Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (e book reader pc .txt) 📕
Description
Man and Wife is the ninth novel by Wilkie Collins, and was published in serial form in 1870. Like many of his other novels it has a complex plot and tackles social issues, in this case the then-lax state of the marriage laws, particularly in Scotland and Ireland. As always, Collins deals carefully but frankly with human personal behavior. To avoid offending Victorian morals too greatly, much is implied rather than stated outright. Nevertheless, even dealing with such matters at all led to his novels being derided as “sensation fiction” by his critics. By today’s standards, of course, they wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.
In Man and Wife, the main character Anne Silvester has fallen pregnant to a muscular and handsome, but boorish man, Geoffrey Delamayn, to whom she is not married. She is working as a governess at a house in Scotland. Anne arranges to meet Delamayn secretly at a garden party and angrily demands that he fulfill his promise to marry her, that very day. He very reluctantly agrees to a secret, private marriage, knowing that a public marriage would badly affect his inheritance prospects. How is the marriage to be arranged quickly but kept quiet? Anne has a plan based on her understanding of the looseness of the marriage laws in Scotland. Naturally, of course, things go badly wrong with this plan and many complexities arise.
Collins is deeply critical of the state of contemporary marriage laws, both in how loosely they were framed, and in how little power over their own lives they gave to women once they were married, even if married to a brutal man. He also uses this novel to denounce the worship of sporting heroes and the obsession with physical prowess rather than mental superiority as a primary indication of male virtue.
Though not as popular as his novels The Woman in White and The Moonstone, Man and Wife received a good critical reception when it was released and was a commercial success.
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- Author: Wilkie Collins
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“Quite correct.”
“Is what you know about Mr. Delamayn connected with anything that you know about Miss Silvester?”
If Arnold had felt himself at liberty to answer that question, Sir Patrick’s suspicions would have been aroused, and Sir Patrick’s resolution would have forced a full disclosure from him before he left the house.
It was getting on to midnight. The first hour of the wedding-day was at hand, as the truth made its final effort to struggle into light. The dark phantoms of trouble and terror to come were waiting near them both at that moment. Arnold hesitated again—hesitated painfully. Sir Patrick paused for his answer. The clock in the hall struck the quarter to twelve.
“I can’t tell you!” said Arnold.
“Is it a secret?”
“Yes.”
“Committed to your honor?”
“Doubly committed to my honor.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Geoffrey and I have quarreled since he took me into his confidence. I am doubly bound to respect his confidence after that.”
“Is the cause of your quarrel a secret also?”
“Yes.”
Sir Patrick looked Arnold steadily in the face.
“I have felt an inveterate distrust of Mr. Delamayn from the first,” he said. “Answer me this. Have you any reason to think—since we first talked about your friend in the summerhouse at Windygates—that my opinion of him might have been the right one after all?”
“He has bitterly disappointed me,” answered Arnold. “I can say no more.”
“You have had very little experience of the world,” proceeded Sir Patrick. “And you have just acknowledged that you have had reason to distrust your experience of your friend. Are you quite sure that you are acting wisely in keeping his secret from me? Are you quite sure that you will not repent the course you are taking tonight?” He laid a marked emphasis on those last words. “Think, Arnold,” he added, kindly. “Think before you answer.”
“I feel bound in honor to keep his secret,” said Arnold. “No thinking can alter that.”
Sir Patrick rose, and brought the interview to an end.
“There is nothing more to be said.” With those words he gave Arnold his hand, and, pressing it cordially, wished him good night.
Going out into the hall, Arnold found Blanche alone, looking at the barometer.
“The glass is at Set Fair, my darling,” he whispered. “Good night for the last time!”
He took her in his arms, and kissed her. At the moment when he released her Blanche slipped a little note into his hand.
“Read it,” she whispered, “when you are alone at the inn.”
So they parted on the eve of their wedding day.
XXXV The DayThe promise of the weatherglass was fulfilled. The sun shone on Blanche’s marriage.
At nine in the morning the first of the proceedings of the day began. It was essentially of a clandestine nature. The bride and bridegroom evaded the restraints of lawful authority, and presumed to meet together privately, before they were married, in the conservatory at Ham Farm.
“You have read my letter, Arnold?”
“I have come here to answer it, Blanche. But why not have told me? Why write?”
“Because I put off telling you so long; and because I didn’t know how you might take it; and for fifty other reasons. Never mind! I’ve made my confession. I haven’t a single secret now which is not your secret too. There’s time to say no, Arnold, if you think I ought to have no room in my heart for anybody but you. My uncle tells me I am obstinate and wrong in refusing to give Anne up. If you agree with him, say the word, dear, before you make me your wife.”
“Shall I tell you what I said to Sir Patrick last night?”
“About this?”
“Yes. The confession (as you call it) which you make in your pretty note, is the very thing that Sir Patrick spoke to me about in the dining-room before I went away. He told me your heart was set on finding Miss Silvester. And he asked me what I meant to do about it when we were married.”
“And you said—?”
Arnold repeated his answer to Sir Patrick, with fervid embellishments of the original language, suitable to the emergency. Blanche’s delight expressed itself in the form of two unblushing outrages on propriety, committed in close succession. She threw her arms round Arnold’s neck; and she actually kissed him three hours before the consent of State and Church sanctioned her in taking that proceeding. Let us shudder—but let us not blame her. These are the consequences of free institutions.
“Now,” said Arnold, “it’s my turn to take to pen and ink. I have a letter to write before we are married as well as you. Only there’s this difference between us—I want you to help me.”
“Who are you going to write to?”
“To my lawyer in Edinburgh. There will be no time unless I do it now. We start for Switzerland this afternoon—don’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. I want to relieve your mind, my darling, before we go. Wouldn’t you like to know—while we are away—that the right people are on the lookout for Miss Silvester? Sir Patrick has told me of the last place that she has been traced to—and my lawyer will set the right people at work. Come and help me to put it in the proper language, and the whole thing will be in train.”
“Oh, Arnold! can I ever love you enough to reward you for this!”
“We shall see, Blanche—in Switzerland.”
They audaciously penetrated, arm in arm, into Sir Patrick’s own study—entirely at their disposal, as they well knew, at that hour of the morning. With Sir Patrick’s pens and Sir Patrick’s paper they produced a letter of instructions, deliberately reopening the investigation which Sir Patrick’s superior wisdom had closed. Neither pains nor money were to be spared by the lawyer in at once taking measures (beginning at Glasgow) to find Anne. The report of the result was to be
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