Man and Wife

Wilkie Collins

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9783849658335
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

If the only test of fiction is that it shall secure interest, then Mr. Wilkie Collins has succeeded to the full with this novel. The construction is almost perfect, and the interest is so graduated, and the plot so skillfully developed, that no portion can be skipped without loss. Mr. Collins is facile princeps in invention, and introduces no detail that is not of importance in reference to the whole. His novels, indeed, are too complete and self-contained to wholly satisfy any taste that is still simple enough to look at life as it is with anything of the pause and wonder that must often overtake the disinterested observer. There are so many loose threads always to be seen even upon the right side of the tapestry of life, that such an one is persecuted with the wish to get a look at the other side, which remains inscrutably hidden. No real story can ever be so completely told that everything at the end can be satisfactorily wound-up and disposed of. Mr. Wilkie Collins's characters seldom go their own way. They are kept rigidly moving on the puppet-strings of his plot. He is versatile in his knack of pulling a very large number about so cleverly that, while they cross and recross each other's paths in every imaginable way, they never really knock against each other. Take an instance: was it at all likely that Mr. Arnold Brinkworth, who was wholly unsuspicious of the risk he was running in visiting, as his wife, at Craig Fernie "Hottle, " the woman Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn had promised to marry, should have been so oblivious as not to have looked after the letter which he had carried to Anne Silvester, and with whose contents he was fully acquainted? Had he been alive to the risks he ran, his want of attention to her and her interests might have had some excuse. But the letter needed to be lost, to make the leading complication of the novel; and accordingly Bishopriggs, the smug waiter at the "hottle, " is called in to do his part. All the complications arise out of most glaring improbabilities; it is only Mr. Wilkie Collins's consummate invention which, by decoy circlings, diverts the mind from dwelling on them in a way which would prove fatal to the story.

PART THE SECOND. THE MARCH OF TIME.

V.

ADVANCING from time past to time present, the Prologue leaves the date last attained (the summer of eighteen hundred and fifty-five), and travels on through an interval of twelve years—tells who lived, who died, who prospered, and who failed among the persons concerned in the tragedy at the Hampstead villa—and, this done, leaves the reader at the opening of THE STORY in the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight.

The record begins with a marriage—the marriage of Mr. Vanborough and Lady Jane Parnell.

In three months from the memorable day when his solicitor had informed him that he was a free man, Mr. Vanborough possessed the wife he desired, to grace the head of his table and to push his fortunes in the world—the Legislature of Great Britain being the humble servant of his treachery, and the respectable accomplice of his crime.

He entered Parliament. He gave (thanks to his wife) six of the grandest dinners, and two of the most crowded balls of the season. He made a successful first speech in the House of Commons. He endowed a church in a poor neighborhood. He wrote an article which attracted attention in a quarterly review. He discovered, denounced, and remedied a crying abuse in the administration of a public charity. He received (thanks once more to his wife) a member of the Royal family among the visitors at his country house in the autumn recess. These were his triumphs, and this his rate of progress on the way to the peerage, during the first year of his life as the husband of Lady Jane.

There was but one more favor that Fortune could confer on her spoiled child—and Fortune bestowed it. There was a spot on Mr. Vanborough’s past life as long as the woman lived whom he had disowned and deserted. At the end of the first year Death took her—and the spot was rubbed out.

She had met the merciless injury inflicted on her with a rare patience, with an admirable courage. It is due to Mr. Vanborough to admit that he broke her heart, with the strictest attention to propriety. He offered (through his lawyer ) a handsome provision for her and for her child. It was rejected, without an instant’s hesitation. She repudiated his money—she repudiated his name. By the name which she had borne in her maiden days—the name which she had made illustrious in her Art—the mother and daughter were known to all who cared to inquire after them when they had sunk in the world.

There was no false pride in the resolute attitude which she thus assumed after her husband had forsaken her. Mrs. Silvester (as she was now called) gratefully accepted for herself, and for Miss Silvester, the assistance of the dear old friend who had found her again in her affliction, and who remained faithful to her to the end. They lived with Lady Lundie until the mother was strong enough to carry out the plan of life which she had arranged for the future, and to earn her bread as a teacher of singing. To all appearance she rallied, and became herself again, in a few months’ time. She was making her way; she was winning sympathy, confidence, and respect every where—when she sank suddenly at the opening of her new life. Nobody could account for it. The doctors themselves were divided in opinion. Scientifically speaking, there was no reason why she should die. It was a mere figure of speech—in no degree satisfactory to any reasonable mind—to say, as Lady Lundie said, that she had got her death-blow on the day when her husband deserted her. The one thing certain was the fact—account for it as you might. In spite of science (which meant little), in spite of her own courage (which meant much), the woman dropped at her post and died.

In the latter part of her illness her mind gave way. The friend of her old school-days, sitting at the bedside, heard her talking as if she thought herself back again in the cabin of the ship. The poor soul found the tone, almost the look, that had been lost for so many years—the tone of the past time when the two girls had gone their different ways in the world. She said, “we will meet, darling, with all the old love between us,” just as she had said almost a lifetime since. Before the end her mind rallied. She surprised the doctor and the nurse by begging them gently to leave the room. When they had gone she looked at Lady Lundie, and woke, as it seemed, to consciousness from a dream.

“Blanche,” she said, “you will take care of my child?”

“She shall be my child, Anne, when you are gone.”

The dying woman paused, and thought for a little. A sudden trembling seized her.

“Keep it a secret!” she said. “I am afraid for my child.”

“Afraid? After what I have promised you?”

She solemnly repeated the words, “I am afraid for my child.”

“Why?”

“My Anne is my second self—isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“She is as fond of your child as I was of you?”

“Yes.”

“She is not called by her father’s name—she is called by mine. She is Anne Silvester as I was. Blanche! Will she end like Me?”

The question was put with the laboring breath, with the heavy accents which tell that death is near. It chilled the living woman who heard it to the marrow of her bones.

“Don’t think that!” she cried, horror-struck. “For God’s sake, don’t think that!”

The wildness began to appear again in Anne Silvester’s eyes. She made feebly impatient signs with her hands. Lady Lundie bent over her, and heard her whisper, “Lift me up.”

She lay in her friend’s arms; she looked up in her friend’s face; she went back wildly to her fear for her child.

“Don’t bring her up like Me! She must be a governess—she must get her bread. Don’t let her act! don’t let her sing! don’t let her go on the stage!” She stopped—her voice suddenly recovered its sweetness of tone—she smiled faintly—she said the old girlish words once more, in the old girlish way, “Vow it, Blanche!” Lady Lundie kissed her, and answered, as she had answered when they parted in the ship, “I vow it, Anne!”

The head sank, never to be lifted more. The last look of life flickered in the filmy eyes and went out. For a moment afterward her lips moved. Lady Lundie put her ear close to them, and heard the dreadful question reiterated, in the same dreadful words: “She is Anne Silvester—as I was. Will she end like Me?”

VI.

Five years passed—and the lives of the three men who had sat at the dinner-table in the Hampstead villa began, in their altered aspects, to reveal the progress of time and change.

Mr. Kendrew; Mr. Delamayn; Mr. Vanborough. Let the order in which they are here named be the order in which their lives are reviewed, as seen once more after a lapse of five years.

How the husband’s friend marked his sense of the husband’s treachery has been told already. How he felt the death of the deserted wife is still left to tell. Report, which sees the inmost hearts of men, and delights in turning them outward to the public view, had always declared that Mr. Kendrew’s life had its secret, and that the secret was a hopeless passion for the beautiful woman who had married his friend. Not a hint ever dropped to any living soul, not a word ever spoken to the woman herself, could be produced in proof of the assertion while the woman lived. When she died Report started up again more confidently than ever, and appealed to the man’s own conduct as proof against the man himself.

He attended the funeral—though he was no relation. He took a few blades of grass from the turf with which they covered her grave—when he thought that nobody was looking at him. He disappeared from his club. He traveled. He came back. He admitted that he was weary of England. He applied for, and obtained, an appointment in one of the colonies. To what conclusion did all this point? Was it not plain that his usual course of life had lost its attraction for him, when the object of his infatuation had ceased to exist? It might have been so—guesses less likely have been made at the truth, and have hit the mark. It is, at any rate, certain that he left England, never to return again. Another man lost, Report said. Add to that, a man in ten thousand—and, for once, Report might claim to be right.

Mr. Delamayn comes next.

The rising solicitor was struck off the roll, at his own request—and entered himself as a student at one of the Inns of Court. For three years nothing was known of him but that he was reading hard and keeping his terms. He was called to the Bar. His late partners in the firm knew they could trust him, and put business into his hands. In two years he made himself a position in Court. At the end of the two years he made himself a position out of Court. He appeared as “Junior” in “a famous case,” in which the honor of a great family, and the title to a great estate were concerned. His “Senior” fell ill on the eve of the trial. He conducted the case for the defendant and won it. The defendant said, “What can I do for you?” Mr. Delamayn answered, “Put me into Parliament.” Being a landed gentleman, the defendant had only to issue the necessary orders—and behold, Mr. Delamayn was in Parliament!

In the House of Commons the new member and Mr. Vanborough met again.

They sat on the same bench, and sided with the same party. Mr. Delamayn noticed that Mr. Vanborough ...

Table of contents

• PROLOGUE.—THE IRISH MARRIAGE.
• PART THE SECOND. THE MARCH OF TIME.
• EPILOGUE. A MORNING CALL.