"Wilkie Collins - The Evil Genius" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Wilkie)

He had the fat face, the pink complexion, the hard blue eyes, the scanty yellow
hair, the smile with no meaning in it, the tremendous neck and shoulders, the
mighty fists and feet, which are seen in complete combination in England only.
Men of this breed possess a nervous system without being aware of it; suffer
affliction without feeling it; exercise courage without a sense of danger; marry
without love; eat and drink without limit; and sink (big as they are), when
disease attacks them, without an effort to live.
Mrs. Westerfield released her guest's bull-neck at the word of command. It was
impossible not to submit to him--he was so brutal. Impossible not to admire
him--he was so big.
"Have you no love left for me?" was all she ventured to say.
He took the reproof good-humoredly. "Love?" he repeated. "Come! I like
that--after throwing me over for a man with a handle to his name. Which am I to
call you: 'Mrs?' or 'My Lady'?"
"Call me your own. What is there to laugh at, Jemmy? You used to be fond of me;
you would never have gone to America, when I married Westerfield, if I hadn't
been dear to you. Oh, if I'm sure of anything, I'm sure of that! You wouldn't
bear malice, dear, if you only knew how cruelly I have been disappointed."
He suddenly showed an interest in what she was saying: the brute became cheery
and confidential. "So he made you a bad husband, did he? Up with his fist and
knocked you down, I daresay, if the truth was known?"
"You're all in the wrong, dear. He would have been a good husband if I had cared
about him. I never cared about anybody but you. It wasn't Westerfield who
tempted me to say Yes."
"That's a lie."
"No, indeed it isn't."
"Then why did you marry him?"
"When I married him, Jemmy, there was a prospect--oh, how could I resist it?
Think of being one of the Le Basques! Held in honor, to the end of my life, by
that noble family, whether my husband lived or died!"
To the barman's ears, this sounded like sheer nonsense. His experience in the
public-house suggested an explanation. "I say, my girl, have you been drinking?"

Mrs. Westerfield's first impulse led her to rise and point indignantly to the
door. He had only to look at her--and she sat down again a tamed woman. "You
don't understand how the chance tempted me," she answered, gently.
"What chance do you mean?"
"The chance, dear, of being a lord's mother."
He was still puzzled, but he lowered his tone. The true-born Briton bowed by
instinct before the woman who had jilted him, when she presented herself in the
character of a lord's mother. "How do you make that out, Maria?" he asked
politely.
She drew her chair nearer to him, when he called her by her Christian name for
the first time.
"When Westerfield was courting me," she said, "his brother (my lord) was a
bachelor. A lady--if one can call such a creature a lady!--was living under his
protection. He told Westerfield he was very fond of her, and he hated the idea
of getting married. 'If your wife's first child turns out to be a son,' he said,
'there is an heir to the title and estates, and I may go on as I am now.' We
were married a month afterward--and when my first child was born it was a girl.