Man and Wife Read online

first was Mrs. Julius Delamayn. The second was Lady Lundie.

  "Exquisite!" cried her ladyship, surveying the old mullioned

  windows of the house, with their framing of creepers, and the

  grand stone buttresses projecting at intervals from the wall,

  each with its bright little circle of flowers blooming round the

  base. "I am really grieved that Sir Patrick should have missed

  this."

  "I think you said, Lady Lundie, that Sir Patrick had been called

  to Edinburgh by family business?"

  "Business, Mrs. Delamayn, which is any thing but agreeable to me,

  as one member of the family. It has altered all my arrangements

  for the autumn. My step-daughter is to be married next week."

  "Is it so near as that? May I ask who the gentleman is?"

  "Mr. Arnold Brinkworth."

  "Surely I have some association with that name?"

  "You have probably heard of him, Mrs. Delamayn, as the heir to

  Miss Brinkworth's Scotch property?"

  "Exactly! Have you brought Mr. Brinkworth here to-day?"

  "I bring his apologies, as well as Sir Patrick's. They went to

  Edinburgh together the day before yesterday. The lawyers engage

  to have the settlements ready in three or four days more, if a

  personal consultation can be managed. Some formal question, I

  believe, connected with title-deeds. Sir Patrick thought the

  safest way and the speediest way would be to take Mr. Brinkworth

  with him to Edinburgh--to get the business over to-day--and to

  wait until we join them, on our way south, to-morrow."

  "You leave Windygates, in this lovely weather?"

  "Most unwillingly! The truth is, Mrs. Delamayn, I am at my

  step-daughter's mercy. Her uncle has the authority, as her

  guardian--and the use he makes of it is to give her her own way

  in every thing. It was only on Friday last that she consented to

  let the day be fixed--and even then she made it a positive

  condition that the marriage was not to take place in Scotland.

  Pure willfulness! But what can I do? Sir Patrick submits; and Mr.

  Brinkworth submits. If I am to be present at the marriage I must

  follow their example. I feel it my duty to be present--and, as a

  matter of course, I sacrifice myself. We start for London

  to-morrow."

  "Is Miss Lundie to be married in London at this time of year?"

  "No. We only pass through, on our way to Sir Patrick's place in

  Kent--the place that came to him with the title; the place

  associated with the last days of my beloved husband. Another

  trial for _me!_ The marriage is to be solemnized on the scene of

  my bereavement. My old wound is to be reopened on Monday

  next--simply because my step-daughter has taken a dislike to

  Windygates."

  "This day week, then, is the day of the marriage?"

  "Yes. This day week. There have been reasons for hurrying it

  which I need not trouble you with. No words can say how I wish it

  was over.--But, my dear Mrs. Delamayn, how thoughtless of me to

  assail _ you_ with my family worries! You are so sympathetic.

  That is my only excuse. Don't let me keep you from your guests. I

  could linger in this sweet place forever! Where is Mrs. Glenarm?"

  "I really don't know. I missed her when we came out on the

  terrace. She will very likely join us at the lake. Do you care

  about seeing the lake, Lady Lundie?"

  "I adore the beauties of Nature, Mrs. Delamayn--especially

  lakes!"

  "We have something to show you besides; we have a breed of swans

  on the lake, peculiar to the place. My husband has gone on with

  some of our friends; and I believe we are expected to follow, as

  soon as the rest of the party--in charge of my sister--have seen

  the house."

  "And what a house, Mrs. Delamayn! Historical associations in

  every corner of it! It is _such_ a relief to my mind to take

  refuge in the past. When I am far away from this sweet place I

  shall people Swanhaven with its departed inmates, and share the

  joys and sorrows of centuries since."

  As Lady Lundie announced, in these terms, her intention of adding

  to the population of the past, the last of the guests who had

  been roaming over the old house appeared under the porch. Among

  the members forming this final addition to the garden-party were

  Blanche, and a friend of her own age whom she had met at

  Swanhaven. The two girls lagged behind the rest, talking

  confidentially, arm in arm--the subject (it is surely needless to

  add) being the coming marriage.

  "But, dearest Blanche, why are you not to be married at

  Windygates?"

  "I detest Windygates, Janet. I have the most miserable

  associations with the place. Don't ask me what they are! The

  effort of my life is not to think of them now. I long to see the

  last of Windygates. As for being married there, I have made it a

  condition that I am not to be married in Scotland at all."

  "What has poor Scotland done to forfeit your good opinion, my

  dear?"

  "Poor Scotland, Janet, is a place where people don't know whether

  they are married or not. I have heard all about it from my uncle.

  And I know somebody who has been a victim--an innocent victim--to

  a Scotch marriage."

  "Absurd, Blanche! You are thinking of runaway matches, and making

  Scotland responsible for the difficulties of people who daren't

  own the truth!"

  "I am not at all absurd. I am thinking of the dearest friend I

  have. If you only knew--"

  "My dear! _I_ am Scotch, remember! You can be married just as

  well--I really must insist on that--in Scotland as in England."

  "I hate Scotland!"

  "Blanche!"

  "I never was so unhappy in my life as I have been in Scotland. I

  never want to see it again. I am determined to be married in

  England--from the dear old house where I used to live when I was

  a little girl. My uncle is quite willing. _He_ understands me and

  feels for me."

  "Is that as much as to say that _I_ don't understand you and feel

  for you? Perhaps I had better relieve you of my company,

  Blanche?"

  "If you are going to speak to me in that way, perhaps you had!"

  "Am I to hear my native country run down and not to say a word in

  defense of it?"

  "Oh! you Scotch people make such a fuss about your native

  country!"

  "_We_ Scotch people! you are of Scotch extraction yourself, and

  you ought to be ashamed to talk in that way. I wish you

  good-morning!"

  "I wish you a better temper!"

  A minute since the two young ladies had been like twin roses on

  one stalk. Now they parted with red cheeks and hostile sentiments

  and cutting words. How ardent is the warmth of youth! how

  unspeakably delicate the fragility of female friendship!

  The flock of visitors followed Mrs. Delamayn to the shores of the

  lake. For a few minutes after the terrace was left a solitude.

  Then there appeared under the porch a single gentleman, lounging

  out with a flower in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. This

  was the strongest man at Swanhaven--otherwise, Geoffr
ey Delamayn.

  After a moment a lady appeared behind him, walking softly, so as

  not to be heard. She was superbly dressed after the newest and

  the most costly Parisian design. The brooch on her bosom was a

  single diamond of resplendent water and great size. The fan in

  her hand was a master-piece of the finest Indian workmanship. She

  looked what she was, a person possessed of plenty of superfluous

  money, but not additionally blest with plenty of superfluous

  intelligence to correspond. This was the childless young widow of

  the great ironmaster--otherwise, Mrs. Glenarm.

  The rich woman tapped the strong man coquettishly on the shoulder

  with her fan. "Ah! you bad boy!" she said, with a

  slightly-labored archness of look and manner. "Have I found you

  at last?"

  Geoffrey sauntered on to the terrace--keeping the lady behind him

  with a thoroughly savage superiority to all civilized submission

  to the sex--and looked at his watch.

  "I said I'd come here when I'd got half an hour to myself," he

  mumbled, turning the flower carelessly between his teeth. "I've

  got half an hour, and here I am."

  "Did you come for the sake of seeing the visitors, or did you

  come for the sake of seeing Me?"

  Geoffrey smiled graciously, and gave the flower another turn in

  his teeth. "You. Of course."

  The iron-master's widow took his arm, and looked up at him--as

  only a young woman would have dared to look up--with the

  searching summer light streaming in its full brilliancy on her

  face.

  Reduced to the plain expression of what it is really worth, the

  average English idea of beauty in women may be summed up in three

  words--youth, health, plumpness. The more spiritual charm of

  intelligence and vivacity, the subtler attraction of delicacy of

  line and fitness of detail, are little looked for and seldom

  appreciated by the mass of men in this island. It is impossible

  otherwise to account for the extraordinary blindness of

  perception which (to give one instance only) makes nine

  Englishmen out of ten who visit France come back declaring that

  they have not seen a single pretty Frenchwoman, in or out of

  Paris, in the whole country. Our popular type of beauty proclaims

  itself, in its fullest material development, at every shop in

  which an illustrated periodical is sold. The same fleshy-faced

  girl, with the same inane smile, and with no other expression

  whatever, appears under every form of illustration, week after

  week, and month after month, all the year round. Those who wish

  to know what Mrs. Glenarm was like, have only to go out and stop

  at any bookseller's or news-vendor's shop, and there they will

  see her in the first illustration, with a young woman in it,

  which they discover in the window. The one noticeable peculiarity

  in Mrs. Glenarm's purely commonplace and purely material beauty,

  which would have struck an observant and a cultivated man, was

  the curious girlishness of her look and manner. No stranger

  speaking to this woman--who had been a wife at twenty, and who

  was now a widow at twenty-four--would ever have thought of

  addressing her otherwise than as "Miss."

  "Is that the use you make of a flower when I give it to you?" she

  said to Geoffrey. "Mumbling it in your teeth, you wretch, as if

  you were a horse!"

  "If you come to tha t," returned Geoffrey, "I'm more a horse than

  a man. I'm going to run in a race, and the public are betting on

  me. Haw! haw! Five to four."

  "Five to four! I believe he thinks of nothing but betting. You

  great heavy creature, I can't move you. Don't you see I want to

  go like the rest of them to the lake? No! you're not to let go of

  my arm! You're to take me."

  "Can't do it. Must be back with Perry in half an hour."

  (Perry was the trainer from London. He had arrived sooner than he

  had been expected, and had entered on his functions three days

  since.)

  "Don't talk to me about Perry! A little vulgar wretch. Put him

  off. You won't? Do you mean to say you are such a brute that you

  would rather be with Perry than be with me?"

  "The betting's at five to four, my dear. And the race comes off

  in a month from this."

  "Oh! go away to your beloved Perry! I hate you. I hope you'll

  lose the race. Stop in your cottage. Pray don't come back to the

  house. And--mind this!--don't presume to say 'my dear' to me

  again."

  "It ain't presuming half far enough, is it? Wait a bit. Give me

  till the race is run--and then I'll presume to marry you."

  "You! You will be as old as Methuselah, if you wait till I am

  your wife. I dare say Perry has got a sister. Suppose you ask

  him? She would be just the right person for you."

  Geoffrey gave the flower another turn in his teeth, and looked as

  if he thought the idea worth considering.

  "All right," he said. "Any thing to be agreeable to you. I'll ask

  Perry."

  He turned away, as if he was going to do it at once. Mrs. Glenarm

  put out a little hand, ravishingly clothed in a blush-colored

  glove, and laid it on the athlete's mighty arm. She pinched those

  iron muscles (the pride and glory of England) gently. "What a man

  you are!" she said. "I never met with any body like you before!"

  The whole secret of the power that Geoffrey had acquired over her

  was in those words.

  They had been together at Swanhaven for little more than ten

  days; and in that time he had made the conquest of Mrs. Glenarm.

  On the day before the garden-party--in one of the leisure

  intervals allowed him by Perry--he had caught her alone, had

  taken her by the arm, and had asked her, in so many words, if she

  would marry him. Instances on record of women who have been wooed

  and won in ten days are--to speak it with all possible

  respect--not wanting. But an instance of a woman willing to have

  it known still remains to be discovered. The iron-master's widow

  exacted a promise of secrecy before the committed herself When

  Geoffrey had pledged his word to hold his tongue in public until

  she gave him leave to speak, Mrs. Glenarm, without further

  hesitation, said Yes--having, be it observed, said No, in the

  course of the last two years, to at least half a dozen men who

  were Geoffrey's superiors in every conceivable respect, except

  personal comeliness and personal strength.

  There is a reason for every thing; and there was a reason for

  this.

  However persistently the epicene theorists of modern times may

  deny it, it is nevertheless a truth plainly visible in the whole

  past history of the sexes that the natural condition of a woman

  is to find her master in a man. Look in the face of any woman who

  is in no direct way dependent on a man: and, as certainly as you

  see the sun in a cloudless sky, you see a woman who is not happy.

  The want of a master is their great unknown want; the possession

  of a master is--unconsciously to themselves--the only possible

  completion of their lives. In ni
nety-nine cases out of a hundred

  this one primitive instinct is at the bottom of the otherwise

  inexplicable sacrifice, when we see a woman, of her own free

  will, throw herself away on a man who is unworthy of her. This

  one primitive instinct was at the bottom of the otherwise

  inexplicable facility of self-surrender exhibited by Mrs.

  Glenarm.

  Up to the time of her meeting with Geoffrey, the young widow had

  gathered but one experience in her intercourse with the

  world--the experience of a chartered tyrant. In the brief six

  months of her married life with the man whose grand-daughter she

  might have been--and ought to have been--she had only to lift her

  finger to be obeyed. The doting old husband was the willing slave

  of the petulant young wife's slightest caprice. At a later

  period, when society offered its triple welcome to her birth, her

  beauty, and her wealth--go where she might, she found herself the

  object of the same prostrate admiration among the suitors who

  vied with each other in the rivalry for her hand. For the first

  time in her life she encountered a man with a will of his own

  when she met Geoffrey Delamayn at Swanhaven Lodge.

  Geoffrey's occupation of the moment especially favored the

  conflict between the woman's assertion of her influence and the

  man's assertion of his will.

  During the days that had intervened between his return to his

  brother's house and the arrival of the trainer, Geoffrey had

  submitted himself to all needful preliminaries of the physical

  discipline which was to prepare him for the race. He knew, by

  previous experience, what exercise he ought to take, what hours

  he ought to keep, what temptations at the table he was bound to

  resist. Over and over again Mrs. Glenarm tried to lure him into

  committing infractions of his own discipline--and over and over

  again the influence with men which had never failed her before

  failed her now. Nothing she could say, nothing she could do,

  would move _this_ man. Perry arrived; and Geoffrey's defiance of

  every attempted exercise of the charming feminine tyranny, to

  which every one else had bowed, grew more outrageous and more

  immovable than ever. Mrs. Glenarm became as jealous of Perry as

  if Perry had been a woman. She flew into passions; she burst into

  tears; she flirted with other men; she threatened to leave the

  house. All quite useless! Geoffrey never once missed an

  appointment with Perry; never once touched any thing to eat or

  drink that she could offer him, if Perry had forbidden it. No

  other human pursuit is so hostile to the influence of the sex as

  the pursuit of athletic sports. No men are so entirely beyond the

  reach of women as the men whose lives are passed in the

  cultivation of their own physical strength. Geoffrey resisted

  Mrs. Glenarm without the slightest effort. He casually extorted

  her admiration, and undesignedly forced her respect. She clung to

  him, as a hero; she recoiled from him, as a brute; she struggled

  with him, submitted to him, despised him, adored him, in a

  breath. And the clew to it all, confused and contradictory as it

  seemed, lay in one simple fact--Mrs. Glenarm had found her

  master.

  "Take me to the lake, Geoffrey!" she said, with a little pleading

  pressure of the blush-colored hand.

  Geoffrey looked at his watch. "Perry expects me in twenty

  minutes," he said.

  "Perry again!"

  "Yes."

  Mrs. Glenarm raised her fan, in a sudden outburst of fury, and

  broke it with one smart blow on Geoffrey's face.

  "There!" she cried, with a stamp of her foot. "My poor fan

  broken! You monster, all through you!"

  Geoffrey coolly took the broken fan and put it in his pocket.

  "I'll write to London," he said, "and get you another. Come

  along! Kiss, and make it up."

  He looked over each shoulder, to make sure that they were alone

  then lifted her off the ground (she was no light weight), held