Man and Wife

'It is absolutely necessary,' answered Sir Patrick, 'because Delamayn is concerned in it.'

Anne summoned her resolution, and entered on her narrative in these words:

'The person who carries on the business here discovered the address for me,' she began. 'I had some difficulty, however, in finding the house. It is little more than a cottage; and it is quite lost in a great garden, surrounded by high walls. I saw a carriage waiting. The coachman was walking his horses up and down—and he showed me the door. It was a high wooden door in the wall, with a grating in it. I rang the bell. A servant-girl opened the grating, and looked at me. She refused to let me in. Her mistress had ordered her to close the door on all strangers— especially strangers who were women. I contrived to pass some money to her through the grating, and asked to speak to her mistress. After waiting some time, I saw another face behind the bars—and it struck me that I recognized it. I suppose I was nervous. It startled me. I said, 'I think we know each other.' There was no answer. The door was suddenly opened—and who do you think stood before me?'

'Was it somebody I know?'

'Yes.'

'Man? or woman?'

'It was Hester Dethridge.'

'Hester Dethridge!'

'Yes. Dressed just as usual, and looking just as usual—with her slate hanging at her side.'

'Astonishing! Where did I last see her? At the Windygates station, to be sure—going to London, after she had left my sister-in-law's service. Has she accepted another place—without letting me know first, as I told her?'

'She is living at Fulham.'

'In service?'

'No. As mistress of her own house.'

'What! Hester Dethridge in possession of a house of her own? Well! well! why shouldn't she have a rise in the world like other people? Did she let you in?'

'She stood for some time looking at me, in that dull strange way that she has. The servants at Windygates always said she was not in her right mind—and you will say, Sir Patrick, when you hear what happened, that the servants were not mistaken. She must be mad. I said, 'Don't you remember me?' She lifted her slate, and wrote, 'I remember you, in a dead swoon at Windygates House.' I was quite unaware that she had been present when I fainted in the library. The discovery startled me—or that dreadful, dead-cold look that she has in her eyes startled me—I don't know which. I couldn't speak to her just at first. She wrote on her slate again—the strangest question —in these words: 'I said, at the time, brought to it by a man. Did I say true?' If the question had been put in the usual way, by any body else, I should have considered it too insolent to be noticed. Can you understand my answering it, Sir Patrick? I can't understand it myself, now—and yet I did answer. She forced me to it with her stony eyes. I said 'yes.''

'Did all this take place at the door?'

'At the door.'

'When did she let you in?'

'The next thing she did was to let me in. She took me by the arm, in a rough way, and drew me inside the door, and shut it. My nerves are broken; my courage is gone. I crept with cold when she touched me. She dropped my arm. I stood like a child, waiting for what it pleased her to say or do next. She rested her two hands on her sides, and took a long look at me. She made a horrid dumb sound—not as if she was angry; more, if such a thing could be, as if she was satisfied—pleased even, I should have said, if it had been any body but Hester Dethridge. Do you understand it?'

'Not yet. Let me get nearer to understanding it by asking something before you go on. Did she show any attachment to you, when you were both at Windygates?'

'Not the least. She appeared to be incapable of attachment to me, or to any body.'

'Did she write any more questions on her slate?'

'Yes. She wrote another question under what she had written just before. Her mind was still running on my fainting fit, and on the 'man' who had 'brought me to it.' She held up the slate; and the words were these: 'Tell me how he served you, did he knock you down?' Most people would have laughed at the question. I was startled by it. I told her, No. She shook her head as if she didn't believe me. She wrote on her slate, 'We are loth to own it when they up with their fists and beat us—ain't we?' I said, 'You are quite wrong.' She went on obstinately with her writing. 'Who is the man?'—was her next question. I had control enough over myself to decline telling her that. She opened the door, and pointed to me to go out. I made a sign entreating her to wait a little. She went back, in her impenetrable way, to the writing on the slate—still about the 'man.' This time, the question was plainer still. She had evidently placed her own interpretation of my appearance at the house. She wrote, 'Is it the man who lodges here?' I saw that she would close the door on me if I didn't answer. My only chance with her was to own that she had guessed right. I said 'Yes. I want to see him.' She took me by the arm, as roughly as before—and led me into the house.'

'I begin to understand her,' said Sir Patrick. 'I remember hearing, in my brother's time, that she had been brutally ill-used by her husband. The association of id eas, even in her confused brain, becomes plain, if you bear that in mind. What is her last remembrance of you? It is the remembrance of a fainting woman at Windygates.'

'Yes.'

'She makes you acknowledge that she has guessed right, in guessing that a man was, in some way, answerable for the condition in which she found you. A swoon produced by a shock indicted on the mind, is a swoon that she doesn't understand. She looks back into her own experience, and associates it with the exercise of actual physical brutality on the part of the man. And she sees, in you, a reflection of her own sufferings and her own case. It's curious—to a student of human nature. And it explains, what is otherwise unintelligible—her overlooking her own instructions to the servant, and letting you into the house. What happened next?'

'She took me into a room, which I suppose was her own room. She made signs, offering me tea. It was done in the strangest way—without the least appearance of kindness. After what you have just said to me, I think I can in