Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (761 page)

“Pray don’t ask! It’s past and over — it can have no interest for you — it has nothing to do with my errand here. I must return,” she went on, hurriedly, “to my object in trespassing on your kindness. Have you heard me mentioned, Mr. Delamayn, by another member of your family besides your father?”

Julius had not anticipated that sh e would approach, of her own accord, the painful subject on which he had himself forborne to touch. He was a little disappointed. He had expected more delicacy of feeling from her than she had shown.

“Is it necessary,” he asked, coldly, “to enter on that?”

The blood rose again in Anne’s cheeks.

“If it had not been necessary,” she answered, “do you think I could have forced myself to mention it to
you?
Let me remind you that I am here on sufferance. If I don’t speak plainly (no matter at what sacrifice to my own feelings), I make my situation more embarrassing than it is already. I have something to tell Mrs. Glenarm relating to the anonymous letters which she has lately received. And I have a word to say to her, next, about her contemplated marriage. Before you allow me to do this, you ought to know who I am. (I have owned it.) You ought to have heard the worst that can be said of my conduct. (Your face tells me you have heard the worst.) After the forbearance you have shown to me, as a perfect stranger, I will not commit the meanness of taking you by surprise. Perhaps, Mr. Delamayn, you understand,
now,
why I felt myself obliged to refer to your brother. Will you trust me with permission to speak to Mrs. Glenarm?”

It was simply and modestly said — with an unaffected and touching resignation of look and manner. Julius gave her back the respect and the sympathy which, for a moment, he had unjustly withheld from her.

“You have placed a confidence in me,” he said “which most persons in your situation would have withheld. I feel bound, in return to place confidence in you. I will take it for granted that your motive in this matter is one which it is my duty to respect. It will be for Mrs. Glenarm to say whether she wishes the interview to take place or not. All that I can do is to leave you free to propose it to her. You
are
free.”

As he spoke the sound of the piano reached them from the music-room. Julius pointed to the glass door which opened on to the terrace.

“You have only to go in by that door,” he said, “and you will find Mrs. Glenarm alone.”

Anne bowed, and left him. Arrived at the short flight of steps which led up to the door, she paused to collect her thoughts before she went in.

A sudden reluctance to go on and enter the room took possession of her, as she waited with her foot on the lower step. The report of Mrs. Glenarm’s contemplated marriage had produced no such effect on her as Sir Patrick had supposed: it had found no love for Geoffrey left to wound, no latent jealousy only waiting to be inflamed. Her object in taking the journey to Perth was completed when her correspondence with Geoffrey was in her own hands again. The change of purpose which had brought her to Swanhaven was due entirely to the new view of her position toward Mrs. Glenarm which the coarse commonsense of Bishopriggs had first suggested to her. If she failed to protest against Mrs. Glenarm’s marriage, in the interests of the reparation which Geoffrey owed to her, her conduct would only confirm Geoffrey’s audacious assertion that she was a married woman already. For her own sake she might still have hesitated to move in the matter. But Blanche’s interests were concerned as well as her own; and, for Blanche’s sake, she had resolved on making the journey to Swanhaven Lodge.

At the same time, feeling toward Geoffrey as she felt now — conscious as she was of not really desiring the reparation on which she was about to insist — it was essential to the preservation of her own self-respect that she should have some purpose in view which could justify her to her own conscience in assuming the character of Mrs. Glenarm’s rival.

She had only to call to mind the critical situation of Blanche — and to see her purpose before her plainly. Assuming that she could open the coming interview by peaceably proving that her claim on Geoffrey was beyond dispute, she might then, without fear of misconception, take the tone of a friend instead of an enemy, and might, with the best grace, assure Mrs. Glenarm that she had no rivalry to dread, on the one easy condition that she engaged to make Geoffrey repair the evil that he had done. “Marry him without a word against it to dread from
me
— so long as he unsays the words and undoes the deeds which have thrown a doubt on the marriage of Arnold and Blanche.” If she could but bring the interview to this end — there was the way found of extricating Arnold, by her own exertions, from the false position in which she had innocently placed him toward his wife! Such was the object before her, as she now stood on the brink of her interview with Mrs. Glenarm.

Up to this moment, she had firmly believed in her capacity to realize her own visionary project. It was only when she had her foot on the step that a doubt of the success of the coming experiment crossed her mind. For the first time, she saw the weak point in her own reasoning. For the first time, she felt how much she had blindly taken for granted, in assuming that Mrs. Glenarm would have sufficient sense of justice and sufficient command of temper to hear her patiently. All her hopes of success rested on her own favorable estimate of a woman who was a total stranger to her! What if the first words exchanged between them proved the estimate to be wrong?

It was too late to pause and reconsider the position. Julius Delamayn had noticed her hesitation, and was advancing toward her from the end of the terrace. There was no help for it but to master her own irresolution, and to run the risk boldly. “Come what may, I have gone too far to stop
here.
” With that desperate resolution to animate her, she opened the glass door at the top of the steps, and went into the room.

Mrs. Glenarm rose from the piano. The two women — one so richly, the other so plainly dressed; one with her beauty in its full bloom, the other worn and blighted; one with society at her feet, the other an outcast living under the bleak shadow of reproach — the two women stood face to face, and exchanged the cold courtesies of salute between strangers, in silence.

The first to meet the trivial necessities of the situation was Mrs. Glenarm. She good-humoredly put an end to the embarrassment — which the shy visitor appeared to feel acutely — by speaking first.

“I am afraid the servants have not told you?” she said. “Mrs. Delamayn has gone out.”

“I beg your pardon — I have not called to see Mrs. Delamayn.”

Mrs. Glenarm looked a little surprised. She went on, however, as amiably as before.

“Mr. Delamayn, perhaps?” she suggested. “I expect him here every moment.”

Anne explained again. “I have just parted from Mr. Delamayn.” Mrs. Glenarm opened her eyes in astonishment. Anne proceeded. “I have come here, if you will excuse the intrusion — ”

She hesitated — at a loss how to end the sentence. Mrs. Glenarm, beginning by this time to feel a strong curiosity as to what might be coming next, advanced to the rescue once more.

“Pray don’t apologize,” she said. “I think I understand that you are so good as to have come to see
me.
You look tired. Won’t you take a chair?”

Anne could stand no longer. She took the offered chair. Mrs. Glenarm resumed her place on the music-stool, and ran her fingers idly over the keys of the piano. “Where did you see Mr. Delamayn?” she went on. “The most irresponsible of men, except when he has got his fiddle in his hand! Is he coming in soon? Are we going to have any music? Have you come to play with us? Mr. Delamayn is a perfect fanatic in music, isn’t he? Why isn’t he here to introduce us? I suppose you like the classical style, too? Did you know that I was in the music-room? Might I ask your name?”

Frivolous as they were, Mrs. Glenarm’s questions were not without their use. They gave Anne time to summon her resolution, and to feel the necessity of explaining herself.

“I am speaking, I believe, to Mrs. Glenarm?” she began.

The good-humored widow smiled and bowed graciously.

“I have come here, Mrs. Glenarm — by Mr. Delamayn’s permission — to ask leave to speak to you on a matter in which you are interested.”

Mrs. Glenarm’s many-ringed fingers paused over the keys of the piano. Mrs. Gle narm’s plump face turned on the stranger with a dawning expression of surprise.

“Indeed? I am interested in so many matters. May I ask what
this
matter is?”

The flippant tone of the speaker jarred on Anne. If Mrs. Glenarm’s nature was as shallow as it appeared to be on the surface, there was little hope of any sympathy establishing itself between them.

“I wished to speak to you,” she answered, “about something that happened while you were paying a visit in the neighbourhood of Perth.”

The dawning surprise in Mrs. Glenarm’s face became intensified into an expression of distrust. Her hearty manner vanished under a veil of conventional civility, drawn over it suddenly. She looked at Anne. “Never at the best of times a beauty,” she thought. “Wretchedly out of health now. Dressed like a servant, and looking like a lady. What
does
it mean?”

The last doubt was not to be borne in silence by a person of Mrs. Glenarm’s temperament. She addressed herself to the solution of it with the most unblushing directness — dextrously excused by the most winning frankness of manner.

“Pardon me,” she said. “My memory for faces is a bad one; and I don’t think you heard me just now, when I asked for your name. Have we ever met before?”

“Never.”

“And yet — if I understand what you are referring to — you wish to speak to me about something which is only interesting to myself and my most intimate friends.”

“You understand me quite correctly,” said Anne. “I wish to speak to you about some anonymous letters — ”

“For the third time, will you permit me to ask for your name?”

“You shall hear it directly — if you will first allow me to finish what I wanted to say. I wish — if I can — to persuade you that I come here as a friend, before I mention my name. You will, I am sure, not be very sorry to hear that you need dread no further annoyance — ”

“Pardon me once more,” said Mrs. Glenarm, interposing for the second time. “I am at a loss to know to what I am to attribute this kind interest in my affairs on the part of a total stranger.”

This time, her tone was more than politely cold — it was politely impertinent. Mrs. Glenarm had lived all her life in good society, and was a perfect mistress of the subtleties of refined insolence in her intercourse with those who incurred her displeasure.

Anne’s sensitive nature felt the wound — but Anne’s patient courage submitted. She put away from her the insolence which had tried to sting, and went on, gently and firmly, as if nothing had happened.

“The person who wrote to you anonymously,” she said, “alluded to a correspondence. He is no longer in possession of it. The correspondence has passed into hands which may be trusted to respect it. It will be put to no base use in the future — I answer for that.”

“You answer for that?” repeated Mrs. Glenarm. She suddenly leaned forward over the piano, and fixed her eyes in unconcealed scrutiny on Anne’s face. The violent temper, so often found in combination with the weak nature, began to show itself in her rising colour, and her lowering brow. “How do
you
know what the person wrote?” she asked. “How do
you
know that the correspondence has passed into other hands? Who are you?” Before Anne could answer her, she sprang to her feet, electrified by a new idea. “The man who wrote to me spoke of something else besides a correspondence. He spoke of a woman. I have found you out!” she exclaimed, with a burst of jealous fury. “
You
are the woman!”

Anne rose on her side, still in firm possession of her self-control.

“Mrs. Glenarm,” she said, calmly, “I warn — no, I entreat you — not to take that tone with me. Compose yourself; and I promise to satisfy you that you are more interested than you are willing to believe in what I have still to say. Pray bear with me for a little longer. I admit that you have guessed right. I own that I am the miserable woman who has been ruined and deserted by Geoffrey Delamayn.”