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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“I want a plain answer to my question—‘yes, or no.’ ”
“Let me speak, will you! A man has a right to explain himself, I suppose?”
Mr. Kendrew stopped him by a gesture of disgust.
“I won’t trouble you to explain yourself,” he said. “I prefer to leave the house. You have given me a lesson, Sir, which I shall not forget. I find that one man may have known another from the days when they were both boys, and may have seen nothing but the false surface of him in all that time. I am ashamed of having ever been your friend. You are a stranger to me from this moment.”
With those words he left the room.
“That is a curiously hotheaded man,” remarked Mr. Delamayn. “If you will allow me, I think I’ll change my mind. I’ll have a glass of wine.”
Mr. Vanborough rose to his feet without replying, and took a turn in the room impatiently. Scoundrel as he was—in intention, if not yet in act—the loss of the oldest friend he had in the world staggered him for the moment.
“This is an awkward business, Delamayn,” he said. “What would you advise me to do?”
Mr. Delamayn shook his head, and sipped his claret.
“I decline to advise you,” he answered. “I take no responsibility, beyond the responsibility of stating the law as it stands, in your case.”
Mr. Vanborough sat down again at the table, to consider the alternative of asserting or not asserting his freedom from the marriage tie. He had not had much time thus far for turning the matter over in his mind. But for his residence on the Continent the question of the flaw in his marriage might no doubt have been raised long since. As things were, the question had only taken its rise in a chance conversation with Mr. Delamayn in the summer of that year.
For some minutes the lawyer sat silent, sipping his wine, and the husband sat silent, thinking his own thoughts. The first change that came over the scene was produced by the appearance of a servant in the dining-room.
Mr. Vanborough looked up at the man with a sudden outbreak of anger.
“What do you want here?”
The man was a well-bred English servant. In other words, a human machine, doing its duty impenetrably when it was once wound up. He had his words to speak, and he spoke them.
“There is a lady at the door, Sir, who wishes to see the house.”
“The house is not to be seen at this time of the evening.”
The machine had a message to deliver, and delivered it.
“The lady desired me to present her apologies, Sir. I was to tell you she was much pressed for time. This was the last house on the house agent’s list, and her coachman is stupid about finding his way in strange places.”
“Hold your tongue, and tell the lady to go to the devil!”
Mr. Delamayn interfered—partly in the interests of his client, partly in the interests of propriety.
“You attach some importance, I think, to letting this house as soon as possible?” he said.
“Of course I do!”
“Is it wise—on account of a momentary annoyance—to lose an opportunity of laying your hand on a tenant?”
“Wise or not, it’s an infernal nuisance to be disturbed by a stranger.”
“Just as you please. I don’t wish to interfere. I only wish to say—in case you are thinking of my convenience as your guest—that it will be no nuisance to me.”
The servant impenetrably waited. Mr. Vanborough impatiently gave way.
“Very well. Let her in. Mind, if she comes here, she’s only to look into the room, and go out again. If she wants to ask questions, she must go to the agent.”
Mr. Delamayn interfered once more, in the interests, this time, of the lady of the house.
“Might it not be desirable,” he suggested, “to consult Mrs. Vanborough before you quite decide?”
“Where’s your mistress?”
“In the garden, or the paddock, Sir—I am not sure which.”
“We can’t send all over the grounds in search of her. Tell the housemaid, and show the lady in.”
The servant withdrew. Mr. Delamayn helped himself to a second glass of wine.
“Excellent claret,” he said. “Do you get it direct from Bordeaux?”
There was no answer. Mr. Vanborough had returned to the contemplation of the alternative between freeing himself or not freeing himself from the marriage tie. One of his elbows was on the table, he bit fiercely at his fingernails. He muttered between his teeth, “What am I to do?”
A sound of rustling silk made itself gently audible in the passage outside. The door opened, and the lady who had come to see the house appeared in the dining-room.
IVShe was tall and elegant; beautifully dressed, in the happiest combination of simplicity and splendor. A light summer veil hung over her face. She lifted it, and made her apologies for disturbing the gentlemen over their wine, with the unaffected ease and grace of a highly-bred woman.
“Pray accept my excuses for this intrusion. I am ashamed to disturb you. One look at the room will be quite enough.”
Thus far she had addressed Mr. Delamayn, who happened to be nearest to her. Looking round the room her eye fell on Mr. Vanborough. She started, with a loud exclamation of astonishment. “You!” she said. “Good Heavens! who would have thought of meeting you here?”
Mr. Vanborough, on his side, stood petrified.
“Lady Jane!” he exclaimed. “Is it possible?”
He barely looked at her while she spoke. His eyes wandered guiltily toward the window which led into the garden. The situation was a terrible one—equally terrible if his wife discovered Lady Jane, or if Lady Jane discovered his wife. For the moment nobody was visible on the lawn. There was time, if the chance only offered—there was time for him to get the visitor out of the house. The visitor, innocent of all knowledge of the truth, gaily offered him her hand.
“I believe in mesmerism for the first time,” she said. “This is an instance of magnetic sympathy, Mr. Vanborough. An invalid friend of mine wants a furnished house at Hampstead. I undertake to find one
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