delamayn,” she answered. “But I have no right to plead that.” She looked up at him for a moment. The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks. She bent her head again, and hid them from him. “The only atonement I can make,” she said, “is to ask your pardon, and to leave the house.”

In silence, she turned away to the door. In silence, Julius Delamayn paid her the trifling courtesy of opening it for her. She went out.

Mrs. Glenarm’s indignation—suspended for the moment—transferred itself to Julius.

“If I have been entrapped into seeing that woman, with your approval,” she said, haughtily, “I owe it to myself, Mr. Delamayn, to follow her example, and to leave your house.”

“I authorized her to ask you for an interview, Mrs. Glenarm. If she has presumed on the permission that I gave her, I sincerely regret it, and I beg you to accept my apologies. At the same time, I may venture to add, in defense of my conduct, that I thought her—and think her still—a woman to be pitied more than to be blamed.”

“To be pitied did you say?” asked Mrs. Glenarm, doubtful whether her ears had not deceived her.

“To be pitied,” repeated Julius.

“You may find it convenient, Mr. Delamayn, to forget what your brother has told us about that person. I happen to remember it.”

“So do I, Mrs. Glenarm. But, with my experience of Geoffrey—” He hesitated, and ran his fingers nervously over the strings of his violin.

“You don’t believe him?” said Mrs. Glenarm.

Julius declined to admit that he doubted his brother’s word, to the lady who was about to become his brother’s wife.

“I don’t quite go that length,” he said. “I find it difficult to reconcile what Geoffrey has told us, with Miss Silvester’s manner and appearance—”

“Her appearance!” cried Mrs. Glenarm, in a transport of astonishment and disgust. “Her appearance! Oh, the men! I beg your pardon—I ought to have remembered that there is no accounting for tastes. Go on—pray go on!”

“Shall we compose ourselves with a little music?” suggested Julius.

“I particularly request you will go on,” answered Mrs. Glenarm, emphatically. “You find it ‘impossible to reconcile’—”

“I said ‘difficult.’ ”

“Oh, very well. Difficult to reconcile what Geoffrey told us, with Miss Silvester’s manner and appearance. What next? You had something else to say, when I was so rude as to interrupt you. What was it?”

“Only this,” said Julius. “I don’t find it easy to understand Sir Patrick Lundie’s conduct in permitting Mr. Brinkworth to commit bigamy with his niece.”

“Wait a minute! The marriage of that horrible woman to Mr. Brinkworth was a private marriage. Of course, Sir Patrick knew nothing about it!”

Julius owned that this might be possible, and made a second attempt to lead the angry lady back to the piano. Useless, once more! Though she shrank from confessing it to herself, Mrs. Glenarm’s belief in the genuineness of her lover’s defense had been shaken. The tone taken by Julius—moderate as it was—revived the first startling suspicion of the credibility of Geoffrey’s statement which Anne’s language and conduct had forced on Mrs. Glenarm. She dropped into the nearest chair, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. “You always hated poor Geoffrey,” she said, with a burst of tears. “And now you’re defaming him to me!”

Julius managed her admirably. On the point of answering her seriously, he checked himself. “I always hated poor Geoffrey,” he repeated, with a smile. “You ought to be the last person to say that, Mrs. Glenarm! I brought him all the way from London expressly to introduce him to you.”

“Then I wish you had left him in London!” retorted Mrs. Glenarm, shifting suddenly from tears to temper. “I was a happy woman before I met your brother. I can’t give him up!” she burst out, shifting back again from temper to tears. “I don’t care if he has deceived me. I won’t let another woman have him! I will be his wife!” She threw herself theatrically on her knees before Julius. “Oh, do help me to find out the truth!” she said. “Oh, Julius, pity me! I am so fond of him!”

There was genuine distress in her face, there was true feeling in her voice. Who would have believed that there were reserves of merciless insolence and heartless cruelty in this woman—and that they had been lavishly poured out on a fallen sister not five minutes since?

“I will do