Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (e book reader pc .txt) 📕
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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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With that formidable announcement, Lady Lundie closed the conversation; and Mrs. Glenarm rose to take her leave.
“We meet at the Junction, dear Lady Lundie?”
“At the Junction, on Saturday.”
Eleventh Scene Sir Patrick’s House XLII The Smoking-Room Window“I can’t believe it! I won’t believe it! You’re trying to part me from my husband—you’re trying to set me against my dearest friend. It’s infamous. It’s horrible. What have I done to you? Oh, my head! my head! Are you trying to drive me mad?”
Pale and wild; her hands twisted in her hair; her feet hurrying her aimlessly to and fro in the room—so Blanche answered her stepmother, when the object of Lady Lundie’s pilgrimage had been accomplished, and the cruel truth had been plainly told.
Her ladyship sat, superbly composed, looking out through the window at the placid landscape of woods and fields which surrounded Ham Farm.
“I was prepared for this outbreak,” she said, sadly. “These wild words relieve your overburdened heart, my poor child. I can wait, Blanche—I can wait!”
Blanche stopped, and confronted Lady Lundie.
“You and I never liked each other,” she said. “I wrote you a pert letter from this place. I have always taken Anne’s part against you. I have shown you plainly—rudely, I dare say—that I was glad to be married and get away from you. This is not your revenge, is it?”
“Oh, Blanche, Blanche, what thoughts to think! what words to say! I can only pray for you.”
“I am mad, Lady Lundie. You bear with mad people. Bear with me. I have been hardly more than a fortnight married. I love him—I love her—with all my heart. Remember what you have told me about them. Remember! remember! remember!”
She reiterated the words with a low cry of pain. Her hands went up to her head again; and she returned restlessly to pacing this way and that in the room.
Lady Lundie tried the effect of a gentle remonstrance. “For your own sake,” she said, “don’t persist in estranging yourself from me. In this dreadful trial, I am the only friend you have.”
Blanche came back to her stepmother’s chair; and looked at her steadily, in silence. Lady Lundie submitted to inspection—and bore it perfectly.
“Look into my heart,” she said. “Blanche! it bleeds for you!”
Blanche heard, without heeding. Her mind was painfully intent on its own thoughts. “You are a religious woman,” she said, abruptly. “Will you swear on your Bible, that what you told me is true?”
“My Bible!” repeated Lady Lundie with sorrowful emphasis. “Oh, my child! have you no part in that precious inheritance? Is it not your Bible, too?”
A momentary triumph showed itself in Blanche’s face. “You daren’t swear it!” she said. “That’s enough for me!”
She turned away scornfully. Lady Lundie caught her by the hand, and drew her sharply back. The suffering saint disappeared, and the woman who was no longer to be trifled with took her place.
“There must be an end to this,” she said. “You don’t believe what I have told you. Have you courage enough to put it to the test?”
Blanche started, and released her hand. She trembled a little. There was a horrible certainty of conviction expressed in Lady Lundie’s sudden change of manner.
“How?” she asked.
“You shall see. Tell me the truth, on your side, first. Where is Sir Patrick? Is he really out, as his servant told me?”
“Yes. He is out with the farm bailiff. You have taken us all by surprise. You wrote that we were to expect you by the next train.”
“When does the next train arrive? It is eleven o’clock now.”
“Between one and two.”
“Sir Patrick will not be back till then?”
“Not till then.”
“Where is Mr. Brinkworth?”
“My husband?”
“Your husband—if you like. Is he out, too?”
“He is in the smoking-room.”
“Do you mean the long room, built out from the back of the house?”
“Yes.”
“Come downstairs at once with me.”
Blanche advanced a step—and drew back. “What do you want of me?” she asked, inspired by a sudden distrust.
Lady Lundie turned round, and looked at her impatiently.
“Can’t you see yet,” she said, sharply, “that your interest and my interest in this matter are one? What have I told you?”
“Don’t repeat it!”
“I must repeat it! I have told you that Arnold Brinkworth was privately at Craig Fernie, with Miss Silvester, in the acknowledged character of her husband—when we supposed him to be visiting the estate left him by his aunt. You refuse to believe it—and I am about to put it to the proof. Is it your interest or is it not, to know whether this man deserves the blind belief that you place in him?”
Blanche trembled from head to foot, and made no reply.
“I am going into the garden, to speak to Mr. Brinkworth through the smoking-room window,” pursued her ladyship. “Have you the courage to come with me; to wait behind out of sight; and to hear what he says with his own lips? I am not afraid of putting it to that test. Are you?”
The tone in which she asked the question roused Blanche’s spirit.
“If I believed him to be guilty,” she said, resolutely, “I should not have the courage. I believe him to be innocent. Lead the way, Lady Lundie, as soon as you please.”
They left the room—Blanche’s own room at Ham Farm—and descended to the hall. Lady Lundie stopped, and consulted the railway timetable hanging near the house-door.
“There is a train to London at a quarter to twelve,” she said. “How long does it take to walk to the station?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You will soon know. Answer
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