Man and Wife

by Wilkie Collins

son _has_ gravely wronged Miss Silvester? And suppose I followed

  that up by telling him that his son has made atonement by

  marrying her?"

  "After the feeling that he has shown in the matter, I believe he

  would sign the codicil."

  "Then, for God's sake, let me see him!"

  "I must speak to the doctor."

  "Do it instantly!"

  With the will in his hand, Mr. Marchwood advanced to the bedroom

  door. It was opened from within before he could get to it. The

  doctor appeared on the threshold. He held up his hand warningly

  when Mr. Marchwood attempted to speak to him.

  "Go to Lady Holchester," he said. "It's all over."

  "Dead?"

  "Dead."

  SIXTEENTH SCENE.--SALT PATCH.

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-EIGHTH.

  THE PLACE.

  EARLY in the present century it was generally reported among the

  neighbors of one Reuben Limbrick that he was in a fair way to

  make a comfortable little fortune by dealing in Salt.

  His place of abode was in Staffordshire, on a morsel of freehold

  land of his own--appropriately called Salt Patch. Without being

  absolutely a miser, he lived in the humblest manner, saw very

  little company; skillfully invested his money; and persisted in

  remaining a single man.

  Toward eighteen hundred and forty he first felt the approach of

  the chronic malady which ultimately terminated his life. After

  trying what the medical men of his own locality could do for him,

  with very poor success, he met by accident with a doctor living

  in the western suburbs of London, who thoroughly understood his

  complaint. After some journeying backward and forward to consult

  this gentleman, he decided on retiring from business, and on

  taking up his abode within an easy distance of his medical man.

  Finding a piece of freehold land to be sold in the neighborhood

  of Fulham, he bought it, and had a cottage residence built on it,

  under his own directions. He surrounded the whole--being a man

  singularly jealous of any intrusion on his retirement, or of any

  chance observation of his ways and habits--with a high wall,

  which cost a large sum of money, and which was rightly considered

  a dismal and hideous object by the neighbors. When the new

  residence was completed, he called it after the name of the place

  in Staffordshire where he had made his money, and where he had

  lived during the happiest period of his life. His relatives,

  failing to understand that a question of sentiment was involved

  in this proceeding, appealed to hard facts, and reminded him that

  there were no salt mines in the neighborhood. Reuben Limbrick

  answered, "So much the worse for the neighborhood"--and persisted

  in calling his property, "Salt Patch."

  The cottage was so small that it looked quite lost in the large

  garden all round it. There was a ground-floor and a floor above

  it--and that was all.

  On either side of the passage, on the lower floor, were two

  rooms. At the right-hand side, on entering by the front-door,

  there was a kitchen, with its outhouses attached. The room next

  to the kitchen looked into the garden. In Reuben Limbrick's time

  it was called the study and contained a small collection of books

  and a large store of fishing-tackle. On the left-hand side of the

  passage there was a drawing-room situated at the back of the

  house, and communicating with a dining-room in the front. On the

  upper floor there were five bedrooms--two on one side of the

  passage, corresponding in size with the dining-room and the

  drawing-room below, but not opening into each other; three on the

  other side of the passage, consisting of one larger room in

  front, and of two small rooms at the back. All these were solidly

  and completely furnished. Money had not been spared, and

  workmanship had not been stinted. It was all substantial--and, up

  stairs and down stairs, it was all ugly.

  The situation of Salt Patch was lonely. The lands of the

  market-gardeners separated it from other houses. Jealously

  surrounded by its own high walls, the cottage suggested, even to

  the most unimaginative persons, the idea of an asylum or a

  prison. Reuben Limbrick's relatives, occasionally coming to stay

  with him, found the place prey on their spirits, and rejoiced

  when the time came for going home again. They were never pressed

  to stay against their will. Reuben Limbrick was not a hospitable

  or a sociable man. He set very little value on human sympathy, in

  his attacks of illness; and he bore congratulations impatiently,

  in his intervals of health. "I care about nothing but fishing,"

  he used to say. "I find my dog very good company. And I am quite

  happy as long as I am free from pain."

  On his death-bed, he divided his money justly enough among his

  relations. The only part of his Will which exposed itself to

  unfavorable criticism, was a clause conferring a legacy on one of

  his sisters (then a widow) who had estranged herself from her

  family by marrying beneath her. The family agreed in considering

  this unhappy person as undeserving of notice or benefit. Her name

  was Hester Dethridge. It proved to be a great aggravation of

  Hester's offenses, in the eyes of Hester's relatives, when it was

  discovered that she possessed a life-interest in Salt Patch, and

  an income of two hundred a year.

  Not visited by the surviving members of her family, living,

  literally, by herself in the world, Hester decided, in spite of

  her comfortable little income, on letting lodgings. The

  explanation of this strange conduct which she had written on her

  slate, in reply to an inquiry from Anne, was the true one. "I

  have not got a friend in the world: I dare not live alone." In

  that desolate situation, and with that melancholy motive, she put

  the house into an agent's hands. The first person in want of

  lodgings whom the agent sent to see the place was Perry the

  trainer; and Hester's first tenant was Geoffrey Delamayn.

  The rooms which the landlady reserved for herself were the

  kitchen, the room next to it, which had once been her brother's

  "study," and the two small back bedrooms up stairs--one for

  herself, the other for the servant-girl whom she employed to help

  her. The whole of the rest of the cottage was to let. It was more

  than the trainer wanted; but Hester Dethridge refused to dispose

  of her lodgings--either as to the rooms occupied, or as to the

  period for which they were to be taken--on other than her own

  terms. Perry had no alternative but to lose the advantage of the

  garden as a private training-ground, or to submit.

  Being only two in number, the lodgers had three bedrooms to

  choose from. Geoffrey established himself in the back-room, over

  the drawing-room. Perry chose the front-room, placed on the other

  side of the cottage, next to the two smaller apartments occupied

  by Hester and her maid. Under this arrangement, the front

  bedroom, on the opposite side of the passage--next to the room in

  which Geoffrey slept--was left
empty, and was called, for the

  time being, the spare room. As for the lower floor, the athlete

  and his trainer ate their meals in the dining-room; and left the

  drawing-room, as a needless luxury, to take care of itself.

  The Foot-Race once over, Perry's business at the cottage was at

  an end. His empty bedroom became a second spare room. The term

  for which the lodgings had been taken was then still unexpired.

  On the day after the race Geoffrey had to choose between

  sacrificing the money, or remaining in the lodgings by himself,

  with two spare bedrooms on his hands, and with a drawing-room for

  the reception of his visitors--who called with pipes in their

  mouths, and whose idea of hospitality was a pot of beer in the

  garden.

  To use his own phrase, he was "out of sorts." A sluggish

  reluctance to face change of any kind possessed him. He decided

  on staying at Salt Patch until his marriage to Mrs. Glenarm

  (which he then looked upon as a certainty) obliged him to alter

  his habits completely, once for all. From Fulham he had gone, the

  next day, to attend the inquiry in Portland Place. And to Fulham

  he returned, when he brought the wife who had been forced upon

  him to her "home."

  Such was the position of the tenant, and such were the

  arrangements of the interior of the cottage, on the memorable

  evening when Anne Silvester entered it as Geoffrey's wife.

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH.

  THE NIGHT.

  ON leaving Lady Lundie's house, Geoffrey called the first empty

  cab that passed him. He opened the door, and signed to Anne to

  enter the vehicle. She obeyed him mechanically. He placed himself

  on the seat opposite to her, and told the man to drive to Fulham.

  The cab started on its journey; husband and wife preserving

  absolute silence. Anne laid her head back wearily, and closed her

  eyes. Her strength had broken down under the effort which had

  sustained her from the beginning to the end of the inquiry. Her

  power of thinking was gone. She felt nothing, knew nothing,

  feared nothing. Half in faintness, half in slumber, she had lost

  all sense of her own terrible position before the first five

  minutes of the journey to Fulham had come to an end.

  Sitting opposite to her, savagely self-concentrated in his own

  thoughts, Geoffrey roused himself on a sudden. An idea had sprung

  to life in his sluggish brain. He put his head out of the window

  of the cab, and directed the driver to turn back, and go to an

  hotel near the Great Northern Railway.

  Resuming his seat, he looked furtively at Anne. She neither moved

  nor opened her eyes--she was, to all appearance, unconscious of

  what had happened. He observed her attentively. Was she really

  ill? Was the time coming when he would be freed from her? He

  pondered over that question--watching her closely. Little by

  little the vile hope in him slowly died away, and a vile

  suspicion took its place. What, if this appearance of illness was

  a pretense? What, if she was waiting to throw him off his guard,

  and escape from him at the first opportunity? He put his head out

  of the window again, and gave another order to the driver. The

  cab diverged from the direct route, and stopped at a public house

  in Holborn, kept (under an assumed name) by Perry the trainer.

  Geoffrey wrote a line in pencil on his card, and sent it into the

  house by the driver. After waiting some minutes, a lad appeared

  and touched his hat. Geoffrey spoke to him, out of the window, in

  an under-tone. The lad took his place on the box by the driver.

  The cab turned back, and took the road to the hotel near the

  Great Northern Railway.

  Arrived at the place, Geoffrey posted the lad close at the door

  of the. cab, and pointed to Anne, still reclining with closed

  eyes; still, as it seemed, too weary to lift her head, too faint

  to notice any thing that happened. "If she attempts to get out,

  stop her, and send for me." With those parting directions he

  entered the hotel, and asked for Mr. Moy.

  Mr. Moy was in the house; he had just returned from Portland

  Place. He rose, and bowed coldly, when Geoffrey was shown into

  his sitting-room.

  "What is your business with me?" he asked.

  "I've had a notion come into my head," said Geoffrey. "And I want

  to speak to you about it directly."

  "I must request you to consult some one else. Consider me, if you

  please, as having withdrawn from all further connection with your

  affairs."

  Geoffrey looked at him in stolid surprise.

  "Do you mean to say you're going to leave me in the lurch?" he

  asked.

  "I mean to say that I will take no fresh step in any business of

  yours," answered Mr. Moy, firmly. "As to the future, I have

  ceased to be your legal adviser. As to the past, I shall

  carefully complete the formal duties toward you which remain to

  be done. Mrs. Inchbare and Bishopriggs are coming here by

  appointment, at six this evening, to receive the money due to

  them before they go back. I shall return to Scotland myself by

  the night mail. The persons referred to, in the matter of the

  promise of marriage, by Sir Patrick, are all in Scotland. I will

  take their evidence as to the handwriting, and as to the question

  of residence in the North--and I will send it to you in written

  form. That done, I shall have done all. I decline to advise you

  in any future step which you propose to take."

  After reflecting for a moment, Geoffrey put a last question.

  "You said Bishopriggs and the woman would be here at six this

  evening."

  "Yes."

  "Where are they to be found before that?"

  Mr. Moy wrote a few words on a slip of paper, and handed it to

  Geoffrey. "At their lodgings," he said. "There is the address."

  Geoffrey took the address, and left the room. Lawyer and client

  parted without a word on either side.

  Returning to the cab, Geoffrey found the lad steadily waiting at

  his post.

  "Has any thing happened?"

  "The lady hasn't moved, Sir, since you left her."

  "Is Perry at the public house?"

  "Not at this time, Sir."

  "I want a lawyer. Do you know who Perry's lawyer is?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "And where he is to be found?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Get up on the box, and tell the man where to drive to."

  The cab went on again along the Euston Road, and stopped at a

  house in a side-street, with a professional brass plate on the

  door. The lad got down, and came to the window.

  "Here it is, Sir."

  "Knock at the door, and see if he is at home."

  He prove d to be at home. Geoffrey entered the house, leaving his

  emissary once more on the watch. The lad noticed that the lady

  moved this time. She shivered as if she felt cold--opened her

  eyes for a moment wearily, and looked out through the

  window--sighed, and sank back again in the corner of the cab.

  After an absence of more than half an hour Geoffrey came out

  again. His interview
with Perry's lawyer appeared to have

  relieved his mind of something that had oppressed it. He once

  more ordered the driver to go to Fulham--opened the door to get

  into the cab--then, as it seemed, suddenly recollected

  himself--and, calling the lad down from the box, ordered him to

  get inside, and took his place by the driver.

  As the cab started he looked over his shoulder at Anne through

  the front window. "Well worth trying," he said to himself. "It's

  the way to be even with her. And it's the way to be free."

  They arrived at the cottage. Possibly, repose had restored Anne's

  strength. Possibly, the sight of the place had roused the

  instinct of self-preservation in her at last. To Geoffrey's

  surprise, she left the cab without assistance. When he opened the

  wooden gate, with his own key, she recoiled from it, and looked

  at him for the first time.

  He pointed to the entrance.

  "Go in," he said.

  "On what terms?" she asked, without stirring a step.

  Geoffrey dismissed the cab; and sent the lad in, to wait for

  further orders. These things done, he answered her loudly and

  brutally the moment they were alone:

  "On any terms I please."

  "Nothing will induce me," she said, firmly, "to live with you as

  your wife. You may kill me--but you will never bend me to that."

  He advanced a step--opened his lips--and suddenly checked

  himself. He waited a while, turning something over in his mind.

  When he spoke again, it was with marked deliberation and

  constraint--with the air of a man who was repeating words put

  into his lips, or words prepared beforehand.

  "I have something to tell you in the presence of witnesses," he

  said. "I don't ask you, or wish you, to see me in the cottage

  alone."

  She started at the change in him. His sudden composure, and his

  sudden nicety in the choice of words, tried her courage far more

  severely than it had been tried by his violence of the moment

  before.

  He waited her decision, still pointing through the gate. She

  trembled a little--steadied herself again--and went in. The lad,

  waiting in the front garden, followed her.

  He threw open the drawing-room door, on the left-hand side of the

  passage. She entered the room. The servant-girl appeared. He said

  to her, "Fetch Mrs. Dethridge; and come back with her yourself."

  Then he went into the room; the lad, by his own directions,

  following him in; and the door being left wide open.

  Hester Dethridge came out from the kitchen with the girl behind

  her. At the sight of Anne, a faint and momentary change passed

  over the stony stillness of her face. A dull light glimmered in

  her eyes. She slowly nodded her head. A dumb sound, vaguely

  expressive of something like exultation or relief, escaped her

  lips.

  Geoffrey spoke--once more, with marked deliberation and

  constraint; once more, with the air of repeating something which

  had been prepared beforehand. He pointed to Anne.

  "This woman is my wife," he said. "In the presence of you three,

  as witnesses, I tell her that I don't forgive her. I have brought

  her here--having no other place in which I can trust her to

  be--to wait the issue of proceedings, undertaken in defense of my

  own honor and good name. While she stays here, she will live

  separate from me, in a room of her own. If it is necessary for me

  to communicate with her, I shall only see her in the presence of

  a third person. Do you all understand me?"

  Hester Dethridge bowed her head. The other two answered,

  "Yes"--and turned to go out.

  Anne rose. At a sign from Geoffrey, the servant and the lad

  waited in the room to hear what she had to say.

  "I know nothing in my conduct," she said, addressing herself to

  Geoffrey, "which justifies you in telling these people that you

  don't forgive me. Those words applied by you to me are an insult.