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The Law and the Lady
by Wilkie Collins
February, 1999 [Etext #1622]
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The Law and the Lady
by Wilkie Collins
NOTE:
ADDRESSED TO THE READER.
IN offering this book to you, I have no Preface to write. I have
only to request that you will bear in mind certain established
truths, which occasionally escape your memory when you are
reading a work of fiction. Be pleased, then, to remember (First):
That the actions of human beings are not invariably governed by
the laws of pure reason. (Secondly): That we are by no means
always in the habit of bestowing our love on the objects which
are the most deserving of it, in the opinions of our friends.
(Thirdly and Lastly): That Characters which may not have
appeared, and Events which may not have taken place, within the
limits of our own individual experience, may nevertheless be
perfectly natural Characters and perfectly probable Events, for
all that. Having said these few words, I have said all that seems
to be necessary at the present time, in presenting my new Story
to your notice.
W. C.
LONDON, February 1, 1875.
THE LAW AND THE LADY.
PART I.
PARADISE LOST.
CHAPTER I.
THE BRIDE'S MISTAKE.
"FOR after this manner in the old time the holy women also who
trusted in God adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their
own husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord;
whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid
with any amazement."
Concluding the Marriage Service of the Church of England in those
well-known words, my uncle Starkweather shut up his book, and
looked at me across the altar rails with a hearty expression of
interest on his broad, red face. At the same time my aunt, Mrs.
Starkweather, standing by my side, tapped me smartly on the
shoulder, and said,
"Valeria, you are married!"
Where were my thoughts? What had become of my attention? I was
too bewildered to know. I started and looked at my new husband.
He seemed to be almost as much bewildered as I was. The same
thought had, as I believe, occurred to us both at the same
moment. Was it really possible--in spite of his mother's
opposition to our marriage--that we were Man and Wife? My aunt
Starkweather settled the question by a second tap on my shoulder.
"Take his arm!" she whispered, in the tone of a woman who had
lost all patience with me.
I took his arm.
"Follow your uncle."
Holding fast by my husband's arm, I followed my uncle and the
curate who had assisted him at the marriage.
The two clergymen led us into the vestry. The church was in one
of the dreary quarters of London, situated between the City and
the West End; the day was dull; the atmosphere was heavy and
damp. We were a melancholy little wedding party, worthy of the
dreary neighborhood and the dull day. No relatives or friends of
my husband's were present; his family, as I have already hinted,
disapproved of his marriage. Except my uncle and my aunt, no
other relations appeared on my side. I had lost both my parents,
and I had but few friends. My dear father's faithful old clerk,
Benjamin, attended the wedding to "give me away," as the phrase
is. He had known me from a child, and, in my forlorn position, he
was as good as a father to me.
The last ceremony left to be performed was, as usual, the signing
of the marriage register. In the confusion of the moment (and in
the absence of any information to guide me) I committed a
mistake--ominous, in my aunt Starkweather's opinion, of evil to
come. I signed my married instead of my maiden name.
"What!" cried my uncle, in his loudest and cheeriest tones, "you
have forgotten your own name already? Well, well! let us hope you
will never repent parting with it so readily. Try again,
Valeria--try again."
With trembling fingers I struck the pen through my first effort,
and wrote my maiden name, very badly indeed, as follows:
Valeria Brinton
When it came to my husband's turn I noticed, with surprise, that
his hand trembled too, and that he produced a very poor specimen
of his customary signature:
Eustace Woodville
My aunt, on being requested to sign, complied under protest. "A
bad beginning!" she said, pointing to my first unfortunate
signature with the feather end of her pen. "I hope, my dear, you
may not live to regret it."
Even then, in the days of my ignorance and my innocence, that
curious outbreak of my aunt's superstition produced a certain
uneasy sensation in my mind. It was a consolation to me to feel
the reassuring pressure of my husband's hand. It was an
indescribable relief to hear my uncle's hearty voice wishing me a
happy life at parting. The good man had left his north-country
Vicarage (my home since the death of my parents) expressly to
read the service at my marriage; and he and my aunt had arranged
to return by the mid-day train. He folded me in his great strong
arms, and he gave me a kiss which must certainly have been heard
by the idlers waiting for the bride and bridegroom outside the
church door.
"I wish you health and happiness, my love, with all my heart. You
are old enough to choose for yourself, and--no offense, Mr.
Woodville, you and I are new friends--and I pray God, Valeria, it
may turn out that you have chosen well. Our house will be dreary
enough without you; but I don't complain, my dear. On the
contrary, if this change in your life makes you happier, I
rejoice. Come, come! don't cry, or you will set your aunt
off--and it's no joke at her time of life. Besides, crying will
spoil your beauty. Dry your eyes and look in the glass there, and
you will see that I am right. Good-by, child--and God bless you!"
He tucked my aunt under his arm, and hurried out. My heart sank a
little, dearly as I loved my husband, when I had seen the last of
the true friend and protector of my maiden days.
The parting with old Benjamin came next. "I wish you well, my
dear; don't forget me," was all he said. But the old days at home
came back on me at those few words. Benjamin always dined with us
on Sundays in my father's time, and always brought some little
present with him for his master's child. I was very near to
"spoiling my beauty" (as my uncle had put it) when I offered the
old man my cheek to kiss, and heard him sigh to himself, as if he
too were not quite hopeful about my future life.
My husband's voice roused me, and turned my mind to happier
thoughts.
"Shall we go, Valeria?" he asked.
I stopped him on our way out to take advantage of my uncle's
advice; in other words, to see how I looked in the glass over the
vestry fireplace.
What does the glass show me?
The glass shows a tall and slender young woman of
three-and-twenty years of age. She is not at all the sort of
person who attracts attention in the street, seeing that she
fails to exhibit the popular yellow hair and the popular painted
cheeks. Her hair is black; dressed, in these later days (as it
was dressed years since to please her father), in broad ripples
drawn back from the forehead, and gathered into a simple knot
behind (like the hair of the Venus de Medicis), so as to show the
neck beneath. Her complexion is pale: except in moments of
violent agitation there is no color to be seen in her face. Her
eyes are of so dark a blue that they are generally mistaken for
black. Her eyebrows are well enough in form, but they are too
dark and too strongly marked. Her nose just inclines toward the
aquiline bend, and is considered a little too large by persons
difficult to please in the matter of noses. The mouth, her best
feature, is very delicately shaped, and is capable of presenting
great varieties of expression. As to the face in general, it is
too narrow and too long at the lower part, too broad and too low
in the higher regions of the eyes and the head. The whole
picture, as reflected in the glass, represents a woman of some
elegance, rather too pale, and rather too sedate and serious in
her moments of silence and repose--in short, a person who fails
to strike the ordinary observer at first sight, but who gains in
general estimation on a second, and sometimes on a third view. As
for her dress, it studiously conceals, instead of proclaiming,
that she has been married that morning. She wears a gray cashmere
tunic trimmed with gray silk, and having a skirt of the same
material and color beneath it. On her head is a bonnet to match,
relieved by a quilling of white muslin with one deep red rose, as
a morsel of positive color, to complete the effect of the whole
dress.
Have I succeeded or failed in describing the picture of myself
which I see in the glass? It is not for me to say. I have done my
best to keep clear of the two vanities--the vanity of
depreciating and the vanity of praising my own personal
appearance. For the rest, well written or badly written, thank
Heaven it is done!
And whom do I see in the glass standing by my side?
I see a man who is not quite so tall as I am, and who has the
misfortune of looking older than his years. His forehead is
prematurely bald. His big chestnut-colored beard and his long
overhanging mustache are prematurely streaked with gray. He has
the color in the face which my face wants, and the firmness in
his figure which my figure wants. He looks at me with the
tenderest and gentlest eyes (of a light brown) that I ever saw in
the countenance of a man. His smile is rare and sweet; his
manner, perfectly quiet and retiring, has yet a latent
persuasiveness in it which is (to women) irresistibly winning. He
just halts a little in his walk, from the effect of an injury
received in past years, when he was a soldier serving in India,
and he carries a thick bamboo cane, with a curious crutch handle
(an old favorite), to help himself along whenever he gets on his
feet, in doors or out. With this one little drawback (if it is a
drawback), there is nothing infirm or old or awkward about him;
his slight limp when he walks has (perhaps to my partial eyes) a
certain quaint grace of its own, which is pleasanter to see than
the unrestrained activity of other men. And last and best of all,
I love him! I love him! I love him! And there is an end of my
portrait of my husband on our wedding-day.
The glass has told me all I want to know. We leave the vestry at
last.
The sky, cloudy since the morning, has darkened while we have
been in the church, and the rain is beginning to fall heavily.
The idlers outside stare at us grimly under their umbrellas as we
pass through their ranks and hasten into our carriage. No
cheering; no sunshine; no flowers strewn in our path; no grand
breakfast; no genial speeches; no bridesmaids; no fathers or
mother's blessing. A dreary wedding--there is no denying it--and
(if Aunt Starkweather is right) a bad beginning as well!
A _coup_ has been reserved for us at the railway station. The
attentive porter, on the look-out for his fee pulls down the
blinds over the side windows of the carriage, and shuts out all
prying eyes in that way. After what seems to be an interminable
delay the train starts. My husband winds his arm round me. "At
last!" he whispers, with love in his eyes that no words can
utter, and presses me to him gently. My arm steals round his
neck; my eyes answer his eyes. Our lips meet in the first long,
lingering kiss of our married life.
Oh, what recollections of that journey rise in me as I write! Let
me dry my eyes, and shut up my paper for the day.
CHAPTER II.
THE BRIDE'S THOUGHTS.
WE had been traveling for a little more than an hour when a
change passed insensibly over us both.
Still sitting close together, with my hand in his, with my head
on his shoulder, little by little we fell insensibly into
silence. Had we already exhausted the narrow yet eloquent
vocabulary of love? Or had we determined by unexpressed consent,
after enjoying the luxury of passion that speaks, to try the
deeper and finer rapture of passion that thinks? I can hardly
determine; I only know that a time came when, under some strange
influence, our lips were closed toward each other. We traveled
along, each of us absorbed in our own reverie. Was he thinking
exclusively of me--as I was thinking exclusively of him? Before
the journey's end I had my doubts; at a little later time I knew
for certain that his thoughts, wandering far away from his young
wife, were all turned inward on his own unhappy self.
For me the secret pleasure of filling my mind with him, while I
felt him by my side, was a luxury in itself.
I pictured in my thoughts our first meeting in the neighborhood
of my uncle's house.
Our famous north-country trout stream wound its flashing and
foaming way through a ravine in the rocky moorland. It was a
windy, shadowy evening. A heavily clouded sunset lay low and red
in the west. A solitary angler stood casting his fly at a turn in
the stream where the backwater lay still and deep under an
overhanging bank. A girl (myself) standing on the bank, invisible
to the fisherman beneath, waited eagerly to see the trout rise.
The moment came; the fish took the fly.
Sometimes on the little level strip of sand at the foot of the
bank, sometimes (when the stream turned again) in the shallower
water rushing over its rocky bed, the angler followed the
captured trout, now letting the line run out and now winding it
in again, in the difficult and delicate process of "playing" the
fish. Along the bank I followed to watch the contest of skill and
cunning between the man and the trout. I had lived long enough
with my uncle Starkweather to catch some of his enthusiasm for
field sports, and to learn something, especially, of the angler's
art. Still following the stranger, with my eyes intently fixed on
every movement of his rod and line, and with not so much as a
chance fragment of my attention to spare for the rough path along
which I was walking, I stepped by chance on the loose overhanging
earth at the edge of the bank, and fell into the stream in an
instant.
The distance was trifling, the water was shallow, the bed of the
river was (fortunately for me) of sand. Beyond the fright and the
wetting I had nothing to complain of. In a few moments I was out
of the water and up again, very much ashamed of myself, on the
firm ground. Short as the interval was, it proved long enough to
favor the escape of the fish. The angler had heard my first
instinctive cry of alarm, had turned, and had thrown aside his
rod to help me. We confronted each other for the first time, I on
the bank and he in the shallow water below. Our eyes encountered,
and I verily believe our hearts encountered at the same moment.
This I know for certain, we forgot our breeding as lady and
gentleman: we looked at each other in barbarous silence.
I was the first to recover myself. What did I say to him?
I said something about my not being hurt, and then something
more, urging him to run back and try if he might not yet recover
the fish.
He went back unwillingly. He returned to me--of course without
the fish. Knowing how bitterly disappointed my uncle would have
been in his place, I apologized very earnestly. In my eagerness
to make atonement, I even offered to show him a spot where he
might try again, lower down the stream.
He would not hear of it; he entreated me to go home and change my
wet dress. I cared nothing for the wetting, but I obeyed him
without knowing why.
He walked with me. My way back to the Vicarage was his way back
to the inn. He had come to our parts, he told me, for the quiet
and retirement as much as for the fishing. He had noticed me once
or twice from the window of his room at the inn. He asked if I
were not the vicar's daughter.
I set him right. I told him that the vicar had married my
mother's sister, and that the two had been father and mother to
me since the death of my parents. He asked if he might venture to
call on Doctor Starkweather the next day, mentioning the name of
a friend of his, with whom he believed the vicar to be
acquainted. I invited him to visit us, as if it had been my
house; I was spell-bound under his eyes and under his voice. I
had fancied, honestly fancied, myself to have been in love often
and often before this time. Never in any other man's company had
I felt as I now felt in the presence of _this_ man. Night seemed
to fall suddenly over the evening landscape when he left me. I
leaned against the Vic arage gate. I could not breathe, I could
not think; my heart fluttered as if it would fly out of my
bosom--and all this for a stranger! I burned with shame; but oh,
in spite of it all, I was so happy!
And now, when little more than a few weeks had passed since that
first meeting, I had him by my side; he was mine for life! I
lifted my head from his bosom to look at him. I was like a child
with a new toy--I wanted to make sure that he was really my own.
He never noticed the action; he never moved in his corner of the
carriage. Was he deep in his own thoughts? and were they thoughts
of Me?
I laid down my head again softly, so as not to disturb him. My
thoughts wandered backward once more, and showed me another
picture in the golden gallery of the past.
The garden at the Vicarage formed the new scene. The time was
night. We had met together in secret. We were walking slowly to
and fro, out of sight of the house, now in the shadowy paths of
the shrubbery, now in the lovely moonlight on the open lawn.
We had long since owned our love and devoted our lives to each
other. Already our interests were one; already we shared the
pleasures and the pains of life. I had gone out to meet him that
night with a heavy heart, to seek comfort in his presence and to
find encouragement in his voice. He noticed that I sighed when he
first took me in his arms, and he gently turned my head toward
the moonlight to read my trouble in my face. How often he had
read my happiness there in the earlier days of our love!
"You bring bad news, my angel," he said, lifting my hair tenderly
from my forehead as he spoke. "I see the lines here which tell me
of anxiety and distress. I almost wish I loved you less dearly,
Valeria."
"Why?"
"I might give you back your freedom. I have only to leave this
place, and your uncle would be satisfied, and you would be
relieved from all the cares that are pressing on you now."
"Don't speak of it, Eustace! If you want me to forget my cares,
say you love me more dearly than ever."
He said it in a kiss. We had a moment of exquisite forgetfulness
of the hard ways of life--a moment of delicious absorption in
each other. I came back to realities fortified and composed,
rewarded for all that I had gone through, ready to go through it
all over again for another kiss. Only give a woman love, and
there is nothing she will not venture, suffer, and do.
"No, they have done with objecting. They have remembered at last
that I am of age, and that I can choose for myself. They have
been pleading with me, Eustace, to give you up. My aunt, whom I
thought rather a hard woman, has been crying--for the first time
in my experience of her. My uncle, always kind and good to me,
has been kinder and better than ever. He has told me that if I
persist in becoming your wife, I shall not be deserted on my
wedding-day. Wherever we may marry, he will be there to read the
service, and my aunt will go to the church with me. But he
entreats me to consider seriously what I am doing--to consent to
a separation from you for a time--to consult other people on my
position toward you, if I am not satisfied with his opinion. Oh,
my darling, they are as anxious to part us as if you were the
worst instead of the best of men!"
"Has anything happened since yesterday to increase their distrust
of me?" he asked.
"Yes,"
"What is it?"
"You remember referring my uncle to a friend of yours and of
his?"
"Yes. To Major Fitz-David."
"My uncle has written to Major Fitz-David "
"Why?"
He pronounced that one word in a tone so utterly unlike his
natural tone that his voice sounded quite strange to me.
"You won't be angry, Eustace, if I tell you?" I said. "My uncle,
as I understood him, had several motives for writing to the
major. One of them was to inquire if he knew your mother's
address."
Eustace suddenly stood still.
I paused at the same moment, feeling that I could venture no
further without the risk of offending him.
To speak the truth, his conduct, when he first mentioned our
engagement to my uncle, had been (so far as appearances went) a
little flighty and strange. The vicar had naturally questioned
him about his family. He had answered that his father was dead;
and he had consented, though not very readily, to announce his
contemplated marriage to his mother. Informing us that she too
lived in the country, he had gone to see her, without more
particularly mentioning her address. In two days he had returned
to the Vicarage with a very startling message. His mother
intended no disrespect to me or my relatives, but she disapproved
so absolutely of her son's marriage that she (and the members of
her family, who all agreed with her) would refuse to be present
at the ceremony, if Mr. Woodville persisted in keeping his
engagement with Dr. Starkweather's niece. Being asked to explain
this extraordinary communication, Eustace had told us that his
mother and his sisters were bent on his marrying another lady,
and that they were bitterly mortified and disappointed by his
choosing a stranger to the family. This explanation was enough
for me; it implied, so far as I was concerned, a compliment to my
superior influence over Eustace, which a woman always receives
with pleasure. But it failed to satisfy my uncle and my aunt. The
vicar expressed to Mr. Woodville a wish to write to his mother,
or to see her, on the subject of her strange message. Eustace
obstinately declined to mention his mother's address, on the
ground that the vicar's interference would be utterly useless. My
uncle at once drew the conclusion that the mystery about the
address indicated something wrong. He refused to favor Mr.
Woodville's renewed proposal for my hand, and he wrote the same
day to make inquiries of Mr. Woodville's reference and of his own
friend Major Fitz-David.
Under such circumstances as these, to speak of my uncle's motives
was to venture on very delicate ground. Eustace relieved me from
further embarrassment by asking a question to which I could
easily reply.
"Has your uncle received any answer from Major Fitz-David?" he
inquired.
"Yes.
"Were you allowed to read it?" His voice sank as he said those
words; his face betrayed a sudden anxiety which it pained me to
see.
"I have got the answer with me to show you," I said.
He almost snatched the letter out of my hand; he turned his back
on me to read it by the light of the moon. The letter was short
enough to be soon read. I could have repeated it at the time. I
can repeat it now.
"DEAR VICAR--Mr. Eustace Woodville is quite correct in stating
to you that he is a gentleman by birth and position, and that he
inherits (under his deceased father's will) an independent
fortune of two thousand a year.
"Always yours,
"LAWRENCE FITZ-DAVID."
"Can anybody wish for a plainer answer than that?" Eustace
asked, handing the letter back to me.
"If _I_ had written for information about you," I answered, "it
would have been plain enough for me."
"Is it not plain enough for your uncle?"
"No."
"What does he say?"
"Why need you care to know, my darling?"
"I want to know, Valeria. There must be no secret between us in
this matter. Did your uncle say anything when he showed you the
major's letter?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"My uncle told me that his letter of inquiry filled three pages,
and he bade me observe that the major's answer contained one
sentence only. He said, 'I volunteered to go to Major Fitz-David
and talk the matter over. You see he takes no notice of my
proposal. I asked him for the address of Mr. Woodville's mother.
He passes over my request, as he has passed over my proposal--he
studiously confines himself to the shortest possible statement of
bare facts. Use your common-sense, Valeria. Isn't this rudeness
rather remarkable on the part of a man who is a gentleman by
birth and breeding, and who is also a friend of mine?'"
Eustace stopped me there.
"Did you answer your uncle's question?" he asked.
"No," I replied. "I only said that I did not understand the
major's conduct."
"And what did your uncle say next? If you love me, Valeria, tell
me the truth."
"He used very stron g language, Eustace. He is an old man; you
must not be offended with him."
"I am not offended. What did he say?"
"He said, 'Mark my words! There is something under the surface in
connection with Mr. Woodville, or with his family, to which Major
Fitz-David is not at liberty to allude. Properly interpreted,
Valeria, that letter is a warning. Show it to Mr. Woodville, and
tell him (if you like) what I have just told you--'"
Eustace stopped me again.
"You are sure your uncle said those words?" he asked, scanning my
face attentively in the moonlight.
"Quite sure. But I don't say what my uncle says. Pray don't think
that!"
He suddenly pressed me to his bosom, and fixed his eyes on mine.
His look frightened me.
"Good-by, Valeria!" he said. "Try and think kindly of me, my
darling, when you are married to some happier man."
He attempted to leave me. I clung to him in an agony of terror
that shook me from head to foot.
"What do you mean?" I asked, as soon as I could speak. "I am
yours and yours only. What have I said, what have I done, to
deserve those dreadful words?"
"We must part, my angel," he answered, sadly. "The fault is none
of yours; the misfortune is all mine. My Valeria! how can you
marry a man who is an object of suspicion to your nearest and
dearest friends? I have led a dreary life. I have never found in
any other woman the sympathy with me, the sweet comfort and
companionship, that I find in you. Oh, it is hard to lose you! it
is hard to go back again to my unfriended life! I must make the
sacrifice, love, for your sake. I know no more why that letter is
what it is than you do. Will your uncle believe me? will your
friends believe me? One last kiss, Valeria! Forgive me for having
loved you--passionately, devotedly loved you. Forgive me--and let
me go!"
I held him desperately, recklessly. His eyes, put me beside
myself; his words filled me with a frenzy of despair.
"Go where you may," I said, "I go with you!
Friends--reputation--I care nothing who I lose, or what I lose!
Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman--don't madden me! I can't live
without you. I must and will be your wife!"
Those wild words were all I could say before the misery and
madness in me forced their way outward in a burst of sobs and
tears.
He yielded. He soothed me with his charming voice; he brought me
back to myself with his tender caresses. He called the bright
heaven above us to witness that he devoted his whole life to me.
He vowed--oh, in such solemn, such eloquent words!--that his one
thought, night and day, should be to prove himself worthy of such
love as mine. And had he not nobly redeemed the pledge? Had not
the betrothal of that memorable night been followed by the
betrothal at the altar, by the vows before God! Ah, what a life
was before me! What more than mortal happiness was mine!
Again I lifted my head from his bosom to taste the dear delight
of seeing him by my side--my life, my love, my husband, my own!
Hardly awakened yet from the absorbing memories of the past to
the sweet realities of the present, I let my cheek touch his
cheek, I whispered to him softly, "Oh, how I love you! how I love
you!"
The next instant I started back from him. My heart stood still. I
put my hand up to my face. What did I feel on my cheek? (_I_ had
not been weeping--I was too happy.) What did I feel on my cheek?
A tear!
His face was still averted from me. I turned it toward me, with
my own hands, by main force.
I looked at him--and saw my husband, on our wedding-day, with his
eyes full of tears.
CHAPTER III.
RAMSGATE SANDS.
EUSTACE succeeded in quieting my alarm. But I can hardly say
that he succeeded in satisfying my mind as well.
He had been thinking, he told me, of the contrast between his
past and his present life. Bitter remembrance of the years that
had gone had risen in his memory, and had filled him with
melancholy misgivings of his capacity to make my life with him a
happy one. He had asked himself if he had not met me too late--if
he were not already a man soured and broken by the
disappointments and disenchantments of the past? Doubts such as
these, weighing more and more heavily on his mind, had filled his
eyes with the tears which I had discovered--tears which he now
entreated me, by my love for him, to dismiss from my memory
forever.
I forgave him, comforted him, revived him; but there were moments
when the remembrance of what I had seen troubled me in secret,
and when I asked myself if I really possessed my husband's full
confidence as he possessed mine.
We left the train at Ramsgate.
The favorite watering-place was empty; the season was just over.
Our arrangements for the wedding tour included a cruise to the
Mediterranean in a yacht lent to Eustace by a friend. We were
both fond of the sea, and we were equally desirous, considering
the circumstances under which we had married, of escaping the
notice of friends and acquaintances. With this object in view,
having celebrated our marriage privately in London, we had
decided on instructing the sailing-master of the yacht to join us
at Ramsgate. At this port (when the season for visitors was at an
end) we could embark far more privately than at the popular
yachting stations situated in the Isle of Wight.
Three days passed--days of delicious solitude, of exquisite
happiness, never to be forgotten, never to be lived over again,
to the end of our lives!
Early on the morning of the fourth day, just before sunrise, a
trifling incident happened, which was noticeable, nevertheless,
as being strange to me in my experience of myself.
I awoke, suddenly and unaccountably, from a deep and dreamless
sleep with an all-pervading sensation of nervous uneasiness which
I had never felt before. In the old days at the Vicarage my
capacity as a sound sleeper had been the subject of many a little
harmless joke. From the moment when my head was on the pillow I
had never known what it was to awake until the maid knocked at my
door. At all seasons and times the long and uninterrupted repose
of a child was the repose that I enjoyed.
And now I had awakened, without any assignable cause, hours
before my usual time. I tried to compose myself to sleep again.
The effort was useless. Such a restlessness possessed me that I
was not even able to lie still in the bed. My husband was
sleeping soundly by my side. In the fear of disturbing him I
rose, and put on my dressing-gown and slippers.
I went to the window. The sun was just rising over the calm gray
sea. For a while the majestic spectacle before me exercised a
tranquilizing influence on the irritable condition of my nerves.
But ere long the old restlessness returned upon me. I walked
slowly to and fro in the room, until I was weary of the monotony
of the exercise. I took up a book, and laid it aside again. My
attention wandered; the author was powerless to recall it. I got
on my feet once more, and looked at Eustace, and admired him and
loved him in his tranquil sleep. I went back to the window, and
wearied of the beautiful morning. I sat down before the glass and
looked at myself. How haggard and worn I was already, through
awaking before my usual time! I rose again, not knowing what to
do next. The confinement to the four walls of the room began to
be intolerable to me. I opened the door that led into my
husband's dressing-room, and entered it, to try if the change
would relieve me.
The first object that I noticed was his dressing-case, open on
the toilet-table.
I took out the bottles and pots and brushes and combs, the knives
and scissors in one compartment, the writing materials in
another. I smelled the perfumes and pomatums; I busily cleaned
and dusted the bottles with my handkerchief as I took them out.
Little by little I completely emptied the dressing-case. It was
lined with blue velvet. In one corner I noticed a tiny slip of
loose blue silk. Taking it between my finger and thumb, and
drawing it upward, I discovered that there was a false bottom to
the case, forming a secret compartment for letters and papers. In
my strange condition--capricious, idle, inquisitive--it was an
amusement to me to take out the papers, just as I had taken out
everything else .
I found some receipted bills, which failed to interest me; some
letters, which it is needless to say I laid aside after only
looking at the addresses; and, under all, a photograph, face
downward, with writing on the back of it. I looked at the
writing, and saw these words:
"To my dear son, Eustace."
His mother! the woman who had so obstinately and mercilessly
opposed herself to our marriage!
I eagerly turned the photograph, expecting to see a woman with a
stern, ill-tempered, forbidding countenance. To my surprise, the
face showed the remains of great beauty; the expression, though
remarkably firm, was yet winning, tender, and kind. The gray hair
was arranged in rows of little quaint old-fashioned curls on
either side of the head, under a plain lace cap. At one corner of
the mouth there was a mark, apparently a mole, which added to the
characteristic peculiarity of the face. I looked and looked,
fixing the portrait thoroughly in my mind. This woman, who had
almost insulted me and my relatives, was, beyond all doubt or
dispute, so far as appearances went, a person possessing unusual
attractions--a person whom it would be a pleasure and a privilege
to know.
I fell into deep thought. The discovery of the photograph quieted
me as nothing had quieted me yet.
The striking of a clock downstairs in the hall warned me of the
flight of time. I carefully put back all the objects in the
dressing-case (beginning with the photograph) exactly as I had
found them, and returned to the bedroom. As I looked at my
husband, still sleeping peacefully, the question forced itself
into my mind, What had made that genial, gentle mother of his so
sternly bent on parting us? so harshly and pitilessly resolute in
asserting her disapproval of our marriage?
Could I put my question openly to Eustace when he awoke? No; I
was afraid to venture that length. It had been tacitly understood
between us that we were not to speak of his mother--and, besides,
he might be angry if he knew that I had opened the private
compartment of his dressing-case.
After breakfast that morning we had news at last of the yacht.
The vessel was safely moored in the inner harbor, and the
sailing-master was waiting to receive my husband's orders on
board.
Eustace hesitated at asking me to accompany him to the yacht. It
would be necessary for him to examine the inventory of the
vessel, and to decide questions, not very interesting to a woman,
relating to charts and barometers, provisions and water. He asked
me if I would wait for his return. The day was enticingly
beautiful, and the tide was on the ebb. I pleaded for a walk on
the sands; and the landlady at our lodgings, who happened to be
in the room at the time, volunteered to accompany me and take
care of me. It was agreed that we should walk as far as we felt
inclined in the direction of Broadstairs, and that Eustace should
follow and meet us on the sands, after having completed his
arrangements on board the yacht.
In half an hour more the landlady and I were out on the beach.
The scene on that fine autumn morning was nothing less than
enchanting. The brisk breeze, the brilliant sky, the flashing
blue sea, the sun-bright cliffs and the tawny sands at their
feet, the gliding procession of ships on the great marine highway
of the English Channel--it was all so exhilarating, it was all so
delightful, that I really believe if I had been by myself I could
have danced for joy like a child. The one drawback to my
happiness was the landlady's untiring tongue. She was a forward,
good-natured, empty-headed woman, who persisted in talking,
whether I listened or not, and who had a habit of perpetually
addressing me as "Mrs. Woodville," which I thought a little
overfamiliar as an assertion of equality from a person in her
position to a person in mine.
We had been out, I should think, more than half an hour, when we
overtook a lady walking before us on the beach.
Just as we were about to pass the stranger she took her
handkerchief from her pocket, and accidentally drew out with it a
letter, which fell unnoticed by her, on the sand. I was nearest
to the letter, and I picked it up and offered it to the lady.
The instant she turned to thank me, I stood rooted to the spot.
There was the original of the photographic portrait in the
dressing-case! there was my husband's mother, standing face to
face with me! I recognized the quaint little gray curls, the
gentle, genial expression, the mole at the corner of the mouth.
No mistake was possible. His mother herself!
The old lady, naturally enough, mistook my confusion for shyness.
With perfect tact and kindness she entered into conversation with
me. In another minute I was walking side by side with the woman
who had sternly repudiated me as a member of her family; feeling,
I own, terribly discomposed, and not knowing in the least whether
I ought or ought not to assume the responsibility, in my
husband's absence, of telling her who I was.
In another minute my familiar landlady, walking on the other side
of my mother-in-law, decided the question for me. I happened to
say that I supposed we must by that time be near the end of our
walk--the little watering-place called Broadstairs. "Oh no, Mrs.
Woodville! cried the irrepressible woman, calling me by my name,
as usual; "nothing like so near as you think!"
I looked with a beating heart at the old lady.
To my unutterable amazement, not the faintest gleam of
recognition appeared in her face. Old Mrs. Woodville went on
talking to young Mrs. Woodville just as composedly as if she had
never heard her own name before in her life!
My face and manner must have betrayed something of the agitation
that I was suffering. Happening to look at me at the end of her
next sentence, the old lady started, and said, in her kindly way,
"I am afraid you have overexerted yourself. You are very
pale--you are looking quite exhausted. Come and sit down here;
let me lend you my smelling-bottle."
I followed her, quite helplessly, to the base of the cliff. Some
fallen fragments of chalk offered us a seat. I vaguely heard the
voluble landlady's expressions of sympathy and regret; I
mechanically took the smelling-bottle which my husband's mother
offered to me, after hearing my name, as an act of kindness to a
stranger
If I had only had myself to think of, I believe I should have
provoked an explanation on the spot. But I had Eustace to think
of. I was entirely ignorant of the relations, hostile or
friendly, which existed between his mother and himself. What
could I do?
In the meantime the old lady was still speaking to me with the
most considerate sympathy. She too was fatigued. she said. She
had passed a weary night at the bedside of a near relative
staying at Ramsgate. Only the day before she had received a
telegram announcing that one of her sisters was seriously ill.
She was herself thank God, still active and strong, and she had
thought it her duty to start at once for Ramsgate. Toward the
morning the state of the patient had improved. "The doctor
assures me ma'am, that there is no immediate danger; and I
thought it might revive me, after my long night at the bedside,
if I took a little walk on the beach."
I heard the words--I understood what they meant--but I was still
too bewildered and too intimidated by my extraordinary position
to be able to continue the conversation. The landlady had a
sensible suggestion to make--the landlady was the next person who
spoke.
"Here is a gentleman coming," she said to me, pointing in the
direction of Ramsgate. You can never walk back. Shall we ask him
to send a chaise from Broadstairs to the gap in the cliff?"
The gentleman advanced a little nearer.
The landlady and I recognized him at the same moment. It was
Eustace coming to meet us, as we had arranged. The irrepressible
landlady gave the freest expression to her feelings. Oh, Mrs.
Woodville, ain't it lucky? here is Mr. Woodville himself ."
Once more I looked at my mother-in-law. Once more the name failed
to produce the slightest effect on her. Her sight was not so keen
as ours; she had not recognized her son yet. He had young eyes
like us, and he recognized his mother. For a mome nt he stopped
like a man thunderstruck. Then he came on--his ruddy face white
with suppressed emotion, his eyes fixed on his mother.
"You here!" he said to her.
"How do you do, Eustace?" she quietly rejoined. "Have _you_ heard
of your aunt's illness too? Did you know she was staying at
Ramsgate?"
He made no answer. The landlady, drawing the inevitable inference
from the words that she had just heard, looked from me to my
mother-in-law in a state of amazement, which paralyzed even her
tongue. I waited with my eyes on my husband, to see what he would
do. If he had delayed acknowledging me another moment, the whole
future course of my life might have been altered--I should have
despised him.
He did _not_ delay. He came to my side and took my hand.
"Do you know who this is?" be said to his mother.
She answered, looking at me with a courteous bend of her head:
"A lady I met on the beach, Eustace, who kindly restored to me a
letter that I dropped. I think I heard the name" (she turned to
the landlady): Mrs. Woodville, was it not?"
My husband's fingers unconsciously closed on my hand with a grasp
that hurt me. He set his mother right, it is only just to say,
without one cowardly moment of hesitation.
"Mother," he said to her, very quietly, "this lady is my wife."
She had hitherto kept her seat. She now rose slowly and faced her
son in silence. The first expression of surprise passed from her
face. It was succeeded by the most terrible look of mingled
indignation and contempt that I ever saw in a woman's eyes.
"I pity your wife," she said.
With those words and no more, lifting her hand she waved him back
from her, and went on her way again, as we had first found her,
alone.
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE WAY HOME.
LEFT by ourselves, there was a moment of silence among us.
Eustace spoke first.
"Are you able to walk back?" he said to me. "Or shall we go on to
Broadstairs, and return to Ramsgate by the railway?"
He put those questions as composedly, so far as his manner was
concerned, as if nothing remarkable had happened. But his eyes
and his lips betrayed him. They told me that he was suffering
keenly in secret. The extraordinary scene that had just passed,
far from depriving me of the last remains of my courage, had
strung up my nerves and restored my self-possession. I must have
been more or less than woman if my self-respect had not been
wounded, if my curiosity had not been wrought to the highest
pitch, by the extraordinary conduct of my husband's mother when
Eustace presented me to her. What was the secret of her despising
him, and pitying me? Where was the explanation of her
incomprehensible apathy when my name was twice pronounced in her
hearing? Why had she left us, as if the bare idea of remaining in
our company was abhorrent to her? The foremost interest of my
life was now the interest of penetrating these mysteries. Walk? I
was in such a fever of expectation that I felt as if I could have
walked to the world's end, if I could only keep my husband by my
side, and question him on the way.
"I am quite recovered," I said. "Let us go back, as we came, on
foot."
Eustace glanced at the landlady. The landlady understood him.
"I won't intrude my company on you, sir," she said, sharply. "I
have some business to do at Broadstairs, and, now I am so near, I
may as well go on. Good-morning, Mrs. Woodville."
She laid a marked emphasis on my name, and she added one
significant look at parting, which (in the preoccupied state of
my mind at that moment) I entirely failed to comprehend. There
was neither time nor opportunity to ask her what she meant. With
a stiff little bow, addressed to Eustace, she left us as his
mother had left us taking the way to Broadstairs, and walking
rapidly.
At last we were alone.
I lost no time in beginning my inquiries; I wasted no words in
prefatory phrases. In the plainest terms I put the question to
him:
"What does your mother's conduct mean?"
Instead of answering, he burst into a fit of laughter--loud,
coarse, hard laughter, so utterly unlike any sound I had ever yet
heard issue from his lips, so strangely and shockingly foreign to
his character as _I_ understood it, that I stood still on the
sands and openly remonstrated with him.
"Eustace! you are not like yourself," I said. You almost frighten
me."
He took no notice. He seemed to be pursuing some pleasant train
of thought just started in his mind.
"So like my mother!" he exclaimed, with the air of a man who felt
irresistibly diverted by some humorous idea of his own. "Tell me
all about it, Valeria!"
"Tell _you_!" I repeated. "After what has happened, surely it is
your duty to enlighten _me_."
"You don't see the joke," he said.
"I not only fail to see the joke," I rejoined, "I see something
in your mother's language and your mother's behavior which
justifies me in asking you for a serious explanation."
"My dear Valeria, if you understood my mother as well as I do, a
serious explanation of her conduct would be the last thing in the
world that you would expect from me. The idea of taking my mother
seriously!" He burst out laughing again. "My darling, you don't
know how you amuse me."
It was all forced: it was all unnatural. He, the most delicate,
the most refined of men--a gentleman in the highest sense of the
word--was coarse and loud and vulgar! My heart sank under a
sudden sense of misgiving which, with all my love for him, it was
impossible to resist. In unutterable distress and alarm I asked
myself, "Is my husband beginning to deceive me? is he acting a
part, and acting it badly, before we have been married a week?" I
set myself to win his confidence in a new way. He was evidently
determined to force his own point of view on me. I determined, on
my side, to accept his point of view.
"You tell me I don't understand your mother," I said, gently.
"Will you help me to understand her?"
"It is not easy to help you to understand a woman who doesn't
understand herself," he answered. "But I will try. The key to my
poor dear mother's character is, in one word--Eccentricity."
If he had picked out the most inappropriate word in the whole
dictionary to describe the lady whom I had met on the beach,
"Eccentricity" would have been that word. A child who had seen
what I saw, who had heard what I heard would have discovered that
he was trifling--grossly, recklessly trifling--with the truth
"Bear in mind what I have said," he proceeded; "and if you want
to understand my mother, do what I asked you to do a minute
since--tell me all about it. How came you to speak to her, to
begin with?"
"Your mother told you, Eustace. I was walking just behind her,
when she dropped a letter by accident--"
"No accident," he interposed. "The letter was dropped on
purpose."
"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "Why should your mother drop the
letter on purpose?"
"Use the key to her character, my dear. Eccentricity! My mother's
odd way of making acquaintance with you."
"Making acquaintance with me? I have just told you that I was
walking behind her. She could not have known of the existence of
such a person as myself until I spoke to her first."
"So you suppose, Valeria."
"I am certain of it."
"Pardon me--you don't know my mother as I do."
I began to lose all patience with him.
"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that your mother was out on
the sands to-day for the express purpose of making acquaintance
with Me?"
"I have not the slightest doubt of it," he answered, coolly.
"Why, she didn't even recognize my name!" I burst out. "Twice
over the landlady called me Mrs. Woodville in your mother's
hearing, and twice over, I declare to you on my word of honor, it
failed to produce the slightest impression on her. She looked and
acted as if she had never heard her own name before in her life."
"'Acted' is the right word," he said, just as composedly as
before. "The women on the stage are not the only women who can
act. My mother's object was to make herself thoroughly acquainted
with you, and to throw you off your guard by speaking in the
character of a stranger. It is exactly like her to take that
roundabout way of satisfying her curiosity about a
daughter-in-law she disapproves of . If I had not joined you when
I did, you would have been examined and cross-examined about
yourself and about me, and you would innocently have answered
under the impression that you were speaking to a chance
acquaintance. There is my mother all over! She is your enemy,
remember--not your friend. She is not in search of your merits,
but of your faults. And you wonder why no impression was produced
on her when she heard you addressed by your name! Poor innocent!
I can tell you this--you only discovered my mother in her own
character when I put an end to the mystification by presenting
you to each other. You saw how angry she was, and now you know
why."
I let him go on without saying a word. I listened--oh! with such
a heavy heart, with such a crushing sense of disenchantment and
despair! The idol of my worship, the companion, guide, protector
of my life--had he fallen so low? could he stoop to such
shameless prevarication as this?
Was there one word of truth in all that he had said to me? Yes!
If I had not discovered his mother's portrait, it was certainly
true that I should not have known, not even have vaguely
suspected, who she really was. Apart from this, the rest was
lying, clumsy lying, which said one thing at least for him, that
he was not accustomed to falsehood and deceit. Good Heavens! if
my husband was to be believed, his mother must have tracked us to
London, tracked us to the church, tracked us to the railway
station, tracked us to Ramsgate! To assert that she knew me by
sight as the wife of Eustace, and that she had waited on the
sands and dropped her letter for the express purpose of making
acquaintance with me, was also to assert every one of these
monstrous probabilities to be facts that had actually happened!
I could say no more. I walked by his side in silence, feeling the
miserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a
family secret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in
the body, we were separated, after a married life of barely four
days.
"Valeria," he asked, "have you nothing to say to me?"
"Nothing."
"Are you not satisfied with my explanation?"
I detected a slight tremor in his voice as he put that question.
The tone was, for the first time since we had spoken together, a
tone that my experience associated with him in certain moods of
his which I had already learned to know well. Among the hundred
thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman
who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her
than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who
shed tears on the smallest provocation: it is not in my
temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little natural
change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to the
happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out
crying.
He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to
look at me.
I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of
my weakness and my want of spirit. I was determined not to look
at him.
In the silence that followed he suddenly dropped on his knees at
my feet, with a cry of despair that cut through me like a knife.
"Valeria! I am vile--I am false--I am unworthy of you. Don't
believe a word of what I have been saying--lies, lies, cowardly,
contemptible lies! You don't know what I have gone through; you
don't know how I have been tortured. Oh, my darling, try not to
despise me! I must have been beside myself when I spoke to you as
I did. You looked hurt; you looked offended; I didn't know what
to do. I wanted to spare you even a moment's pain--I wanted to
hush it up, and have done with it. For God's sake don't ask me to
tell you any more! My love! my angel! it's something between my
mother and me; it's nothing that need disturb you; it's nothing
to anybody now. I love you, I adore you; my whole heart and soul
are yours. Be satisfied with that. Forget what has happened. You
shall never see my mother again. We will leave this place
to-morrow. We will go away in the yacht. Does it matter where we
live, so long as we live for each other? Forgive and forget! Oh,
Valeria, Valeria, forgive and forget!"
Unutterable misery was in his face; unutterable misery was in his
voice. Remember this. And remember that I loved him.
"It is easy to forgive," I said, sadly. "For your sake, Eustace,
I will try to forget."
I raised him gently as I spoke. He kissed my hands with the air
of a man who was too humble to venture on any more familiar
expression of his gratitude than that. The sense of embarrassment
between us as we slowly walked on again was so unendurable that I
actually cast about in my mind for a subject of conversation, as
if I had been in the company of a stranger! In mercy to _him_, I
asked him to tell me about the yacht.
He seized on the subject as a drowning man seizes on the hand
that rescues him.
On that one poor little topic of the yacht he talked, talked,
talked, as if his life depended upon his not being silent for an
instant on the rest of the way back. To me it was dreadful to
hear him. I could estimate what he was suffering by the violence
which he--ordinarily a silent and thoughtful man--was now doing
to his true nature, and to the prejudices and habits of his life.
With the greatest difficulty I preserved my self-control until we
reached the door of our lodgings. There I was obliged to plead
fatigue, and ask him to let me rest for a little while in the
solitude of my own room.
"Shall we sail to-morrow?" he called after me suddenly, as I
ascended the stairs.
Sail with him to the Mediterranean the next day? Pass weeks and
weeks absolutely alone with him, in the narrow limits of a
vessel, with his horrible secret parting us in sympathy further
and further from each other day by day? I shuddered at the
thought of it.
"To-morrow is rather a short notice," I said. "Will you give me a
little longer time to prepare for the voyage?"
"Oh yes--take any time you like," he answered, not (as I thought)
very willingly. "While you are resting--there are still one or
two little things to be settled--I think I will go back to the
yacht. Is there anything I can do for you, Valeria, before I go?"
"Nothing--thank you, Eustace."
He hastened away to the harbor. Was he afraid of his own
thoughts, if he were left by himself in the house. Was the
company of the sailing-master and the steward better than no
company at all?
It was useless to ask. What did I know about him or his thoughts?
I locked myself into my room.
CHAPTER V.
THE LANDLADY'S DISCOVERY.
I SAT down, and tried to compose my spirits. Now or never was
the time to decide what it was my duty to my husband and my duty
to myself to do next.
The effort was beyond me. Worn out in mind and body alike, I was
perfectly incapable of pursuing any regular train of thought. I
vaguely felt--if I left things as they were--that I could never
hope to remove the shadow which now rested on the married life
that had begun so brightly. We might live together, so as to save
appearances. But to forget what had happened, or to feel
satisfied with my position, was beyond the power of my will. My
tranquillity as a woman--perhaps my dearest interests as a
wife--depended absolutely on penetrating the mystery of my
mother-in-law's conduct, and on discovering the true meaning of
the wild words of penitence and self-reproach which my husband
had addressed to me on our way home.
So far I could advance toward realizing my position--and no
further. When I asked myself what was to be done next, hopeless
confusion, maddening doubt, filled my mind, and transformed me
into the most listless and helpless of living women.
I gave up the struggle. In dull, stupid, obstinate despair, I
threw myself on my bed, and fell from sheer fatigue into a
broken, uneasy sleep.
I was awakened by a knock at the door of my room.
Was it my husband? I started to my feet as the idea occurred to
me. Was some new trial of my patience and my fortitude at hand?
Half nervously, half irritably, I asked who was there.
The landlady's voice answered me.
"Can I speak to you for a moment, if you please?"
I opened the door. There is no
disguising it--though I loved him so dearly, though I had left
home and friends for his sake--it was a relief to me, at that
miserable time, to know that Eustace had not returned to the
house.
The landlady came in, and took a seat, without waiting to be
invited, close by my side. She was no longer satisfied with
merely asserting herself as my equal. Ascending another step on
the social ladder, she took her stand on the platform of
patronage, and charitably looked down on me as an object of pity.
"I have just returned from Broadstairs," she began. "I hope you
will do me the justice to believe that I sincerely regret what
has happened."
I bowed, and said nothing.
"As a gentlewoman myself," proceeded the landlady--"reduced by
family misfortunes to let lodgings, but still a gentlewoman--I
feel sincere sympathy with you. I will even go further than that.
I will take it on myself to say that I don't blame _you_. No, no.
I noticed that you were as much shocked and surprised at your
mother-in-law's conduct as I was; and that is saying a great
deal--a great deal indeed. However, I have a duty to perform. It
is disagreeable, but it is not the less a duty on that account. I
am a single woman; not from want of opportunities of changing my
condition--I beg you will understand that--but from choice.
Situated as I am, I receive only the most respectable persons
into my house. There must be no mystery about the positions of
_my_ lodgers. Mystery in the position of a lodger carries with
it--what shall I say? I don't wish to offend you--I will say, a
certain Taint. Very well. Now I put it to your own common-sense.
Can a person in my position be expected to expose herself
to--Taint? I make these remarks in a sisterly and Christian
spirit. As a lady yourself--I will even go the length of saying a
cruelly used lady--you will, I am sure, understand--"
I could endure it no longer. I stopped her there.
"I understand," I said, "that you wish to give us notice to quit
your lodgings. When do you want us to go?"
The landlady held up a long, lean, red hand, in a sorrowful and
sisterly protest.
"No," she said. "Not that tone; not those looks. It's natural you
should be annoyed; it's natural you should be angry. But do--now
do please try and control yourself. I put it to your own
common-sense (we will say a week for the notice to quit)--why not
treat me like a friend? You don't know what a sacrifice, what a
cruel sacrifice, I have made--entirely for your sake.
"You?" I exclaimed. "What sacrifice?"
"What sacrifice?" repeated the landlady. "I have degraded myself
as a gentlewoman. I have forfeited my own self-respect." She
paused for a moment, and suddenly seized my hand in a perfect
frenzy of friendship. "Oh, my poor dear!" cried this intolerable
person. "I have discovered everything. A villain has deceived
you. You are no more married than I am!"
I snatched my hand out of hers, and rose angrily from my chair.
"Are you mad?" I asked.
The landlady raised her eyes to the ceiling with the air of a
person who had deserved martyrdom, and who submitted to it
cheerfully.
"Yes," she said. "I begin to think I _am_ mad--mad to have
devoted myself to an ungrateful woman, to a person who doesn't
appreciate a sisterly and Christian sacrifice of self. Well, I
won't do it again. Heaven forgive me--I won't do it again!"
"Do what again?" I asked.
"Follow your mother-in-law," cried the landlady, suddenly
dropping the character of a martyr, and assuming the character of
a vixen in its place. "I blush when I think of it. I followed
that most respectable person every step of the way to her own
door."
Thus far my pride had held me up. It sustained me no longer. I
dropped back again into my chair, in undisguised dread of what
was coming next.
"I gave you a look when I left you on the beach," pursued the
landlady, growing louder and louder and redder and redder as she
went on. "A grateful woman would have understood that look. Never
mind! I won't do it again I overtook your mother-in-law at the
gap in the cliff. I followed her--oh, how I feel the disgrace of
it _now!_--I followed her to the station at Broadstairs. She went
back by train to Ramsgate. _I_ went back by train to Ramsgate.
She walked to her lodgings. _I_ walked to her lodgings. Behind
her. Like a dog. Oh, the disgrace of it! Providentially, as I
then thought--I don't know what to think of it now--the landlord
of the house happened to be a friend of mine, and happened to be
at home. We have no secrets from each other where lodgers are
concerned. I am in a position to tell you, madam, what your
mother-in-law's name really is. She knows nothing about any such
person as Mrs. Woodville, for an excellent reason. Her name is
_not_ Woodville. Her name (and consequently her son's name) is
Macallan--Mrs. Macallan, widow of the late General Macallan. Yes!
your husband is _not_ your husband. You are neither maid, wife,
nor widow. You are worse than nothing, madam, and you leave my
house!"
I stopped her as she opened the door to go out. She had roused
_my_ temper by this time. The doubt that she had cast on my
marriage was more than mortal resignation could endure.
"Give me Mrs. Macallan's address," I said.
The landlady's anger receded into the background, and the
landlady's astonishment appeared in its place.
"You don't mean to tell me you are going to the old lady
herself?" she said.
"Nobody but the old lady can tell me what I want to know," I
answered. "Your discovery (as you call it) may be enough for
_you_; it is not enough for _me_. How do we know that Mrs.
Macallan may not have been twice married? and that her first
husband's name may not have been Woodville?"
The landlady's astonishment subsided in its turn, and the
landlady's curiosity succeeded as the ruling influence of the
moment. Substantially, as I have already said of her, she was a
good-natured woman. Her fits of temper (as is usual with
good-natured people) were of the hot and the short-lived sort,
easily roused and easily appeased.
"I never thought of that," she said. "Look here! if I give you
the address, will you promise to tell me all about it when you
come back?"
I gave the required promise, and received the address in return.
"No malice," said the landlady, suddenly resuming all her old
familiarity with me.
"No malice," I answered, with all possible cordiality on my side.
In ten minutes more I was at my mother-in-law's lodgings.
CHAPTER VI.
MY OWN DISCOVERY.
FORTUNATELY for me, the landlord did not open the door when I
rang. A stupid maid-of-all-work, who never thought of asking me
for my name, let me in. Mrs. Macallan was at home, and had no
visitors with her. Giving me this information, the maid led the
way upstairs, and showed me into the drawing-room without a word
of announcement.
My mother-in-law was sitting alone, near a work-table, knitting.
The moment I appeared in the doorway she laid aside her work,
and, rising, signed to me with a commanding gesture of her hand
to let her speak first.
"I know what you have come here for," she said. "You have come
here to ask questions. Spare yourself, and spare me. I warn you
beforehand that I will not answer any questions relating to my
son."
It was firmly, but not harshly said. I spoke firmly in my turn.
"I have not come here, madam, to ask questions about your son," I
answered. "I have come, if you will excuse me, to ask you a
question about yourself."
She started, and looked at me keenly over her spectacles. I had
evidently taken her by surprise.
"What is the question?" she inquired.
"I now know for the first time, madam, that your name is
Macallan," I said. "Your son has married me under the name of
Woodville. The only honorable explanation of this circumstance,
so far as I know, is that my husband is your son by a first
marriage. The happiness of my life is at stake. Will you kindly
consider my position? Will you let me ask you if you have been
twice married, and if the name of your first husband was
Woodville?"
She considered a little before she replied.
"The question is a perfectly natural one in your position," she
said. "But I think I had better not answer it."
"May I as k why?"
"Certainly. If I answered you, I should only lead to other
questions, and I should be obliged to decline replying to them. I
am sorry to disappoint you. I repeat what I said on the beach--I
have no other feeling than a feeling of sympathy toward _you._ If
you had consulted me before your marriage, I should willingly
have admitted you to my fullest confidence. It is now too late.
You are married. I recommend you to make the best of your
position, and to rest satisfied with things as they are."
"Pardon me, madam," I remonstrated. "As things are, I don't know
that I _am_ married. All I know, unless you enlighten me, is that
your son has married me under a name that is not his own. How can
I be sure whether I am or am not his lawful wife?"
"I believe there can be no doubt that you are lawfully my son's
wife," Mrs. Macallan answered. "At any rate it is easy to take a
legal opinion on the subject. If the opinion is that you are
_not_ lawfully married, my son (whatever his faults and failings
may be) is a gentleman. He is incapable of willfully deceiving a
woman who loves and trusts him. He will do you justice. On my
side, I will do you justice, too. If the legal opinion is adverse
to your rightful claims, I will promise to answer any questions
which you may choose to put to me. As it is, I believe you to be
lawfully my son's wife; and I say again, make the best of your
position. Be satisfied with your husband's affectionate devotion
to you. If you value your peace of mind and the happiness of your
life to come, abstain from attempting to know more than you know
now."
She sat down again with the air of a woman who had said her last
word.
Further remonstrance would be useless; I could see it in her
face; I could hear it in her voice. I turned round to open the
drawing-room door.
"You are hard on me, madam," I said at parting. "I am at your
mercy, and I must submit."
She suddenly looked up, and answered me with a flush on her kind
and handsome old face.
"As God is my witness, child, I pity you from the bottom of my
heart!"
After that extraordinary outburst of feeling, she took up her
work with one hand, and signed to me with the other to leave her.
I bowed to her in silence, and went out.
I had entered the house far from feeling sure of the course I
ought to take in the future. I left the house positively
resolved, come what might of it, to discover the secret which the
mother and son were hiding from me. As to the question of the
name, I saw it now in the light in which I ought to have seen it
from the first. If Mrs. Macallan _had_ been twice married (as I
had rashly chosen to suppose), she would certainly have shown
some signs of recognition when she heard me addressed by her
first husband's name. Where all else was mystery, there was no
mystery here. Whatever his reasons might be, Eustace had
assuredly married me under an assumed name.
Approaching the door of our lodgings, I saw my husband walking
backward and forward before it, evidently waiting for my return.
If he asked me the question, I decided to tell him frankly where
I had been, and what had passed between his mother and myself.
He hurried to meet me with signs of disturbance in his face and
manner.
"I have a favor to ask of you, Valeria," he said. "Do you mind
returning with me to London by the next train?"
I looked at him. In the popular phrase, I could hardly believe my
own ears.
"It's a matter of business," he went on, "of no interest to any
one but myself, and it requires my presence in London. You don't
wish to sail just yet, as I understand? I can't leave you here by
yourself. Have you any objection to going to London for a day or
two?"
I made no objection. I too was eager to go back.
In London I could obtain the legal opinion which would tell me
whether I were lawfully married to Eustace or not. In London I
should be within reach of the help and advice of my father's
faithful old clerk. I could confide in Benjamin as I could
confide in no one else. Dearly as I loved my uncle Starkweather,
I shrank from communicating with him in my present need. His wife
had told me that I made a bad beginning when I signed the wrong
name in the marriage register. Shall I own it? My pride shrank
from acknowledging, before the honeymoon was over, that his wife
was right.
In two hours more we were on the railway again. Ah, what a
contrast that second journey presented to the first! On our way
to Ramsgate everybody could see that we were a newly wedded
couple. On our way to London nobody noticed us; nobody would have
doubted that we had been married for years.
We went to a private hotel in the neighborhood of Portland Place.
After breakfast the next morning Eustace announced that he must
leave me to attend to his business. I had previously mentioned to
him that I had some purchases to make in London. He was quite
willing to let me go out alone, on the condition that I should
take a carriage provided by the hotel.
My heart was heavy that morning: I felt the unacknowledged
estrangement that had grown up between us very keenly. My husband
opened the door to go out, and came back to kiss me before he
left me by myself. That little after-thought of tenderness
touched me. Acting on the impulse of the moment, I put my arm
round his neck, and held him to me gently.
"My darling," I said, "give me all your confidence. I know that
you love me. Show that you can trust me too."
He sighed bitterly, and drew back from me--in sorrow, not in
anger.
"I thought we had agreed, Valeria, not to return to that subject
again," he said. "You only distress yourself and distress me."
He left the room abruptly, as if he dare not trust himself to say
more. It is better not to dwell on what I felt after this last
repulse. I ordered the carriage at once. I was eager to find a
refuge from my own thoughts in movement and change.
I drove to the shops first, and made the purchases which I had
mentioned to Eustace by way of giving a reason for going out.
Then I devoted myself to the object which I really had at heart.
I went to old Benjamin's little villa, in the by-ways of St.
John's Wood.
As soon as he had got over the first surprise of seeing me, he
noticed that I looked pale and care-worn. I confessed at once
that I was in trouble. We sat down together by the bright
fireside in his little library (Benjamin, as far as his means
would allow, was a great collector of books), and there I told my
old friend, frankly and truly, all that I have told here.
He was too distressed to say much. He fervently pressed my hand;
he fervently thanked God that my father had not lived to hear
what he had heard. Then, after a pause, he repeated my
mother-in-law's name to himself in a doubting, questioning tone.
"Macallan?" he said. "Macallan? Where have I heard that name? Why
does it sound as if it wasn't strange to me?"
He gave up pursuing the lost recollection, and asked, very
earnestly, what he could do for me. I answered that he could help
me, in the first place, to put an end to the doubt--an
unendurable doubt to _me_--whether I were lawfully married or
not. His energy of the old days when he had conducted my father's
business showed itself again the moment I said those words.
"Your carriage is at the door, my dear," he answered. "Come with
me to my own lawyer, without wasting another moment."
We drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
At my request Benjamin put my case to the lawyer as the case of a
friend in whom I was interested. The answer was given without
hesitation. I had married, honestly believing my husband's name
to be the name under which I had known him. The witnesses to my
marriage--my uncle, my aunt, and Benjamin--had acted, as I had
acted, in perfect good faith. Under those circumstances, there
was no doubt about the law. I was legally married. Macallan or
Woodville, I was his wife.
This decisive answer relieved me of a heavy anxiety. I accepted
my old friend's invitation to return with him to St. John's Wood,
and to make my luncheon at his early dinner.
On our way back I reverted to the one other subject which was now
uppermost in my mind. I reiterated my resolution to discover why
Eustace had
not married me under the name that was really his own.
My companion shook his head, and entreated me to consider well
beforehand what I proposed doing. His advice to me--so strangely
do extremes meet!--was my mother-in-law's advice, repeated almost
word for word. "Leave things as they are, my dear. In the
interest of your own peace of mind be satisfied with your
husband's affection. You know that you are his wife, and you know
that he loves you. Surely that is enough?"
I had but one answer to this. Life, on such conditions as my good
friend had just stated, would be simply unendurable to me.
Nothing could alter my resolution--for this plain reason, that
nothing could reconcile me to living with my husband on the terms
on which we were living now. It only rested with Benjamin to say
whether he would give a helping hand to his master's daughter or
not.
The old man's answer was thoroughly characteristic of him.
"Mention what you want of me, my dear," was all he said.
We were then passing a street in the neighborhood of Portman
Square. I was on the point of speaking again, when the words were
suspended on my lips. I saw my husband.
He was just descending the steps of a house--as if leaving it
after a visit. His eyes were on the ground: he did not look up
when the-carriage passed. As the servant closed the door behind
him, I noticed that the number of the house was Sixteen. At the
next corner I saw the name of the street. It was Vivian Place.
"Do you happen to know who lives at Number Sixteen Vivian Place?"
I inquired of my companion.
Benjamin started. My question was certainly a strange one, after
what he had just said to me.
"No," he replied. "Why do you ask?"
"I have just seen Eustace leaving that house."
"Well, my dear, and what of that?"
"My mind is in a bad way, Benjamin. Everything my husband does
that I don't understand rouses my suspicion now."
Benjamin lifted his withered old hands, and let them drop on his
knees again in mute lamentation over me.
"I tell you again," I went on, "my life is unendurable to me. I
won't answer for what I may do if I am left much longer to live
in doubt of the one man on earth whom I love. You have had
experience of the world. Suppose you were shut out from Eustace's
confidence, as I am? Suppose you were as fond of him as I am, and
felt your position as bitterly as I feel it--what would you do?"
The question was plain. Benjamin met it with a plain answer.
"I think I should find my way, my dear, to some intimate friend
of your husband's," he said, "and make a few discreet inquiries
in that quarter first."
Some intimate friend of my husband's? I considered with myself.
There was but one friend of his whom I knew of--my uncle's
correspondent, Major Fitz-David. My heart beat fast as the name
recurred to my memory. Suppose I followed Benjamin's advice?
Suppose I applied to Major Fitz-David? Even if he, too, refused
to answer my questions, my position would not be more helpless
than it was now. I determined to make the attempt. The only
difficulty in the way, so far, was to discover the Major's
address. I had given back his letter to Doctor Starkweather, at
my uncle's own request. I remembered that the address from which
the Major wrote was somewhere in London--and I remembered no
more.
"Thank you, old friend; you have given me an idea already," I
said to Benjamin. "Have you got a Directory in your house?"
"No, my dear," he rejoined, looking very much puzzled. "But I can
easily send out and borrow one."
We returned to the villa. The servant was sent at once to the
nearest stationer's to borrow a Directory. She returned with the
book just as we sat down to dinner. Searching for the Major's
name under the letter F, I was startled by a new discovery.
"Benjamin!" I said. "This is a strange coincidence. Look here!"
He looked where I pointed. Major Fitz-David's address was Number
Sixteen Vivian Place--the very house which I had seen my husband
leaving as we passed in the carriage!
CHAPTER VII.
ON THE WAY TO THE MAJOR.
"YES, said Benjamin. "It _is_ a coincidence certainly. Still--"
He stopped and looked at me. He seemed a little doubtful how I
might receive what he had it in his mind to say to me next.
"Go on," I said.
"Still, my dear, I see nothing suspicious in what has happened,"
he resumed. "To my mind it is quite natural that your husband,
being in London, should pay a visit to one of his friends. And
it's equally natural that we should pass through Vivian Place on
our way back here. This seems to be the reasonable view. What do
_you_ say?"
"I have told you already that my mind is in a bad way about
Eustace," I answered. "_I_ say there is some motive at the bottom
of his visit to Major Fitz-David. It is not an ordinary call. I
am firmly convinced it is not an ordinary call!"
"Suppose we get on with our dinner?" said Benjamin, resignedly.
"Here is a loin of mutton, my dear--an ordinary loin of mutton.
Is there anything suspicious in _that?_ Very well, then. Show me
you have confidence in the mutton; please eat. There's the wine,
again. No mystery, Valeria, in that claret--I'll take my oath
it's nothing but innocent juice of the grape. If we can't believe
in anything else, let's believe in juice of the grape. Your good
health, my dear."
I adapted myself to the old man's genial humor as readily as I
could. We ate and we drank, and we talked of by-gone days. For a
little while I was almost happy in the company of my fatherly old
friend. Why was I not old too? Why had I not done with love, with
its certain miseries, its transient delights, its cruel losses,
its bitterly doubtful gains? The last autumn flowers in the
window basked brightly in the last of the autumn sunlight.
Benjamin's little dog digested his dinner in perfect comfort on
the hearth. The parrot in the next house screeched his vocal
accomplishments cheerfully. I don't doubt that it is a great
privilege to be a human being. But may it not be the happier
destiny to be an animal or a plant?
The brief respite was soon over; all my anxieties came back. I
was once more a doubting, discontented, depressed creature when I
rose to say good-by.
"Promise, my dear, you will do nothing rash, "said Benjamin, as
he opened the door for me.
"Is it rash to go to Major Fitz-David?" I asked.
"Yes--if you go by yourself. You don't know what sort of man he
is; you don't know how he may receive you. Let me try first, and
pave the way, as the saying is. Trust my experience, my dear. In
matters of this sort there is nothing like paving the way."
I considered a moment. It was due to my good friend to consider
before I said No.
Reflection decided me on taking the responsibility, whatever it
might be, upon my own shoulders. Good or bad, compassionate or
cruel, the Major was a man. A woman's influence was the safest
influence to trust with him, where the end to be gained was such
an end as I had in view. It was not easy to say this to Benjamin
without the danger of mortifying him. I made an appointment with
the old man to call on me the next morning at the hotel, and talk
the matter over again. Is it very disgraceful to me to add that I
privately determined (if the thing could be accomplished) to see
Major Fitz-David in the interval?
"Do nothing rash, my dear. In your own interests, do nothing
rash!"
Those were Benjamin's last words when we parted for the day.
I found Eustace waiting for me in our sitting-room at the hotel.
His spirits seemed to have revived since I had seen him last. He
advanced to meet me cheerfully, with an open sheet of paper in
his hand.
"My business is settled, Valeria, sooner than I had expected," he
began, gayly. "Are your purchases all completed, fair lady? Are
_you_ free too?"
I had learned already (God help me!) to distrust his fits of
gayety. I asked, cautiously,
"Do you mean free for to-day?"
"Free for to-day, and to-morrow, and next week, and next
month--and next year too, for all I know to the contrary," he
answered, putting his arm boisterously round my waist. "Look
here!"
He lifted the open sheet of paper which I had noticed in his
hand, and held it for me to read. It was a telegram to the
sailing-m aster of the yacht, informing him that we had arranged
to return to Ramsgate that evening, and that we should be ready
to sail for the Mediterranean with the next tide.
"I only waited for your return," said Eustace, "to send the
telegram to the office."
He crossed the room as he spoke to ring the bell. I stopped him.
"I am afraid I can't go to Ramsgate to-day," I said.
"Why not?" he asked, suddenly changing his tone, and speaking
sharply.
I dare say it will seem ridiculous to some people, but it is
really true that he shook my resolution to go to Major Fitz-David
when he put his arm round me. Even a mere passing caress from
_him_ stole away my heart, and softly tempted me to yield. But
the ominous alteration in his tone made another woman of me. I
felt once more, and felt more strongly than ever, that in my
critical position it was useless to stand still, and worse than
useless to draw back.
"I am sorry to disappoint you," I answered. It is impossible for
me (as I told you at Ramsgate) to be ready to sail at a moment's
notice. I want time."
"What for?"
Not only his tone, but his look, when he put that second
question, jarred on every nerve in me. He roused in my mind--I
can't tell how or why--an angry sense of the indignity that he
had put upon his wife in marrying her under a false name. Fearing
that I should answer rashly, that I should say something which my
better sense might regret, if I spoke at that moment, I said
nothing. Women alone can estimate what it cost me to be silent.
And men alone can understand how irritating my silence must have
been to my husband.
"You want time?" he repeated. "I ask you again--what for?"
My self-control, pushed to its extremest limits, failed me. The
rash reply flew out of my lips, like a bird set free from a cage.
"I want time," I said, "to accustom myself to my right name."
He suddenly stepped up to me with a dark look.
"What do you mean by your 'right name?'"
"Surely you know," I answered. "I once thought I was Mrs.
Woodville. I have now discovered that I am Mrs. Macallan."
He started back at the sound of his own name as if I had struck
him--he started back, and turned so deadly pale that I feared he
was going to drop at my feet in a swoon. Oh, my tongue! my
tongue! Why had I not controlled my miserable, mischievous
woman's tongue!
"I didn't mean to alarm you, Eustace," I said. "I spoke at
random. Pray forgive me."
He waved his hand impatiently, as if my penitent words were
tangible things--ruffling, worrying things, like flies in
summer--which he was putting away from him.
"What else have you discovered?" he asked, in low, stern tones.
"Nothing, Eustace."
"Nothing?" He paused as he repeated the word, and passed his hand
over his forehead in a weary way. "Nothing, of course," he
resumed, speaking to himself, "or she would not be here." He
paused once more, and looked at me searchingly. "Don't say again
what you said just now," he went on. "For your own sake, Valeria,
as well as for mine." He dropped into the nearest chair, and said
no more.
I certainly heard the warning; but the only words which really
produced an impression on my mind were the words preceding it,
which he had spoken to himself. He had said: "Nothing, of course,
_or she could not be here."_ If I had found out some other truth
besides the truth about the name, would it have prevented me from
ever returning to my husband? Was that what he meant? Did the
sort of discovery that he contemplated mean something so dreadful
that it would have parted us at once and forever? I stood by his
chair in silence, and tried to find the answer to those terrible
questions in his face. It used to speak to me so eloquently when
it spoke of his love. It told me nothing now.
He sat for some time without looking at me, lost in his own
thoughts. Then he rose on a sudden and took his hat.
"The friend who lent me the yacht is in town," he said. "I
suppose I had better see him, and say our plans are changed." He
tore up the telegram with an air of sullen resignation as he
spoke. "You are evidently determined not to go to sea with me,"
he resumed. "We had better give it up. I don't see what else is
to be done. Do you?"
His tone was almost a tone of contempt. I was too depressed about
myself, too alarmed about _him,_ to resent it.
"Decide as you think best, Eustace," I said, sadly. "Every way,
the prospect seems a hopeless one. As long as I am shut out from
your confidence, it matters little whether we live on land or at
sea--we cannot live happily."
"If you could control your curiosity." he answered, sternly, "we
might live happily enough. I thought I had married a woman who
was superior to the vulgar failings of her sex. A good wife
should know better than to pry into affairs of her husband's with
which she had no concern."
Surely it was hard to bear this? However, I bore it.
"Is it no concern of mine?" I asked, gently, "when I find that my
husband has not married me under his family name? Is it no
concern of mine when I hear your mother say, in so many words,
that she pities your wife? It is hard, Eustace, to accuse me of
curiosity because I cannot accept the unendurable position in
which you have placed me. Your cruel silence is a blight on my
happiness and a threat to my future. Your cruel silence is
estranging us from each other at the beginning of our married
life. And you blame me for feeling this? You tell me I am prying
into affairs which are yours only? They are _not_ yours only: I
have my interest in them too. Oh, my darling, why do you trifle
with our love and our confidence in each other? Why do you keep
me in the dark?"
He answered with a stern and pitiless brevity,
"For your own good."
I turned away from him in silence. He was treating me like a
child.
He followed me. Putting one hand heavily on my shoulder, he
forced me to face him once more.
"Listen to this," he said. "What I am now going to say to you I
say for the first and last time. Valeria! if you ever discover
what I am now keeping from your knowledge--from that moment you
live a life of torture; your tranquillity is gone. Your days will
be days of terror; your nights will be full of horrid
dreams--through no fault of mine, mind! through no fault of mine!
Every day of your life you will feel some new distrust, some
growing fear of me, and you will be doing me the vilest injustice
all the time. On my faith as a Christian, on my honor as a man,
if you stir a step further in this matter, there is an end to
your happiness for the rest of your life! Think seriously of what
I have said to you; you will have time to reflect. I am going to
tell my friend that our plans for the Mediterranean are given up.
I shall not be back before the evening." He sighed, and looked at
me with unutterable sadness. "I love you, Valeria," he said. "In
spite of all that has passed, as God is my witness, I love you
more dearly than ever."
So he spoke. So he left me.
I must write the truth about myself, however strange it may
appear. I don't pretend to be able to analyze my own motives; I
don't pretend even to guess how other women might have acted in
my place. It is true of me, that my husband's terrible
warning--all the more terrible in its mystery and its
vagueness--produced no deterrent effect on my mind: it only
stimulated my resolution to discover what he was hiding from me.
He had not been gone two minutes before I rang the bell and
ordered the carriage, to take me to Major Fitz-David's house in
Vivian Place.
Walking to and fro while I was waiting--I was in such a fever of
excitement that it was impossible for me to sit still--I
accidentally caught sight of myself in the glass.
My own face startled me, it looked so haggard and so wild. Could
I present myself to a stranger, could I hope to produce the
necessary impression in my favor, looking as I looked at that
moment? For all I knew to the contrary, my whole future might
depend upon the effect which I produced on Major Fitz-David at
first sight. I rang the bell again, and sent a message to one of
the chambermaids to follow me to my room.
I had no maid of my own with me: the stewardess of the yacht
would have acted as my
attendant if we had held to our first arrangement. It mattered
little, so long as I had a woman to help me. The chambermaid
appeared. I can give no better idea of the disordered and
desperate condition of my mind at that time than by owning that I
actually consulted this perfect stranger on the question of my
personal appearance. She was a middle-aged woman, with a large
experience of the world and its wickedness written legibly on her
manner and on her face. I put money into the woman's hand, enough
of it to surprise her. She thanked me with a cynical smile,
evidently placing her own evil interpretation on my motive for
bribing her.
"What can I do for you, ma'am?" she asked, in a confidential
whisper. "Don't speak loud! there is somebody in the next room."
"I want to look my best," I said, "and I have sent for you to
help me."
"I understand, ma'am."
"What do you understand?"
She nodded her head significantly, and whispered to me again.
"Lord bless you, I'm used to this!" she said. "There is a
gentleman in the case. Don't mind me, ma'am. It's a way I have. I
mean no harm." She stopped, and looked at me critically. "I
wouldn't change my dress if I were you," she went on. "The color
becomes you."
It was too late to resent the woman's impertinence. There was no
help for it but to make use of her. Besides, she was right about
the dress. It was of a delicate maize-color, prettily trimmed
with lace. I could wear nothing which suited me better. My hair,
however, stood in need of some skilled attention. The chambermaid
rearranged it with a ready hand which showed that she was no
beginner in the art of dressing hair. She laid down the combs and
brushes, and looked at me; then looked at the toilet-table,
searching for something which she apparently failed to find.
"Where do you keep it?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at your complexion, ma'am. You will frighten him if he sees
you like that. A touch of color you _must_ have. Where do you
keep it? What! you haven't got it? you never use it? Dear, dear,
dear me!"
For a moment surprise fairly deprived her of her self-possession.
Recovering herself, she begged permission to leave me for a
minute. I let her go, knowing what her errand was. She came back
with a box of paint and powders; and I said nothing to check her.
I saw, in the glass, my skin take a false fairness, my cheeks a
false color, my eyes a false brightness--and I never shrank from
it. No! I let the odious conceit go on; I even admired the
extraordinary delicacy and dexterity with which it was all done.
"Anything" (I thought to myself, in the madness of that miserable
time) "so long as it helps me to win the Major's confidence!
Anything, so long as I discover what those last words of my
husband's really mean!"
The transformation of my face was accomplished. The chambermaid
pointed with her wicked forefinger in the direction of the glass.
"Bear in mind, ma'am, what you looked like when you sent for me,"
she said. "And just see for yourself how you look now. You're the
prettiest woman (of your style) in London. Ah what a thing
pearl-powder is, when one knows how to use it!"
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRIEND OF THE WOMEN.
I FIND it impossible to describe my sensations while the
carriage was taking me to Major Fitz-David's house. I doubt,
indeed, if I really felt or thought at all, in the true sense of
those words.
From the moment when I had resigned myself into the hands of the
chambermaid I seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary
identity--to have stepped out of my own character. At other times
my temperament was of the nervous and anxious sort, and my
tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might place
themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the
prospect of a critical interview with a stranger, I should have
considered with myself what it might be wise to pass over, and
what it might be wise to say. Now I never gave my coming
interview with the Major a thought; I felt an unreasoning
confidence in myself, and a blind faith in _him_. Now neither the
past nor the future troubled me; I lived unreflectingly in the
present. I looked at the shops as we drove by them, and at the
other carriages as they passed mine. I noticed--yes, and
enjoyed--the glances of admiration which chance foot-passengers
on the pavement cast on me. I said to myself, "This looks well
for my prospect of making a friend of the Major!" When we drew up
at the door in Vivian Place, it is no exaggeration to say that I
had but one anxiety--anxiety to find the Major at home.
The door was opened by a servant out of livery, an old man who
looked as if he might have been a soldier in his earlier days. He
eyed me with a grave attention, which relaxed little by little
into sly approval. I asked for Major Fitz-David. The answer was
not altogether encouraging: the man was not sure whether his
master were at home or not.
I gave him my card. My cards, being part of my wedding outfit,
necessarily had the false name printed on them--_Mrs. Eustace
Woodville_. The servant showed me into a front room on the
ground-floor, and disappeared with my card in his hand.
Looking about me, I noticed a door in the wall opposite the
window, communicating with some inner room. The door was not of
the ordinary kind. It fitted into the thickness of the partition
wall, and worked in grooves. Looking a little nearer, I saw that
it had not been pulled out so as completely to close the doorway.
Only the merest chink was left; but it was enough to convey to my
ears all that passed in the next room.
"What did you say, Oliver, when she asked for me?" inquired a
man's voice, pitched cautiously in a low key.
"I said I was not sure you were at home, sir," answered the voice
of the servant who had let me in.
There was a pause. The first speaker was evidently Major
Fitz-David himself. I waited to hear more.
"I think I had better not see her, Oliver," the Major's voice
resumed.
"Very good, sir."
"Say I have gone out, and you don't know when I shall be back
again. Beg the lady to write, if she has any business with me."
"Yes, sir."
"Stop, Oliver!"
Oliver stopped. There was another and longer pause. Then the
master resumed the examination of the man.
"Is she young, Oliver?"
"Yes, sir."
"And--pretty?"
"Better than pretty, sir, to my thinking."
"Aye? aye? What you call a fine woman--eh, Oliver?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Tall?"
"Nearly as tall as I am, Major."
"Aye? aye? aye? A good figure?"
"As slim as a sapling, sir, and as upright as a dart."
"On second thoughts, I am at home, Oliver. Show her in! show her
in!"
So far, one thing at least seemed to be clear. I had done well in
sending for the chambermaid. What would Oliver's report of me
have been if I had presented myself to him with my colorless
cheeks and my ill-dressed hair?
The servant reappeared, and conducted me to the inner room. Major
Fitz-David advanced to welcome me. What was the Major like?
Well, he was like a well-preserved old gentleman of, say, sixty
years old, little and lean, and chiefly remarkable by the
extraordinary length of his nose. After this feature, I noticed
next his beautiful brown wig; his sparkling little gray eyes; his
rosy complexion; his short military whisker, dyed to match his
wig; his white teeth and his winning smile; his smart blue
frock-coat, with a camellia in the button-hole; and his splendid
ring, a ruby, flashing on his little finger as he courteously
signed to me to take a chair.
"Dear Mrs. Woodville, how very kind of you this is! I have been
longing to have the happiness of knowing you. Eustace is an old
friend of mine. I congratulated him when I heard of his marriage.
May I make a confession?--I envy him now I have seen his wife."
The future of my life was perhaps in this man's hands. I studied
him attentively: I tried to read his character in his face.
The Major's sparkling little gray eyes softened as they looked at
me; the Major's strong and sturdy voice dropped to its lowest and
tenderest tones when he spoke to me; the Major's manner
expressed, from the moment when I entered the room, a happy
mixture of admiration and respect. He drew his chair close to
mine, as if it were a privilege to be near me. He took my hand
and lifted my glove to his lips, as if that glove were the most
delicious luxury the world could produce. "Dear Mrs. Woodville,"
he said, as he softly laid my hand back on my lap, "bear with an
old fellow who worships your enchanting sex. You really brighten
this dull house. It is _such_ a pleasure to see you!"
There was no need for the old gentleman to make his little
confession. Women, children, and dogs proverbially know by
instinct who the people are who really like them. The women had a
warm friend--perhaps at one time a dangerously warm friend--in
Major Fitz-David. I knew as much of him as that before I had
settled myself in my chair and opened my lips to answer him.
"Thank you, Major, for your kind reception and your pretty
compliment," I said, matching my host's easy tone as closely as
the necessary restraints on my side would permit. "You have made
your confession. May I make mine?"
Major Fitz-David lifted my hand again from my lap and drew his
chair as close as possible to mine. I looked at him gravely and
tried to release my hand. Major Fitz-David declined to let go of
it, and proceeded to tell me why.
"I have just heard you speak for the first time," he said. "I am
under the charm of your voice. Dear Mrs. Woodville, bear with an
old fellow who is under the charm! Don't grudge me my innocent
little pleasures. Lend me--I wish I could say _give_ me--this
pretty hand. I am such an admirer of pretty hands! I can listen
so much better with a pretty hand in mine. The ladies indulge my
weakness. Please indulge me too. Yes? And what were you going to
say?"
"I was going to say, Major, that I felt particularly sensible of
your kind welcome because, as it happens, I have a favor to ask
of you."
I was conscious, while I spoke, that I was approaching the object
of my visit a little too abruptly. But Major Fitz-David's
admiration rose from one climax to another with such alarming
rapidity that I felt the importance of administering a practical
check to it. I trusted to those ominous words, "a favor to ask of
you," to administer the check, and I did not trust in vain. My
aged admirer gently dropped my hand, and, with all possible
politeness, changed the subject.
"The favor is granted, of course!" he said. "And now, tell me,
how is our dear Eustace?"
"Anxious and out of spirits." I answered.
"Anxious and out of spirits!" repeated the Major. "The enviable
man who is married to You anxious and out of spirits? Monstrous!
Eustace fairly disgusts me. I shall take him off the list of my
friends."
"In that case, take me off the list with him, Major. I am in
wretched spirits too. You are my husband's old friend. I may
acknowledge to _you_ that our married life is just now not quite
a happy one."
Major Fitz-David lifted his eyebrows (dyed to match his whiskers)
in polite surprise.
"Already!" he exclaimed. "What can Eustace be made of? Has he no
appreciation of beauty and grace? Is he the most insensible of
living beings?"
"He is the best and dearest of men," I answered. "But there is
some dreadful mystery in his past life--"
I could get no further; Major Fitz-David deliberately stopped me.
He did it with the smoothest politeness, on the surface. But I
saw a look in his bright little eyes which said, plainly, "If you
_will_ venture on delicate ground, madam, don't ask me to
accompany you."
"My charming friend!" he exclaimed. "May I call you my charming
friend? You have--among a thousand other delightful qualities
which I can see already--a vivid imagination. Don't let it get
the upper hand. Take an old fellow's advice; don't let it get the
upper hand! What can I offer you, dear Mrs. Woodville? A cup of
tea?"
"Call me by my right name, sir," I answered, boldly. "I have made
a discovery. I know as well as you do that my name is Macallan."
The Major started, and looked at me very attentively. His manner
became grave, his tone changed completely, when he spoke next.
"May I ask," he said, "if you have communicated to your husband
the discovery which you have just mentioned to me?"
"Certainly!" I answered. "I consider that my husband owes me an
explanation. I have asked him to tell me what his extraordinary
conduct means--and he has refused, in language that frightens me.
I have appealed to his mother--and _she_ has refused to explain,
in language that humiliates me. Dear Major Fitz-David, I have no
friends to take my part: I have nobody to come to but you! Do me
the greatest of all favors--tell me why your friend Eustace has
married me under a false name!"
"Do _me_ the greatest of all favors;" answered the Major. "Don't
ask me to say a word about it."
He looked, in spite of his unsatisfactory reply, as if he really
felt for me. I determined to try my utmost powers of persuasion;
I resolved not to be beaten at the first repulse.
"I _must_ ask you," I said. "Think of my position. How can I
live, knowing what I know--and knowing no more? I would rather
hear the most horrible thing you can tell me than be condemned
(as I am now) to perpetual misgiving and perpetual suspense. I
love my husband with all my heart; but I cannot live with him on
these terms: the misery of it would drive me mad. I am only a
woman, Major. I can only throw myself on your kindness.
Don't--pray, pray don't keep me in the dark!"
I could say no more. In the reckless impulse of the moment I
snatched up his hand and raised it to my lips. The gallant old
gentleman started as if I had given him an electric shock.
"My dear, dear lady!" he exclaimed, "I can't tell you how I feel
for you! You charm me, you overwhelm me, you touch me to the
heart. What can I say? What can I do? I can only imitate your
admirable frankness, your fearless candor. You have told me what
your position is. Let me tell you, in my turn, how I am placed.
Compose yourself--pray compose yourself! I have a smelling-bottle
here at the service of the ladies. Permit me to offer it."
He brought me the smelling-bottle; he put a little stool under my
feet; he entreated me to take time enough to compose myself.
"Infernal fool!" I heard him say to himself, as he considerately
turned away from me for a few moments. "If _I_ had been her
husband, come what might of it, I would have told her the truth!"
Was he referring to Eustace? And was he going to do what he would
have done in my husband's place?--was he really going to tell me
the truth?
The idea had barely crossed my mind when I was startled by a loud
and peremptory knocking at the street door. The Major stopped and
listened attentively. In a few moments the door was opened, and
the rustling of a woman's dress was plainly audible in the hall.
The Major hurried to the door of the room with the activity of a
young man. He was too late. The door was violently opened from
the outer side, just as he got to it. The lady of the rustling
dress burst into the room.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DEFEAT OF THE MAJOR.
MAJOR FITZ-DAVID'S visitor proved to be a plump, round-eyed
overdressed girl, with a florid complexion and straw colored
hair. After first fixing on me a broad stare of astonishment, she
pointedly addressed her apologies for intruding on us to the
Major alone. The creature evidently believed me to be the last
new object of the old gentleman's idolatry; and she took no pains
to disguise her jealous resentment on discovering us together.
Major Fitz-David set matters right in his own irresistible way.
He kissed the hand of the overdressed girl as devotedly as he had
kissed mine; he told her she was looking charmingly. Then he led
her, with his happy mixture of admiration and respect, back to
the door by which she had entered--a second door communicating
directly with the hall.
"No apology is necessary, my dear," he said. "This lady is with
me on a matter of business. You will find your singing-master
waiting for you upstairs. Begin your lesson; and I will join you
in a few minutes. _Au revoir_, my charming pupil--_au revoir._"
The young lady answered this polite little speech in a
whisper--with her round eyes fixed distrustfully on me while she
spoke. The door closed on her. Major Fitz-David was a t liberty
to set matters right with me, in my turn.
"I call that young person one of my happy discoveries;" said the
old gentleman, complacently. "She possesses, I don't hesitate to
say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it, I
met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter
in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and
singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper
notes electrified me. I said to myself; 'Here is a born prima
donna--I will bring her out!' She is the third I have brought out
in my time. I shall take her to Italy when her education is
sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that
unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future
Queens of Song. Listen! She is beginning her scales. What a
voice! Brava! Brava! Bravissima!"
The high soprano notes of the future Queen of Song rang through
the house as he spoke. Of the loudness of the young lady's voice
there could be no sort of doubt. The sweetness and the purity of
it admitted, in my opinion, of considerable dispute.
Having said the polite words which the occasion rendered
necessary, I ventured to recall Major Fitz-David to the subject
in discussion between us when his visitor had entered the room.
The Major was very unwilling to return to the perilous topic on
which we had just touched when the interruption occurred. He beat
time with his forefinger to the singing upstairs; he asked me
about _my_ voice, and whether I sang; he remarked that life would
be intolerable to him without Love and Art. A man in my place
would have lost all patience, and would have given up the
struggle in disgust. Being a woman, and having my end in view, my
resolution was invincible. I fairly wore out the Major's
resistance, and compelled him to surrender at discretion. It is
only justice to add that, when he did make up his mind to speak
to me again of Eustace, he spoke frankly, and spoke to the point.
"I have known your husband," he began, "since the time when he
was a boy. At a certain period of his past life a terrible
misfortune fell upon him. The secret of that misfortune is known
to his friends, and is religiously kept by his friends. It is the
secret that he is keeping from You. He will never tell it to you
as long as he lives. And he has bound _me_ not to tell it, under
a promise given on my word of honor. You wished, dear Mrs.
Woodville, to be made acquainted with my position toward Eustace.
There it is!"
"You persist in calling me Mrs. Woodville," I said.
"Your husband wishes me to persist," the Major answered. "He
assumed the name of Woodville, fearing to give his own name, when
he first called at your uncle's house. He will now acknowledge no
other. Remonstrance is useless. You must do what we do--you must
give way to an unreasonable man. The best fellow in the world in
other respects: in this one matter as obstinate and self-willed
as he can be. If you ask me my opinion, I tell you honestly that
I think he was wrong in courting and marrying you under his false
name. He trusted his honor and his happiness to your keeping in
making you his--wife. Why should he not trust the story of his
troubles to you as well? His mother quite shares my opinion in
this matter. You must not blame her for refusing to admit you
into her confidence after your marriage: it was then too late.
Before your marriage she did all she could do--without betraying
secrets which, as a good mother, she was bound to respect--to
induce her son to act justly toward you. I commit no indiscretion
when I tell you that she refused to sanction your marriage mainly
for the reason that Eustace refused to follow her advice, and to
tell you what his position really was. On my part I did all I
could to support Mrs. Macallan in the course that she took. When
Eustace wrote to tell me that he had engaged himself to marry a
niece of my good friend Doctor Starkweather, and that he had
mentioned me as his reference, I wrote back to warn him that I
would have nothing to do with the affair unless he revealed the
whole truth about himself to his future wife. He refused to
listen to me, as he had refused to listen to his mother; and he
held me at the same time to my promise to keep his secret. When
Starkweather wrote to me, I had no choice but to involve myself
in a deception of which I thoroughly disapproved, or to answer in
a tone so guarded and so brief as to stop the correspondence at
the outset. I chose the last alternative; and I fear I have
offended my good old friend. You now see the painful position in
which I am placed. To add to the difficulties of that situation,
Eustace came here this very day to warn me to be on my guard, in
case of your addressing to me the very request which you have
just made! He told me that you had met with his mother, by an
unlucky accident, and that you had discovered the family name. He
declared that he had traveled to London for the express purpose
of speaking to me personally on this serious subject. 'I know
your weakness,' he said, 'where women are concerned. Valeria is
aware that you are my old friend. She will certainly write to
you; she may even be bold enough to make her way into your house.
Renew your promise to keep the great calamity of my life a
secret, on your honor and on your oath. 'Those were his words, as
nearly as I can remember them. I tried to treat the thing
lightly; I ridiculed the absurdly theatrical notion of 'renewing
my promise,' and all the rest of it. Quite useless! He refused to
leave me; he reminded me of his unmerited sufferings, poor
fellow, in the past time. It ended in his bursting into tears.
You love him, and so do I. Can you wonder that I let him have his
way? The result is that I am doubly bound to tell you nothing, by
the most sacred promise that a man can give. My dear lady, I
cordially side with you in this matter; I long to relieve your
anxieties. But what can I do?"
He stopped, and waited--gravely waited--to hear my reply.
I had listened from beginning to end without interrupting him.
The extraordinary change in his manner, and in his way of
expressing himself, while he was speaking of Eustace, alarmed me
as nothing had alarmed me yet. How terrible (I thought to myself)
must this untold story be, if the mere act of referring to it
makes light-hearted Major Fitz-David speak seriously and sadly,
never smiling, never paying me a compliment, never even noticing
the singing upstairs! My heart sank in me as I drew that
startling conclusion. For the first time since I had entered the
house I was at the end of my resources; I knew neither what to
say nor what to do next.
And yet I kept my seat. Never had the resolution to discover what
my husband was hiding from me been more firmly rooted in my mind
than it was at that moment! I cannot account for the
extraordinary inconsistency in my character which this confession
implies. I can only describe the facts as they really were.
The singing went on upstairs. Major Fitz-David still waited
impenetrably to hear what I had to say--to know what I resolved
on doing next.
Before I had decided what to say or what to do, another domestic
incident happened. In plain words, another knocking announced a
new visitor at the house door. On this occasion there was no
rustling of a woman's dress in the hall. On this occasion only
the old servant entered the room, carrying a magnificent nosegay
in his hand. "With Lady Clarinda's kind regards. To remind Major
Fitz-David of his appointment." Another lady! This time a lady
with a title. A great lady who sent her flowers and her messages
without condescending to concealment. The Major--first
apologizing to me--wrote a few lines of acknowledgment, and sent
them out to the messenger. When the door was closed again he
carefully selected one of the choicest flowers in the nosegay.
"May I ask," he said, presenting the flower to me with his best
grace, "whether you now understand the delicate position in which
I am placed between your husband and yourself?"
The little interruption caused by the appearance of the nosegay
had given a new impulse to my thoughts, and had thus helped, in
some degree, to r estore me to myself. I was able at last to
satisfy Major Fitz-David that his considerate and courteous
explanation had not been thrown away upon me.
"I thank you, most sincerely, Major," I said "You have convinced
me that I must not ask you to forget, on my account, the promise
which you have given to my husband. It is a sacred promise, which
I too am bound to respect--I quite understand that."
The Major drew a long breath of relief, and patted me on the
shoulder in high approval of what I had said to him.
"Admirably expressed!" he rejoined, recovering his light-hearted
looks and his lover-like ways all in a moment. "My dear lady, you
have the gift of sympathy; you see exactly how I am situated. Do
you know, you remind me of my charming Lady Clarinda. _She_ has
the gift of sympathy, and sees exactly how I am situated. I
should so enjoy introducing you to each other," said the Major,
plunging his long nose ecstatically into Lady Clarinda's flowers.
I had my end still to gain; and, being (as you will have
discovered by this time) the most obstinate of living women, I
still kept that end in view.
"I shall be delighted to meet Lady Clarinda," I replied. "In the
meantime--"
"I will get up a little dinner," proceeded the Major, with a
burst of enthusiasm. "You and I and Lady Clarinda. Our young
prima donna shall come in the evening, and sing to us. Suppose we
draw out the _menu?_ My sweet friend, what is your favorite
autumn soup?"
"In the meantime," I persisted, "to return to what we were
speaking of just now--"
The Major's smile vanished; the Major's hand dropped the pen
destined to immortalize the name of my favorite autumn soup.
"_Must_ we return to that?" he asked, piteously.
"Only for a moment," I said.
"You remind me," pursued Major Fitz-David, shaking his head
sadly, "of another charming friend of mine--a French
friend--Madame Mirliflore. You are a person of prodigious
tenacity of purpose. Madame Mirliflore is a person of prodigious
tenacity of purpose. She happens to be in London. Shall we have
her at our little dinner?" The Major brightened at the idea, and
took up the pen again. "Do tell me," he said, "what _is_ your
favorite autumn soup?"
"Pardon me," I began, "we were speaking just now--"
"Oh, dear me!" cried Major Fitz-David. "Is this the other
subject?"
"Yes--this is the other subject."
The Major put down his pen for the second time, and regretfully
dismissed from his mind Madame Mirliflore and the autumn soup.
"Yes?" he said, with a patient bow and a submissive smile. "You
were going to say--"
"I was going to say," I rejoined, "that your promise only pledges
you not to tell the secret which my husband is keeping from me.
You have given no promise not to answer me if I venture to ask
you one or two questions."
Major Fitz-David held up his hand warningly, and cast a sly look
at me out of his bright little gray eyes.
"Stop!" he said. "My sweet friend, stop there! I know where your
questions will lead me, and what the result will be if I once
begin to answer them. When your husband was here to-day he took
occasion to remind me that I was as weak as water in the hands of
a pretty woman. He is quite right. I _am_ as weak as water; I can
refuse nothing to a pretty woman. Dear and admirable lady, don't
abuse your influence! don't make an old soldier false to his word
of honor!"
I tried to say something here in defense of my motives. The Major
clasped his hands entreatingly, and looked at me with a pleading
simplicity wonderful to see.
"Why press it?" he asked. "I offer no resistance. I am a
lamb--why sacrifice me? I acknowledge your power; I throw myself
on your mercy. All the misfortunes of my youth and my manhood
have come to me through women. I am not a bit better in my age--I
am just as fond of the women and just as ready to be misled by
them as ever, with one foot in the grave. Shocking, isn't it? But
how true! Look at this mark!" He lifted a curl of his beautiful
brown wig, and showed me a terrible scar at the side of his head.
"That wound (supposed to be mortal at the time) was made by a
pistol bullet," he proceeded. "Not received in the service of my
country--oh dear, no! Received in the service of a much-injured
lady, at the hands of her scoundrel of a husband, in a duel
abroad. Well, she was worth it." He kissed his hand
affectionately to the memory of the dead or absent lady, and
pointed to a water-color drawing of a pretty country-house
hanging on the opposite wall. "That fine estate," he proceeded,
"once belonged to me. It was sold years and years since. And who
had the money? The women--God bless them all!--the women. I don't
regret it. If I had another estate, I have no doubt it would go
the same way. Your adorable sex has made its pretty playthings of
my life, my time, and my money--and welcome! The one thing I have
kept to myself is my honor. And now _that_ is in danger. Yes, if
you put your clever little questions, with those lovely eyes and
with that gentle voice, I know what will happen. You will deprive
me of the last and best of all my possessions. Have I deserved to
be treated in that way, and by you, my charming friend?--by you,
of all people in the world? Oh, fie! fie!"
He paused and looked at me as before--the picture of artless
entreaty, with his head a little on one side. I made another
attempt to speak of the matter in dispute between us, from my own
point of view. Major Fitz-David instantly threw himself prostrate
on my mercy more innocently than ever.
"Ask of me anything else in the wide world," he said; "but don't
ask me to be false to my friend. Spare me _that_--and there is
nothing I will not do to satisfy you. I mean what I say, mind!"
he went on, bending closer to me, and speaking more seriously
than he had spoken yet "I think you are very hardly used. It is
monstrous to expect that a woman, placed in your situation, will
consent to be left for the rest of her life in the dark. No! no!
if I saw you, at this moment, on the point of finding out for
yourself what Eustace persists in hiding from you, I should
remember that my promise, like all other promises, has its limits
and reserves. I should consider myself bound in honor not to help
you--but I would not lift a finger to prevent you from
discovering the truth for yourself."
At last he was speaking in good earnest: he laid a strong
emphasis on his closing words. I laid a stronger emphasis on them
still by suddenly leaving my chair. The impulse to spring to my
feet was irresistible. Major Fitz-David had started a new idea in
my mind.
"Now we understand each other!" I said. "I will accept your own
terms, Major. I will ask nothing of you but what you have just
offered to me of your own accord."
"What have I offered?" he inquired, looking a little alarmed.
"Nothing that you need repent of," I answered; "nothing which is
not easy for you to grant. May I ask a bold question? Suppose
this house was mine instead of yours?"
"Consider it yours," cried the gallant old gentleman. "From the
garret to the kitchen, consider it yours!"
"A thousand thanks, Major; I will consider it mine for the
moment. You know--everybody knows--that one of a woman's many
weaknesses is curiosity. Suppose my curiosity led me to examine
everything in my new house?"
"Yes?"
"Suppose I went from room to room, and searched everything, and
peeped in everywhere? Do you think there would be any chance--"
The quick-witted Major anticipated the nature of my question. He
followed my example; he too started to his feet, with a new idea
in his mind.
"Would there be any chance," I went on, "of my finding my own way
to my husband's secret in this house? One word of reply, Major
Fitz-David! Only one word--Yes or No?"
"Don't excite yourself!" cried the Major.
"Yes or No?" I repeated, more vehemently than ever.
"Yes," said the Major, after a moment's consideration.
It was the reply I had asked for; but it was not explicit enough,
now I had got it, to satisfy me. I felt the necessity of leading
him (if possible) into details.
"Does 'Yes' mean that there is some sort of clew to the mystery?"
I asked. "Something, for instance, which my eyes might see and my
hands mig ht touch if I could only find it?"
He considered again. I saw that I had succeeded in interesting
him in some way unknown to myself; and I waited patiently until
he was prepared to answer me.
"The thing you mention," he said, "the clew (as you call it),
might be seen and might be touched--supposing you could find it."
"In this house?" I asked.
The Major advanced a step nearer to me, and answered--
"In this room."
My head began to swim; my heart throbbed violently. I tried to
speak; it was in vain; the effort almost choked me. In the
silence I could hear the music-lesson still going on in the room
above. The future prima donna had done practicing her scales, and
was trying her voice now in selections from Italian operas. At
the moment when I first heard her she was singing the beautiful
air from the _Somnambula,_ "Come per me sereno." I never hear
that delicious melody, to this day, without being instantly
transported in imagination to the fatal back-room in Vivian
Place.
The Major--strongly affected himself by this time--was the first
to break the silence.
"Sit down again," he said; "and pray take the easy-chair. You are
very much agitated; you want rest."
He was right. I could stand no longer; I dropped into the chair.
Major Fitz-David rang the bell, and spoke a few words to the
servant at the door.
"I have been here a long time," I said, faintly. "Tell me if I am
in the way."
"In the way?" he repeated, with his irresistible smile. "You
forget that you are in your own house!"
The servant returned to us, bringing with him a tiny bottle of
champagne and a plateful of delicate little sugared biscuits.
"I have had this wine bottled expressly for the ladies," said the
Major. "The biscuits came to me direct from Paris. As a favor to
_me,_ you must take some refreshment. And then--" He stopped and
looked at me very attentively. "And then," he resumed, "shall I
go to my young prima donna upstairs and leave you here alone?"
It was impossible to hint more delicately at the one request
which I now had it in my mind to make to him. I took his hand and
pressed it gratefully.
"The tranquillity of my whole life to come is at stake," I said.
"When I am left here by myself, does your generous sympathy
permit me to examine everything in the room?"
He signed to me to drink the champagne and eat a biscuit before
he gave his answer.
"This is serious," he said. "I wish you to be in perfect
possession of yourself . Restore your strength--and then I will
speak to you."
I did as he bade me. In a minute from the time when I drank it
the delicious sparkling wine had begun to revive me.
"Is it your express wish," he resumed, "that I should leave you
here by yourself to search the room?"
"It is my express wish," I answered.
"I take a heavy responsibility on myself in granting your
request. But I grant it for all that, because I sincerely
believe--as you believe--that the tranquillity of your life to
come depends on your discovering the truth." Saying those words,
he took two keys from his pocket. "You will naturally feel a
suspicion," he went on, "of any locked doors that you may find
here. The only locked places in the room are the doors of the
cupboards under the long book-case, and the door of the Italian
cabinet in that corner. The small key opens the book-case
cupboards; the long key opens the cabinet door."
With that explanation, he laid the keys before me on the table.
"Thus far," he said, "I have rigidly respected the promise which
I made to your husband. I shall continue to be faithful to my
promise, whatever may be the result of your examination of the
room. I am bound in honor not to assist you by word or deed. I am
not even at liberty to offer you the slightest hint. Is that
understood?"
"Certainly!"
"Very good. I have now a last word of warning to give you--and
then I have done. If you do by any chance succeed in laying your
hand on the clew, remember this--_the discovery which follows
will be a terrible one._ If you have any doubt about your
capacity to sustain a shock which will strike you to the soul,
for God's sake give up the idea of finding out your husband's
secret at once and forever!"
"I thank you for your warning, Major. I must face the
consequences of making the discovery, whatever they may be."
"You are positively resolved?"
"Positively."
"Very well. Take any time you please. The house, and every person
in it, are at your disposal. Ring the bell once if you want the
man-servant. Ring twice if you wish the housemaid to wait on you.
From time to time I shall just look in myself to see how you are
going on. I am responsible for your comfort and security, you
know, while you honor me by remaining under my roof."
He lifted my hand to his lips, and fixed a last attentive look on
me.
"I hope I am not running too great a risk," he said--more to
himself than to me. "The women have led me into many a rash
action in my time. Have _you_ led me, I wonder, into the rashest
action of all?"
With those ominous last words he bowed gravely and left me alone
in the room.
CHAPTER X.
THE SEARCH.
THE fire burning in the grate was not a very large one; and the
outer air (as I had noticed on my way to the house) had something
of a wintry sharpness in it that day.
Still, my first feeling, when Major Fitz-David left me, was a
feeling of heat and oppression, with its natural result, a
difficulty in breathing freely. The nervous agitation of the time
was, I suppose, answerable for these sensations. I took off my
bonnet and mantle and gloves, and opened the window for a little
while. Nothing was to be seen outside but a paved courtyard, with
a skylight in the middle, closed at the further end by the wall
of the Major's stables. A few minutes at the window cooled and
refreshed me. I shut it down again, and took my first step on the
way of discovery. In other words, I began my first examination of
the four walls around me, and of all that they inclosed.
I was amazed at my own calmness. My interview with Major
Fitz-David had, perhaps, exhausted my capacity for feeling any
strong emotion, for the time at least. It was a relief to me to
be alone; it was a relief to me to begin the search. Those were
my only sensations so far.
The shape of the room was oblong. Of the two shorter walls, one
contained the door in grooves which I have already mentioned as
communicating with the front room; the other was almost entirely
occupied by the broad window which looked out on the courtyard.
Taking the doorway wall first, what was there, in the shape of
furniture, on either side of it? There was a card-table on either
side. Above each card-table stood a magnificent china bowl placed
on a gilt and carved bracket fixed to the wall.
I opened the card-tables. The drawers beneath contained nothing
but cards, and the usual counters and markers. With the exception
of one pack, the cards in both tables were still wrapped in their
paper covers exactly as they had come from the shop. I examined
the loose pack, card by card. No writing, no mark of any kind,
was visible on any one of them. Assisted by a library ladder
which stood against the book-case, I looked next into the two
china bowls. Both were perfectly empty. Was there anything more
to examine on that side of the room? In the two corners there
were two little chairs of inlaid wood, with red silk cushions. I
turned them up and looked under the cushions, and still I made no
discoveries. When I had put the chairs back in their places my
search on one side of the room was complete. So far I had found
nothing.
I crossed to the opposite wall, the wall which contained the
window.
The window (occupying, as I have said, almost the entire length
and height of the wall) was divided into three compartments, and
was adorned at their extremity by handsome curtains of dark red
velvet. The ample heavy folds of the velvet left just room at the
two corners of the wall for two little upright cabinets in buhl,
containing rows of drawers, and supporting two fine bronze
productions (reduced in size) of the Venus Milo and the Venus
Callipyge. I had Major Fitz-David's permission to do just what I
pleased. I opened the si x drawers in each cabinet, and examined
their contents without hesitation.
Beginning with the cabinet in the right-hand corner, my
investigations were soon completed. All the six drawers were
alike occupied by a collection of fossils, which (judging by the
curious paper inscriptions fixed on some of them) were associated
with a past period of the Major's life when he had speculated,
not very successfully in mines. After satisfying myself that the
drawers contained nothing but the fossils and their inscriptions,
I turned to the cabinet in the left-hand corner next.
Here a variety of objects was revealed to view, and the
examination accordingly occupied a much longer time.
The top drawer contained a complete collection of carpenter's
tools in miniature, relics probably of the far-distant time when
the Major was a boy, and when parents or friends had made him a
present of a set of toy tools. The second drawer was filled with
toys of another sort--presents made to Major Fitz-David by his
fair friends. Embroidered braces, smart smoking-caps, quaint
pincushions, gorgeous slippers, glittering purses, all bore
witness to the popularity of the friend of the women. The
contents of the third drawer were of a less interesting sort: the
entire space was filled with old account-books, ranging over a
period of many years. After looking into each book, and opening
and shaking it uselessly, in search of any loose papers which
might be hidden between the leaves, I came to the fourth drawer,
and found more relics of past pecuniary transactions in the shape
of receipted bills, neatly tied together, and each inscribed at
the back. Among the bills I found nearly a dozen loose papers,
all equally unimportant. The fifth drawer was in sad confusion. I
took out first a loose bundle of ornamental cards, each
containing the list of dishes at past banquets given or attended
by the Major in London or Paris; next, a box full of delicately
tinted quill pens (evidently a lady's gift); next, a quantity of
old invitation cards; next, some dog's-eared French plays and
books of the opera; next, a pocket-corkscrew, a bundle of
cigarettes, and a bunch of rusty keys; lastly, a passport, a set
of luggage labels, a broken silver snuff-box, two cigar-cases,
and a torn map of Rome. "Nothing anywhere to interest me," I
thought, as I closed the fifth, and opened the sixth and last
drawer.
The sixth drawer was at once a surprise and a disappointment. It
literally contained nothing but the fragments of a broken vase.
I was sitting, at the time, opposite to the cabinet, in a low
chair. In the momentary irritation caused by my discovery of the
emptiness of the last drawer, I had just lifted my foot to push
it back into its place, when the door communicating with the hall
opened, and Major Fitz-David stood before me.
His eyes, after first meeting mine, traveled downward to my foot.
The instant he noticed the open drawer I saw a change in his
face. It was only for a moment; but in that moment he looked at
me with a sudden suspicion and surprise--looked as if he had
caught me with my hand on the clew.
"Pray don't let me disturb you," said Major Fitz-David. "I have
only come here to ask you a question."
"What is it, Major?"
"Have you met with any letters of mine in the course of your
investigations?"
"I have found none yet," I answered. "If I do discover any
letters, I shall, of course, not take the liberty of examining
them."
"I wanted to speak to you about that," he rejoined. "It only
struck me a moment since, upstairs, that my letters might
embarrass you. In your place I should feel some distrust of
anything which I was not at liberty to examine. I think I can set
this matter right, however, with very little trouble to either of
us. It is no violation of any promises or pledges on my part if I
simply tell you that my letters will not assist the discovery
which you are trying to make. You can safely pass them over as
objects that are not worth examining from your point of view. You
understand me, I am sure?"
"I am much obliged to you, Major--I quite understand."
"Are you feeling any fatigue?"
"None whatever, thank you."
"And you still hope to succeed? You are not beginning to be
discouraged already?"
"I am not in the least discouraged. With your kind leave, I mean
to persevere for some time yet."
I had not closed the drawer of the cabinet while we were talking,
and I glanced carelessly, as I answered him, at the fragments of
the broken vase. By this time he had got his feelings under
perfect command. He, too, glanced at the fragments of the vase
with an appearance of perfect indifference. I remembered the look
of suspicion and surprise that had escaped him on entering the
room, and I thought his indifference a little overacted.
"_That_ doesn't look very encouraging," he said, with a smile,
pointing to the shattered pieces of china in the drawer.
"Appearances are not always to be trusted," I replied. "The
wisest thing I can do in my present situation is to suspect
everything, even down to a broken vase."
I looked hard at him as I spoke. He changed the subject.
"Does the music upstairs annoy you?" he asked.
"Not in the least, Major."
"It will soon be over now. The singing-master is going, and the
Italian master has just arrived. I am sparing no pains to make my
young prima donna a most accomplished person. In learning to sing
she must also learn the language which is especially the language
of music. I shall perfect her in the accent when I take her to
Italy. It is the height of my ambition to have her mistaken for
an Italian when she sings in public. Is there anything I can do
before I leave you again? May I send you some more champagne?
Please say yes!"
"A thousand thanks, Major. No more champagne for the present."
He turned at the door to kiss his hand to me at parting. At the
same moment I saw his eyes wander slyly toward the book-case. It
was only for an instant. I had barely detected him before he was
out of the room.
Left by myself again, I looked at the book-case--looked at it
attentively for the first time.
It was a handsome piece of furniture in ancient carved oak, and
it stood against the wall which ran parallel with the hall of the
house. Excepting the space occupied in the upper corner of the
room by the second door, which opened into the hall, the
book-case filled the whole length of the wall down to the window.
The top was ornamented by vases, candelabra, and statuettes, in
pairs, placed in a row. Looking along the row, I noticed a vacant
space on the top of the bookcase at the extremity of it which was
nearest to the window. The opposite extremity, nearest to the
door, was occupied by a handsome painted vase of a very peculiar
pattern. Where was the corresponding vase, which ought to have
been placed at the corresponding extremity of the book-case? I
returned to the open sixth drawer of the cabinet, and looked in
again. There was no mistaking the pattern on the fragments when I
examined them now. The vase which had been broken was the vase
which had stood in the place now vacant on the top of the
book-case at the end nearest to the window.
Making this discovery, I took out the fragments, down to the
smallest morsel of the shattered china, and examined them
carefully one after another.
I was too ignorant of the subject to be able to estimate the
value of the vase or the antiquity of the vase, or even to know
whether it were of British or of foreign manufacture. The ground
was of a delicate cream-color. The ornaments traced on this were
wreaths of flowers and Cupids surrounding a medallion on either
side of the vase. Upon the space within one of the medallions was
painted with exquisite delicacy a woman's head, representing a
nymph or a goddess, or perhaps a portrait of some celebrated
person--I was not learned enough to say which. The other
medallion inclosed the head of a man, also treated in the
classical style. Reclining shepherds and shepherdesses in Watteau
costume, with their dogs and their sheep, formed the adornments
of the pedestal. Such had the vase been in the days of its
prosperity, when it stood on the top of the book-case. By what a
ccident had it become broken? And why had Major Fitz-David's face
changed when he found that I had discovered the remains of his
shattered work of art in the cabinet drawer?
The remains left those serious questions unanswered--the remains
told me absolutely nothing. And yet, if my own observation of the
Major were to be trusted, the way to the clew of which I was in
search lay, directly or indirectly, through the broken vase.
It was useless to pursue the question, knowing no more than I
knew now. I returned to the book-case.
Thus far I had assumed (without any sufficient reason) that the
clew of which I was in search must necessarily reveal itself
through a written paper of some sort. It now occurred to
me--after the movement which I had detected on the part of the
Major--that the clew might quite as probably present itself in
the form of a book.
I looked along the lower rows of shelves, standing just near
enough to them to read the titles on the backs of the volumes. I
saw Voltaire in red morocco, Shakespeare in blue, Walter Scott in
green, the "History of England" in brown, the "Annual Register"
in yellow calf. There I paused, wearied and discouraged already
by the long rows of volumes. How (I thought to myself) am I to
examine all these books? And what am I to look for, even if I do
examine them all?
Major Fitz-David had spoken of a terrible misfortune which had
darkened my husband's past life. In what possible way could any
trace of that misfortune, or any suggestive hint of something
resembling it, exist in the archives of the "Annual Register" or
in the pages of Voltaire? The bare idea of such a thing seemed
absurd The mere attempt to make a serious examination in this
direction was surely a wanton waste of time.
And yet the Major had certainly stolen a look at the book-case.
And again, the broken vase had once stood on the book-case. Did
these circumstances justify me in connecting the vase and the
book-case as twin landmarks on the way that led to discovery? The
question was not an easy one to decide on the spur of the moment.
I looked up at the higher shelves.
Here the collection of books exhibited a greater variety. The
volumes were smaller, and were not so carefully arranged as on
the lower shelves. Some were bound in cloth, some were only
protected by paper covers; one or two had fallen, and lay flat on
the shelves. Here and there I saw empty spaces from which books
had been removed and not replaced. In short, there was no
discouraging uniformity in these higher regions of the book-case.
The untidy top shelves looked suggestive of some lucky accident
which might unexpectedly lead the way to success. I decided, if I
did examine the book-case at all, to begin at the top.
Where was the library ladder?
I had left it against the partition wall which divided the back
room from the room in front. Looking that way, I necessarily
looked also toward the door that ran in grooves--the imperfectly
closed door through which I heard Major Fitz-David question his
servant on the subject of my personal appearance when I first
entered the house. No one had moved this door during the time of
my visit. Everybody entering or leaving the room had used the
other door, which led into the hall.
At the moment when I looked round something stirred in the front
room. The movement let the light in suddenly through the small
open space left by the partially closed door. Had somebody been
watching me through the chink? I stepped softly to the door, and
pushed it back until it was wide open. There was the Major,
discovered in the front room! I saw it in his face--he had been
watching me at the book-case!
His hat was in his hand. He was evidently going out; and he
dexterously took advantage of that circumstance to give a
plausible reason for being so near the door.
"I hope I didn't frighten you," he said.
"You startled me a little, Major."
"I am so sorry, and so ashamed! I was just going to open the
door, and tell you that I am obliged to go out. I have received a
pressing message from a lady. A charming person--I should so like
you to know her. She is in sad trouble, poor thing. Little bills,
you know, and nasty tradespeople who want their money, and a
husband--oh, dear me, a husband who is quite unworthy of her! A
most interesting creature. You remind me of her a little; you
both have the same carriage of the head. I shall not be more than
half an hour gone. Can I do anything for you? You are looking
fatigued. Pray let me send for some more champagne. No? Promise
to ring when you want it. That's right! _Au revoir_, my charming
friend--_au revoir!_"
I pulled the door to again the moment his back was turned, and
sat down for a while to compose myself.
He had been watching me at the book-case! The man who was in my
husband's confidence, the man who knew where the clew was to be
found, had been watching me at the book-case! There was no doubt
of it now. Major Fitz-David had shown me the hiding-place of the
secret in spite of himself!
I looked with indifference at the other pieces of furniture,
ranged against the fourth wall, which I had not examined yet. I
surveyed, without the slightest feeling of curiosity, all the
little elegant trifles scattered on the tables and on the
chimney-piece, each one of which might have been an object of
suspicion to me under other circumstances. Even the water-color
drawings failed to interest me in my present frame of mind. I
observed languidly that they were most of them portraits of
ladies--fair idols, no doubt, of the Major's facile
adoration--and I cared to notice no more. _My_ business in that
room (I was certain of it now!) began and ended with the
book-case. I left my seat to fetch the library ladder,
determining to begin the work of investigation on the top
shelves.
On my way to the ladder I passed one of the tables, and saw the
keys lying on it which Major Fitz-David had left at my disposal.
The smaller of the two keys instantly reminded me of the
cupboards under the bookcase. I had strangely overlooked these. A
vague distrust of the locked doors a vague doubt of what they
might be hiding from me, stole into my mind. I left the ladder in
its place against the wall, and set myself to examine the
contents of the cupboards first.
The cupboards were three in number. As I opened the first of them
the singing upstairs ceased. For a moment there was something
almost oppressive in the sudden change from noise to silence. I
suppose my nerves must have been overwrought. The next sound in
the house--nothing more remarkable than the creaking of a man's
boots descending the stairs--made me shudder all over. The man
was no doubt the singing-master, going away after giving his
lesson. I heard the house door close on him, and started at the
familiar sound as if it were something terrible which I had never
heard before. Then there was silence again. I roused myself as
well as I could, and began my examination of the first cupboard.
It was divided into two compartments.
The top compartment contained nothing but boxes of cigars, ranged
in rows, one on another. The under compartment was devoted to a
collection of shells. They were all huddled together anyhow, the
Major evidently setting a far higher value on his cigars than on
his shells. I searched this lower compartment carefully for any
object interesting to me which might be hidden in it. Nothing was
to be found in any part of it besides the shells.
As I opened the second cupboard it struck me that the light was
beginning to fail.
I looked at the window: it was hardly evening yet. The darkening
of the light was produced by gathering clouds. Rain-drops
pattered against the glass; the autumn wind whistled mournfully
in the corners of the courtyard. I mended the fire before I
renewed my search. My nerves were in fault again, I suppose. I
shivered when I went back to the book-case. My hands trembled: I
wondered what was the matter with me.
The second cupboard revealed (in the upper division of it) some
really beautiful cameos--not mounted, but laid on cotton-wool in
neat cardboard trays. In one corner, half hidden under one of the
trays, there peeped out the whit e leaves of a little manuscript.
I pounced on it eagerly, only to meet with a new disappointment:
the manuscript proved to be a descriptive catalogue of the
cameos--nothing more!
Turning to the lower division of the cupboard, I found more
costly curiosities in the shape of ivory carvings from Japan and
specimens of rare silk from China. I began to feel weary of
disinterring the Major's treasures. The longer I searched, the
farther I seemed to remove myself from the one object that I had
it at heart to attain. After closing the door of the second
cupboard, I almost doubted whether it would be worth my while to
proceed farther and open the third and last door.
A little reflection convinced me that it would be as well, now
that I had begun my examination of the lower regions of the
book-case, to go on with it to the end. I opened the last
cupboard.
On the upper shelf there appeared, in solitary grandeur, one
object only--a gorgeously bound book.
It was of a larger size than usual, judging of it by comparison
with the dimensions of modern volumes. The binding was of blue
velvet, with clasps of silver worked in beautiful arabesque
patterns, and with a lock of the same precious metal to protect
the book from prying eyes. When I took it up, I found that the
lock was not closed.
Had I any right to take advantage of this accident, and open the
book? I have put the question since to some of my friends of both
sexes. The women all agree that I was perfectly justified,
considering the serious interests that I had at stake, in taking
any advantage of any book in the Major's house. The men differ
from this view, and declare that I ought to have put back the
volume in blue velvet unopened, carefully guarding myself from
any after-temptation to look at it again by locking the cupboard
door. I dare say the men are right.
Being a woman, however, I opened the book without a moment's
hesitation.
The leaves were of the finest vellum, with tastefully designed
illuminations all round them. And what did these highly
ornamental pages contain? To my unutterable amazement and
disgust, they contained locks of hair, let neatly into the center
of each page, with inscriptions beneath, which proved them to be
love-tokens from various ladies who had touched the Major's
susceptible heart at different periods of his life. The
inscriptions were written in other languages besides English, but
they appeared to be all equally devoted to the same curious
purpose, namely, to reminding the Major of the dates at which his
various attachments had come to an untimely end. Thus the first
page exhibited a lock of the lightest flaxen hair, with these
lines beneath: "My adored Madeline. Eternal constancy. Alas, July
22, 1839!" The next page was adorned by a darker shade of hair,
with a French inscription under it: "Clemence. Idole de mon âme.
Toujours fidele. Helas, 2me Avril, 1840." A lock of red hair
followed, with a lamentation in Latin under it, a note being
attached to the date of dissolution of partnership in this case,
stating that the lady was descended from the ancient Romans, and
was therefore mourned appropriately in Latin by her devoted
Fitz-David. More shades of hair and more inscriptions followed,
until I was weary of looking at them. I put down the book,
disgusted with the creatures who had assisted in filling it, and
then took it up again, by an afterthought. Thus far I had
thoroughly searched everything that had presented itself to my
notice. Agreeable or not agreeable, it was plainly of serious
importance to my own interests to go on as I had begun, and
thoroughly to search the book.
I turned over the pages until I came to the first blank leaf.
Seeing that they were all blank leaves from this place to the
end, I lifted the volume by the back, and, as a last measure of
precaution, shook it so as to dislodge any loose papers or cards
which might have escaped my notice between the leaves.
This time my patience was rewarded by a discovery which
indescribably irritated and distressed me.
A small photograph, mounted on a card, fell out of the book. A
first glance showed me that it represented the portraits of two
persons.
One of the persons I recognized as my husband.
The other person was a woman.
Her face was entirely unknown to me. She was not young. The
picture represented her seated on a chair, with my husband
standing behind, and bending over her, holding one of her hands
in his. The woman's face was hard-featured and ugly, with the
marking lines of strong passions and resolute self-will plainly
written on it. Still, ugly as she was, I felt a pang of jealousy
as I noticed the familiarly affectionate action by which the
artist (with the permission of his sitters, of course) had
connected the two figures in a group. Eustace had briefly told
me, in the days of our courtship, that he had more than once
fancied himself to be in love before he met with me. Could this
very unattractive woman have been one of the early objects of his
admiration? Had she been near enough and dear enough to him to be
photographed with her hand in his? I looked and looked at the
portraits until I could endure them no longer. Women are strange
creatures--mysteries even to themselves. I threw the photograph
from me into a corner of the cupboard. I was savagely angry with
my husband; I hated--yes, hated with all my heart and soul!--the
woman who had got his hand in hers--the unknown woman with the
self-willed, hard-featured face.
All this time the lower shelf of the cupboard was still waiting
to be looked over.
I knelt down to examine it, eager to clear my mind, if I could,
of the degrading jealousy that had got possession of me.
Unfortunately, the lower shelf contained nothing but relics of
the Major's military life, comprising his sword and pistols, his
epaulets, his sash, and other minor accouterments. None of these
objects excited the slightest interest in me. My eyes wandered
back to the upper shelf; and, like the fool I was (there is no
milder word that can fitly describe me at that moment), I took
the photograph out again, and enraged myself uselessly by another
look at it. This time I observed, what I had not noticed before,
that there were some lines of writing (in a woman's hand) at the
back of the portraits. The lines ran thus:
'To Major Fitz-David, with two vases. From his friends, S. and E.
M."
Was one of those two vases the vase that had been broken? And was
the change that I had noticed in Major Fitz-David's face produced
by some past association in connection with it, which in some way
affected me? It might or might not be so. I was little disposed
to indulge in speculation on this topic while the far more
serious question of the initials confronted me on the back of the
photograph.
"S. and E. M.?" Those last two letters might stand for the
initials of my husband's name--his true name--Eustace Macallan.
In this case the first letter ("S.") in all probability indicated
_her_ name. What right had she to associate herself with him in
that manner? I considered a little--my memory exerted itself--I
suddenly called to mind that Eustace had sisters. He had spoken
of them more than once in the time before our marriage. Had I
been mad enough to torture myself with jealousy of my husband's
sister? It might well be so; "S." might stand for his sister's
Christian name. I felt heartily ashamed of myself as this new
view of the matter dawned on me. What a wrong I had done to them
both in my thoughts! I turned the photograph, sadly and
penitently, to examine the portraits again with a kinder and
truer appreciation of them.
I naturally looked now for a family likeness between the two
faces. There was no family likeness; on the contrary, they were
as unlike each other in form and expression as faces could be.
_Was_ she his sister, after all? I looked at her hands, as
represented in the portrait. Her right hand was clasped by
Eustace; her left hand lay on her lap. On the third finger,
distinctly visible, there was a wedding-ring. Were any of my
husband's sisters married? I had myself asked him the question
when he mentioned them to me, and I perfectly remembered that he
had replie d in the negative.
Was it possible that my first jealous instinct had led me to the
right conclusion after all? If it had, what did the association
of the three initial letters mean? What did the wedding-ring
mean? Good Heavens! was I looking at the portrait of a rival in
my husband's affections--and was that rival his Wife?
I threw the photograph from me with a cry of horror. For one
terrible moment I felt as if my reason was giving way. I don't
know what would have happened, or what I should have done next,
if my love for Eustace had not taken the uppermost place among
the contending emotions that tortured me. That faithful love
steadied my brain. That faithful love roused the reviving
influences of my better and nobler sense. Was the man whom I had
enshrined in my heart of hearts capable of such base wickedness
as the bare idea of his marriage to another woman implied? No!
Mine was the baseness, mine the wickedness, in having even for a
moment thought it of him!
I picked up the detestable photograph from the floor, and put it
back in the book. I hastily closed the cupboard door, fetched the
library ladder, and set it against the book-case. My one idea now
was the idea of taking refuge in employment of any sort from my
own thoughts. I felt the hateful suspicion that had degraded me
coming back again in spite of my efforts to repel it. The books!
the books! my only hope was to absorb myself, body and soul, in
the books.
I had one foot on the ladder, when I heard the door of the room
open--the door which communicated with the hall.
I looked around, expecting to see the Major. I saw instead the
Major's future prima donna standing just inside the door, with
her round eyes steadily fixed on me.
"I can stand a good deal," the girl began, coolly, "but I can't
stand _this_ any longer?"
"What is it that you can't stand any longer?" I asked.
"If you have been here a minute, you have been here two good
hours," she went on. "All by yourself in the Major's study. I am
of a jealous disposition--I am. And I want to know what it
means." She advanced a few steps nearer to me, with a heightening
color and a threatening look. "Is he going to bring _you_ out on
the stage?" she asked, sharply.
"Certainly not."
"He ain't in love with you, is he?"
Under other circumstances I might have told her to leave the
room. In my position at that critical moment the mere presence of
a human creature was a positive relief to me. Even this girl,
with her coarse questions and her uncultivated manners, was a
welcome intruder on my solitude: she offered me a refuge from
myself.
"Your question is not very civilly put," I said. "However, I
excuse you. You are probably not aware that I am a married
woman."
"What has that got to do with it?" she retorted. "Married or
single, it's all one to the Major. That brazen-faced hussy who
calls herself Lady Clarinda is married, and she sends him
nosegays three times a week! Not that I care, mind you, about the
old fool. But I've lost my situation at the railway, and I've got
my own interests to look after, and I don't know what may happen
if I let other women come between him and me. That's where the
shoe pinches, don't you see? I'm not easy in my mind when I see
him leaving you mistress here to do just what you like. No
offense! I speak out--I do. I want to know what you are about all
by yourself in this room? How did you pick up with the Major? I
never heard him speak of you before to-day."
Under all the surface selfishness and coarseness of this strange
girl there was a certain frankness and freedom which pleaded in
her favor--to my mind, at any rate. I answered frankly and freely
on my side.
"Major Fitz-David is an old friend of my husband's," I said, "and
he is kind to me for my husband's sake. He has given me
permission to look in this room--"
I stopped, at a loss how to describe my employment in terms which
should tell her nothing, and which should at the same time
successfully set her distrust of me at rest.
"To look about in this room--for what?" she asked. Her eye fell
on the library ladder, beside which I was still standing. "For a
book?" she resumed.
"Yes," I said, taking the hint. "For a book."
"Haven't you found it yet?"
"No."
She looked hard at me, undisguisedly considering with herself
whether I were or were not speaking the truth.
"You seem to be a good sort," she said, making up her mind at
last. "There's nothing stuck-up about you. I'll help you if I
can. I have rummaged among the books here over and over again,
and I know more about them than you do. What book do you want?"
As she put that awkward question she noticed for the first time
Lady Clarinda's nosegay lying on the side-table where the Major
had left it. Instantly forgetting me and my book, this curious
girl pounced like a fury on the flowers, and actually trampled
them under her feet!
"There!" she cried. "If I had Lady Clarinda here I'd serve her in
the same way."
"What will the Major say?" I asked.
"What do I care? Do you suppose I'm afraid of _him?_ Only last
week I broke one of his fine gimcracks up there, and all through
Lady Clarinda and her flowers!"
She pointed to the top of the book-case--to the empty space on it
close by the window. My heart gave a sudden bound as my eyes took
the direction indicated by her finger. _She_ had broken the vase!
Was the way to discovery about to reveal itself to me through
this girl? Not a word would pass my lips; I could only look at
her.
"Yes!" she said. "The thing stood there. He knows how I hate her
flowers, and he put her nosegay in the vase out of my way. There
was a woman's face painted on the china, and he told me it was
the living image of _her_ face. It was no more like her than I
am. I was in such a rage that I up with the book I was reading at
the time and shied it at the painted face. Over the vase went,
bless your heart, crash to the floor. Stop a bit! I wonder
whether _that's_ the book you have been looking after? Are you
like me? Do you like reading Trials?"
Trials? Had I heard her aright? Yes: she had said Trials.
I answered by an affirmative motion of my head. I was still
speechless. The girl sauntered in her cool way to the fire-place,
and, taking up the tongs, returned with them to the book-case.
"Here's where the book fell," she said--"in the space between the
book-case and the wall. I'll have it out in no time."
I waited without moving a muscle, without uttering a word.
She approached me with the tongs in one hand and with a plainly
bound volume in the other.
"Is that the book?" she said. "Open it, and see."
I took the book from her.
"It is tremendously interesting," she went on. "I've read it
twice over--I have. Mind you, _I_ believe he did it, after all."
Did it? Did what? What was she talking about? I tried to put the
question to her. I struggled--quite vainly--to say only these
words: "What are you talking about?"
She seemed to lose all patience with me. She snatched the book
out of my hand, and opened it before me on the table by which we
were standing side by side.
"I declare, you're as helpless as a baby!" she said,
contemptuously. "There! _Is_ that the book?"
I read the first lines on the title-page--
A COMPLETE REPORT OF THE TRIAL OF EUSTACE MACALLAN.
I stopped and looked up at her. She started back from me with a
scream of terror. I looked down again at the title-page, and read
the next lines--
FOR THE ALLEGED POISONING OF HIS WIFE.
There, God's mercy remembered me. There the black blank of a
swoon swallowed me up.
CHAPTER XI.
THE RETURN TO LIFE.
My first remembrance when I began to recover my senses was the
remembrance of Pain--agonizing pain, as if every nerve in my body
were being twisted and torn out of me. My whole being writhed and
quivered under the dumb and dreadful protest of Nature against
the effort to recall me to life. I would have given worlds to be
able to cry out--to entreat the unseen creatures about me to give
me back to death. How long that speechless agony held me I never
knew. In a longer or shorter time there stole over me slowly a
sleepy sense of relief. I heard my own labored breathing. I felt
my hands moving fee bly and mechanically, like the hands of a
baby. I faintly opened my eyes and looked round me--as if I had
passed through the ordeal of death, and had awakened to new
senses in a new world.
The first person I saw was a man--a stranger. He moved quietly
out of my sight; beckoning, as he disappeared, to some other
person in the room.
Slowly and unwillingly the other person advanced to the sofa on
which I lay. A faint cry of joy escaped me; I tried to hold out
my feeble hands. The other person who was approaching me was my
husband!
I looked at him eagerly. He never looked at me in return. With
his eyes on the ground, with a strange appearance of confusion
and distress in his face, he too moved away out of my sight. The
unknown man whom I had first noticed followed him out of the
room. I called after him faintly, "Eustace!" He never answered;
he never returned. With an effort I moved my head on the pillow,
so as to look round on the other side of the sofa. Another
familiar face appeared before me as if in a dream. My good old
Benjamin was sitting watching me, with the tears in his eyes.
He rose and took my hand silently, in his simple, kindly way.
"Where is Eustace?" I asked. "Why has he gone away and left me?"
I was still miserably weak. My eyes wandered mechanically round
the room as I put the question. I saw Major Fitz-David, I saw the
table on which the singing girl had opened the book to show it to
me. I saw the girl herself, sitting alone in a corner, with her
handkerchief to her eyes as if she were crying. In one mysterious
moment my memory recovered its powers. The recollection of that
fatal title-page came back to me in all its horror. The one
feeling that it roused in me now was a longing to see my
husband--to throw myself into his arms, and tell him how firmly I
believed in his innocence, how truly and dearly I loved him. I
seized on Benjamin with feeble, trembling hands. "Bring him back
to me!" I cried, wildly. "Where is he? Help me to get up!"
A strange voice answered, firmly and kindly: "Compose yourself,
madam. Mr. Woodville is waiting until you have recovered, in a
room close by."
I looked at him, and recognized the stranger who had followed my
husband out of the room. Why had he returned alone? Why was
Eustace not with me, like the rest of them? I tried to raise
myself, and get on my feet. The stranger gently pressed me back
again on the pillow. I attempted to resist him--quite uselessly,
of course. His firm hand held me as gently as ever in my place.
"You must rest a little," he said. "You must take some wine. If
you exert yourself now you will faint again."
Old Benjamin stooped over me, and whispered a word of
explanation.
"It's the doctor, my dear. You must do as he tells you."
The doctor! They had called the doctor in to help them! I began
dimly to understand that my fainting fit must have presented
symptoms far more serious than the fainting fits of women in
general. I appealed to the doctor, in a helpless, querulous way,
to account to me for my husband's extraordinary absence.
"Why did you let him leave the room?" I asked. "If I can't go to
him, why don't you bring him here to me?"
The doctor appeared to be at a loss how to reply to me. He looked
at Benjamin, and said, "Will you speak to Mrs. Woodville?"
Benjamin, in his turn, looked at Major Fitz-David, and said,
"Will _you?_" The Major signed to them both to leave us. They
rose together, and went into the front room, pulling the door to
after them in its grooves. As they left us, the girl who had so
strangely revealed my husband's secret to me rose in her corner
and approached the sofa.
"I suppose I had better go too?" she said, addressing Major
Fitz-David.
"If you please," the Major answered.
He spoke (as I thought) rather coldly. She tossed her head, and
turned her back on him in high indignation. "I must say a word
for myself!" cried this strange creature, with a hysterical
outbreak of energy. "I must say a word, or I shall burst!"
With that extraordinary preface, she suddenly turned my way and
poured out a perfect torrent of words on me.
"You hear how the Major speaks to me?" she began. "He blames
me--poor Me--for everything that has happened. I am as innocent
as the new-born babe. I acted for the best. I thought you wanted
the book. I don't know now what made you faint dead away when I
opened it. And the Major blames Me! As if it was my fault! I am
not one of the fainting sort myself; but I feel it, I can tell
you. Yes! I feel it, though I don't faint about it. I come of
respectable parents--I do. My name is Hoighty--Miss Hoighty. I
have my own self-respect; and it's wounded. I say my self-respect
is wounded, when I find myself blamed without deserving it. You
deserve it, if anybody does. Didn't you tell me you were looking
for a book? And didn't I present it to you promiscuously, with
the best intentions? I think you might say so yourself, now the
doctor has brought you to again. I think you might speak up for a
poor girl who is worked to death with singing and languages and
what not--a poor girl who has nobody else to speak for her. I am
as respectable as you are, if you come to that. My name is
Hoighty. My parents are in business, and my mamma has seen better
days, and mixed in the best of company."
There Miss Hoighty lifted her handkerchief again to her face, and
burst modestly into tears behind it.
It was certainly hard to hold her responsible for what had
happened. I answered as kindly as I could, and I attempted to
speak to Major Fitz-David in her defense. He knew what terrible
anxieties were oppressing me at that moment; and, considerately
refusing to hear a word, he took the task of consoling his young
prima donna entirely on himself. What he said to her I neither
heard nor cared to hear: he spoke in a whisper. It ended in his
pacifying Miss Hoighty, by kissing her hand, and leading her (as
he might have led a duchess) out of the room.
"I hope that foolish girl has not annoyed you--at such a time as
this," he said, very earnestly, when he returned to the sofa. "I
can't tell you how grieved I am at what has happened. I was
careful to warn you, as you may remember. Still, if I could only
have foreseen--"
I let him proceed no further. No human forethought could have
provided against what had happened. Besides, dreadful as the
discovery had been, I would rather have made it, and suffered
under it, as I was suffering now, than have been kept in the
dark. I told him this. And then I turned to the one subject that
was now of any interest to me--the subject of my unhappy husband.
"How did he come to this house?" I asked.
He came here with Mr. Benjamin shortly after I returned," the
Major replied.
"Long after I was taken ill?"
"No. I had just sent for the doctor--feeling seriously alarmed
about you."
"What brought him here? Did he return to the hotel and miss me?"
"Yes. He returned earlier than he had anticipated, and he felt
uneasy at not finding you at the hotel."
"Did he suspect me of being with you? Did he come here from the
hotel?"
"No. He appears to have gone first to Mr. Benjamin to inquire
about you. What he heard from your old friend I cannot say. I
only know that Mr. Benjamin accompanied him when he came here."
This brief explanation was quite enough for me--I understood what
had happened. Eustace would easily frighten simple old Benjamin
about my absence from the hotel; and, once alarmed, Benjamin
would be persuaded without difficulty to repeat the few words
which had passed between us on the subject of Major Fitz-David.
My husband's presence in the Major's house was perfectly
explained. But his extraordinary conduct in leaving the room at
the very time when I was just recovering my senses still remained
to be accounted for. Major Fitz-David looked seriously
embarrassed when I put the question to him.
"I hardly know how to explain it to you," he said. "Eustace has
surprised and disappointed me."
He spoke very gravely. His looks told me more than his words: his
looks alarmed me.
"Eustace has not quarreled with you?" I said.
"Oh no!"
"He understands that you have not broken your promise to him?"
"Certainly. My youn g vocalist (Miss Hoighty) told the doctor
exactly what had happened; and the doctor in her presence
repeated the statement to your husband."
"Did the doctor see the Trial?"
"Neither the doctor nor Mr. Benjamin has seen the Trial. I have
locked it up; and I have carefully kept the terrible story of
your connection with the prisoner a secret from all of them. Mr.
Benjamin evidently has his suspicions. But the doctor has no
idea, and Miss Hoighty has no idea, of the true cause of your
fainting fit. They both believe that you are subject to serious
nervous attacks, and that your husband's name is really
Woodville. All that the truest friend could do to spare Eustace I
have done. He persists, nevertheless, in blaming me for letting
you enter my house. And worse, far worse than this, he persists
in declaring the event of to-day has fatally estranged you from
him. 'There is an end of our married life,' he said to me, 'now
she knows that I am the man who was tried at Edinburgh for
poisoning my wife!"'
I rose from the sofa in horror.
"Good God!" I cried, "does Eustace suppose that I doubt his
innocence?"
"He denies that it is possible for you or for anybody to believe
in his innocence," the Major replied.
"Help me to the door," I said. "Where is he? I must and will see
him!"
I dropped back exhausted on the sofa as I said the words. Major
Fitz-David poured out a glass of wine from the bottle on the
table, and insisted on my drinking it.
"You shall see him," said the Major. "I promise you that. The
doctor has forbidden him to leave the house until you have seen
him. Only wait a little! My poor, dear lady, wait, if it is only
for a few minutes, until you are stronger."
I had no choice but to obey him. Oh, those miserable, helpless
minutes on the sofa! I cannot write of them without shuddering at
the recollection--even at this distance of time.
"Bring him here!" I said. "Pray, pray bring him here!"
"Who is to persuade him to come back?" asked the Major, sadly.
"How can I, how can anybody, prevail with a man--a madman I had
almost said!--who could leave you at the moment when you first
opened your eyes on him? I saw Eustace alone in the next room
while the doctor was in attendance on you. I tried to shake his
obstinate distrust of your belief in his innocence and of my
belief in his innocence by every argument and every appeal that
an old friend could address to him. He had but one answer to give
me. Reason as I might, and plead as I might, he still persisted
in referring me to the Scotch Verdict."
"The Scotch Verdict?" I repeated. "What is that?"
The Major looked surprised at the question.
"Have you really never heard of the Trial?" he said.
"Never."
"I thought it strange," he went on, "when you told me you had
found out your husband's true name, that the discovery appeared
to have suggested no painful association to your mind. It is not
more than three years since all England was talking of your
husband. One can hardly wonder at his taking refuge, poor fellow,
in an assumed name. Where could you have been at the time?"
"Did you say it was three years ago?" I asked.
"Yes."
"I think I can explain my strange ignorance of what was so well
known to every one else. Three years since my father was alive. I
was living with him in a country-house in Italy--up in the
mountains, near Sienna. We never saw an English newspaper or met
with an English traveler for weeks and weeks together. It is just
possible that there might have been some reference made to the
Trial in my father's letters from England. If there were, he
never told me of it. Or, if he did mention the case, I felt no
interest in it, and forgot it again directly. Tell me--what has
the Verdict to do with my husband's horrible doubt of us? Eustace
is a free man. The Verdict was Not Guilty, of course?"
Major Fitz-David shook his head sadly.
"Eustace was tried in Scotland," he said. "There is a verdict
allowed by the Scotch law, which (so far as I know) is not
permitted by the laws of any other civilized country on the face
of the earth. When the jury are in doubt whether to condemn or
acquit the prisoner brought before them, they are permitted, in
Scotland, to express that doubt by a form of compromise. If there
is not evidence enough, on the one hand, to justify them in
finding a prisoner guilty, and not evidence enough, on the other
hand, to thoroughly convince them that a prisoner is innocent,
they extricate themselves from the difficulty by finding a
verdict of Not Proven."
"Was that the Verdict when Eustace was tried?" I asked.
"Yes."
"The jury were not quite satisfied that my husband was guilty?
and not quite satisfied that my husband was innocent? Is that
what the Scotch Verdict means?"
"That is what the Scotch Verdict means. For three years that
doubt about him in the minds of the jury who tried him has stood
on public record."
Oh, my poor darling! my innocent martyr! I understood it at last.
The false name in which he had married me; the terrible words he
had spoken when he had warned me to respect his secret; the still
more terrible doubt that he felt of me at that moment--it was all
intelligible to my sympathies, it was all clear to my
understanding, now. I got up again from the sofa, strong in a
daring resolution which the Scotch Verdict had suddenly kindled
in me--a resolution at once too sacred and too desperate to be
confided, in the first instance, to any other than my husband's
ear.
"Take me to Eustace!" I cried. "I am strong enough to bear
anything now."
After one searching look at me, the Major silently offered me his
arm, and led me out of the room.
CHAPTER XII.
THE SCOTCH VERDICT.
We walked to the far end of the hall. Major Fitz-David opened
the door of a long, narrow room built out at the back of the
house as a smoking-room, and extending along one side of the
courtyard as far as the stable wall.
My husband was alone in the room, seated at the further end of
it, near the fire-place. He started to his feet and faced me in
silence as I entered. The Major softly closed the door on us and
retired. Eustace never stirred a step to meet me. I ran to him,
and threw my arms round his neck and kissed him. The embrace was
not returned; the kiss was not returned. He passively
submitted--nothing more.
"Eustace!" I said, "I never loved you more dearly than I love you
at this moment! I never felt for you as I feel for you now!"
He released himself deliberately from my arms. He signed to me
with the mechanical courtesy of a stranger to take a chair.
"Thank you, Valeria," he answered, in cold, measured tones. "You
could say no less to me, after what has happened; and you could
say no more. Thank you."
We were standing before the fire-place. He left me, and walked
away slowly with his head down, apparently intending to leave the
room.
I followed him--I got before him--I placed myself between him and
the door.
"Why do you leave me?" I said. "Why do you speak to me in this
cruel way? Are you angry, Eustace? My darling, if you _are_
angry, I ask you to forgive me."
"It is I who ought to ask _your_ pardon," he replied. "I beg you
to forgive me, Valeria, for having made you my wife."
He pronounced those words with a hopeless, heart-broken humility
dreadful to see. I laid my hand on his bosom. I said, "Eustace,
look at me."
He slowly lifted his eyes to my face--eyes cold and clear and
tearless--looking at me in steady resignation, in immovable
despair. In the utter wretchedness of that moment, I was like
him; I was as quiet and as cold as my husband. He chilled, he
froze me.
"Is it possible," I said, "that you doubt my belief in your
innocence?"
He left the question unanswered. He sighed bitterly to himself.
"Poor woman!" he said, as a stranger might have said, pitying me.
"Poor woman!"
My heart swelled in me as if it would burst. I lifted my hand
from his bosom, and laid it on his shoulder to support myself.
"I don't ask you to pity me, Eustace; I ask you to do me justice.
You are not doing me justice. If you had trusted me with the
truth in the days when we first knew that we loved each other--if
you had told me all, and more than all that I know now--a s God
is my witness I would still have married you! _Now_ do you doubt
that I believe you are an innocent man!"
"I don't doubt it," he said. "All your impulses are generous,
Valeria. You are speaking generously and feeling generously.
Don't blame me, my poor child, if I look on further than you do:
if I see what is to come--too surely to come--in the cruel
future."
"The cruel future!" I repeated. "What do you mean?"
"You believe in my innocence, Valeria. The jury who tried me
doubted it--and have left that doubt on record. What reason have
_you_ for believing, in the face of the Verdict, that I am an
innocent man?"
"I want no reason! I believe in spite of the jury--in spite of
the Verdict."
"Will your friends agree with you? When your uncle and aunt know
what has happened--and sooner or later they must know it--what
will they say? They will say, 'He began badly; he concealed from
our niece that he had been wedded to a first wife; he married our
niece under a false name. He may say he is innocent; but we have
only his word for it. When he was put on his Trial, the Verdict
was Not Proven. Not Proven won't do for us. If the jury have done
him an injustice--if he _is_ innocent--let him prove it.' That is
what the world thinks and says of me. That is what your friends
will think and say of me. The time is coming, Valeria, when
you--even You--will feel that your friends have reason to appeal
to on their side, and that you have no reason on yours."
"That time will never come!" I answered, warmly. "You wrong me,
you insult me, in thinking it possible!"
He put down my hand from him, and drew back a step, with a bitter
smile.
"We have only been married a few days, Valeria. Your love for me
is new and young. Time, which wears away all things, will wear
away the first fervor of that love."
"Never! never!"
He drew back from me a little further still.
"Look at the world around you," he said. "The happiest husbands
and wives have their occasional misunderstandings and
disagreements; the brightest married life has its passing clouds.
When those days come for _us,_ the doubts and fears that you
don't feel now will find their way to you then. When the clouds
rise in _our_ married life--when I say my first harsh word, when
you make your first hasty reply--then, in the solitude of your
own room, in the stillness of the wakeful night, you will think
of my first wife's miserable death. You will remember that I was
held responsible for it, and that my innocence was never proved.
You will say to yourself, 'Did it begin, in _her_ time, with a
harsh word from him and with a hasty reply from her? Will it one
day end with me as the jury half feared that it ended with her?'
Hideous questions for a wife to ask herself! You will stifle
them; you will recoil from them, like a good woman, with horror.
But when we meet the next morning you will be on your guard, and
I shall see it, and know in my heart of hearts what it means.
Imbittered by that knowledge, my next harsh word may be harsher
still. Your next thoughts of me may remind you more vividly and
more boldly that your husband was once tried as a poisoner, and
that the question of his first wife's death was never properly
cleared up. Do you see what materials for a domestic hell are
mingling for us here? Was it for nothing that I warned you,
solemnly warned you, to draw back, when I found you bent on
discovering the truth? Can I ever be at your bedside now, when
you are ill, and not remind you, in the most innocent things I
do, of what happened at that other bedside, in the time of that
other woman whom I married first? If I pour out your medicine, I
commit a suspicious action--they say I poisoned _her_ in her
medicine. If I bring you a cup of tea, I revive the remembrance
of a horrid doubt--they said I put the arsenic in _her_ cup of
tea. If I kiss you when I leave the room, I remind you that the
prosecution accused me of kissing _her,_ to save appearances and
produce an effect on the nurse. Can we live together on such
terms as these? No mortal creatures could support the misery of
it. This very day I said to you, 'If you stir a step further in
this matter, there is an end of your happiness for the rest of
your life.' You have taken that step and the end has come to your
happiness and to mine. The blight that cankers and kills is on
you and on me for the rest of our lives!"
So far I had forced myself to listen to him. At those last words
the picture of the future that he was placing before me became
too hideous to be endured. I refused to hear more.
"You are talking horribly," I said. "At your age and at mine,
have we done with love and done with hope? It is blasphemy to
Love and Hope to say it!"
"Wait till you have read the Trial," he answered. "You mean to
read it, I suppose?"
"Every word of it! With a motive, Eustace, which you have yet to
know."
"No motive of yours, Valeria, no love and hope of yours, can
alter the inexorable facts. My first wife died poisoned; and the
verdict of the jury has not absolutely acquitted me of the guilt
of causing her death. As long as you were ignorant of that the
possibilities of happiness were always within our reach. Now you
know it, I say again--our married life is at an end."
"No," I said. "Now I know it, our married life has begun--begun
with a new object for your wife's devotion, with a new reason for
your wife's love!"
"What do you mean?"
I went near to him again, and took his hand.
"What did you tell me the world has said of you?" I asked. "What
did you tell me my friends would say of you? 'Not Proven won't do
for us. If the jury have done him an injustice--if he _is_
innocent--let him prove it.' Those were the words you put into
the mouths of my friends. I adopt them for mine! I say Not Proven
won't do for _me._ Prove your right, Eustace, to a verdict of Not
Guilty. Why have you let three years pass without doing it? Shall
I guess why? You have waited for your wife to help you. Here she
is, my darling, ready to help you with all her heart and soul.
Here she is, with one object in life--to show the world and to
show the Scotch Jury that her husband is an innocent man!"
I had roused myself; my pulses were throbbing, my voice rang
through the room. Had I roused _him_? What was his answer?
"Read the Trial." That was his answer.
I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair I shook
him with all my strength. God forgive me, I could almost have
struck him for the tone in which he had spoken and the look that
he had cast on me!
"I have told you that I mean to read the Trial," I said. "I mean
to read it, line by line, with you. Some inexcusable mistake has
been made. Evidence in your favor that might have been found has
not been found. Suspicious circumstances have not been
investigated. Crafty people have not been watched. Eustace! the
conviction of some dreadful oversight, committed by you or by the
persons who helped you, is firmly settled in my mind. The
resolution to set that vile Verdict right was the first
resolution that came to me when I first heard of it in the next
room. We _will_ set it right! We _must_ set it right--for your
sake, for my sake, for the sake of our children if we are blessed
with children. Oh, my own love, don't look at me with those cold
eyes! Don't answer me in those hard tones! Don't treat me as if I
were talking ignorantly and madly of something that can never
be!"
Still I never roused him. His next words were spoken
compassionately rather than coldly--that was all.
"My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land,"
he said. "After such men have done their utmost, and have
failed--my poor Valeria, what can you, what can I, do? We can
only submit."
"Never!" I cried. "The greatest lawyers are mortal men; the
greatest lawyers have made mistakes before now. You can't deny
that."
"Read the Trial." For the third time he said those cruel words,
and said no more.
In utter despair of moving him---feeling keenly, bitterly (if I
must own it), his merciless superiority to all that I had said to
him in the honest fervor of my devotion and my love--I thought of
Major Fitz-David as a last resort. In the dis ordered state of my
mind at that moment, it made no difference to me that the Major
had already tried to reason with him, and had failed. In the face
of the facts I had a blind belief in the influence of his old
friend, if his old friend could only be prevailed upon to support
my view.
"Wait for me one moment," I said. "I want you to hear another
opinion besides mine."
I left him, and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was not
there. I knocked at the door of communication with the front
room. It was opened instantly by the Major himself. The doctor
had gone away. Benjamin still remained in the room.
"Will you come and speak to Eustace?" I began. "If you will only
say what I want you to say--"
Before I could add a word more I heard the house door opened and
closed. Major Fitz-David and Benjamin heard it too. They looked
at each other in silence.
I ran back, before the Major could stop me, to the room in which
I had seen Eustace. It was empty. My husband had left the house.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MAN'S DECISION.
MY first impulse was the reckless impulse to follow
Eustace--openly through the streets.
The Major and Benjamin both opposed this hasty resolution on my
part. They appealed to my own sense of self-respect, without (so
far as I remember it) producing the slightest effect on my mind.
They were more successful when they entreated me next to be
patient for my husband's sake. In mercy to Eustace, they begged
me to wait half an hour. If he failed to return in that time,
they pledged themselves to accompany me in search of him to the
hotel.
In mercy to Eustace I consented to wait. What I suffered under
the forced necessity for remaining passive at that crisis in my
life no words of mine can tell. It will be better if I go on with
my narrative.
Benjamin was the first to ask me what had passed between my
husband and myself.
"You may speak freely, my dear," he said. "I know what has
happened since you have been in Major Fitz-David's house. No one
has told me about it; I found it out for myself. If you remember,
I was struck by the name of 'Macallan,' when you first mentioned
it to me at my cottage. I couldn't guess why at the time. I know
why now."
Hearing this, I told them both unreservedly what I had said to
Eustace, and how he had received it. To my unspeakable
disappointment, they both sided with my husband, treating my view
of his position as a mere dream. They said it, as he had said it,
"You have not read the Trial."
I was really enraged with them. "The facts are enough for _me,_"
I said. "We know he is innocent. Why is his innocence not proved?
It ought to be, it must be, it shall be! If the Trial tell me it
can't be done, I refuse to believe the Trial. Where is the book,
Major? Let me see for myself if his lawyers have left nothing for
his wife to do. Did they love him as I love him? Give me the
book!"
Major Fitz-David looked at Benjamin.
"It will only additionally shock and distress her if I give her
the book," he said. "Don't you agree with me?"
I interposed before Benjamin could answer.
"If you refuse my request," I said, "you will oblige me, Major,
to go to the nearest bookseller and tell him to buy the Trial for
me. I am determined to read it."
This time Benjamin sided with me.
"Nothing can make matters worse than they are, sir," he said. "If
I may be permitted to advise, let her have her own way."
The Major rose and took the book out of the Italian cabinet, to
which he had consigned it for safe-keeping.
"My young friend tells me that she informed you of her
regrettable outbreak of temper a few days since," he said as he
handed me the volume. "I was not aware at the time what book she
had in her hand when she so far forgot herself as to destroy the
vase. When I left you in the study, I supposed the Report of the
Trial to be in its customary place on the top shelf of the
book-case, and I own I felt some curiosity to know whether you
would think of examining that shelf. The broken vase--it is
needless to conceal it from you now--was one of a pair presented
to me by your husband and his first wife only a week before the
poor woman's terrible death. I felt my first presentiment that
you were on the brink of discovery when I found you looking at
the fragments, and I fancy I betrayed to you that something of
the sort was disturbing me. You looked as if you noticed it."
"I did notice it, Major. And I too had a vague idea that I was on
the way to discovery. Will you look at your watch? Have we waited
half an hour yet?"
My impatience had misled me. The ordeal of the half-hour was not
yet at an end.
Slowly and more slowly the heavy minutes followed each other, and
still there were no signs of my husband's return. We tried to
continue our conversation, and failed. Nothing was audible; no
sounds but the ordinary sounds of the street disturbed the
dreadful silence. Try as I might to repel it, there was one
foreboding thought that pressed closer and closer on my mind as
the interval of waiting wore its weary way on. I shuddered as I
asked myself if our married life had come to an end--if Eustace
had really left me.
The Major saw what Benjamin's slower perception had not yet
discovered--that my fortitude was beginning to sink under the
unrelieved oppression of suspense.
"Come!" he said. "Let us go to the hotel."
It then wanted nearly five minutes to the half-hour. I _looked_
my gratitude to Major Fitz-David for sparing me those last
minutes: I could not speak to him or to Benjamin. In silence we
three got into a cab and drove to the hotel.
The landlady met us in the hall. Nothing had been seen or heard
of Eustace. There was a letter waiting for me upstairs on the
table in our sitting-room. It had been left at the hotel by a
messenger only a few minutes since.
Trembling and breathless, I ran up the stairs, the two gentlemen
following me. The address of the letter was in my husband's
handwriting. My heart sank in me as I looked at the lines; there
could be but one reason for his writing to me. That closed
envelope held his farewell words. I sat with the letter on my
lap, stupefied, incapable of opening it.
Kind-hearted Benjamin attempted to comfort and encourage me. The
Major, with his larger experience of women, warned the old man to
be silent.
"Wait!" I heard him whisper. "Speaking to her will do no good
now. Give her time."
Acting on a sudden impulse, I held out the letter to him as he
spoke. Even moments might be of importance, if Eustace had indeed
left me. To give me time might be to lose the opportunity of
recalling him.
"You are his old friend," I said. "Open his letter, Major, and
read it for me."
Major Fitz-David opened the letter and read it through to
himself. When he had done he threw it on the table with a gesture
which was almost a gesture of contempt.
"There is but one excuse for him," he said. "The man is mad."
Those words told me all. I knew the worst; and, knowing it, I
could read the letter. It ran thus:
"MY BELOVED VALERIA--When you read these lines you read my
farewell words. I return to my solitary unfriended life--my life
before I knew you.
"My darling, you have been cruelly treated. You have been
entrapped into marrying a man who has been publicly accused of
poisoning his first wife--and who has not been honorably and
completely acquitted of the charge. And you know it!
"Can you live on terms of mutual confidence and mutual esteem
with me when I have committed this fraud, and when I stand toward
you in this position? It was possible for you to live with me
happily while you were in ignorance of the truth. It is _not_
possible, now you know all.
"No! the one atonement I can make is--to leave you. Your one
chance of future happiness is to be disassociated, at once and
forever, from my dishonored life. I love you, Valeria--truly,
devotedly, passionately. But the specter of the poisoned woman
rises between us. It makes no difference that I am innocent even
of the thought of harming my first wife. My innocence has not
been proved. In this world my innocence can never be proved. You
are young and loving, and generous and hopeful. Bless others,
Valeria, with your rare attractions a nd your delightful gifts.
They are of no avail with _me._ The poisoned woman stands between
us. If you live with me now, you will see her as I see her.
_That_ torture shall never be yours. I love you. I leave you.
"Do you think me hard and cruel? Wait a little, and time will
change that way of thinking. As the years go on you will say to
yourself, 'Basely as he deceived me, there was some generosity in
him. He was man enough to release me of his own free will.'
"Yes, Valeria, I fully, freely release you. If it be possible to
annul our marriage, let it be done. Recover your liberty by any
means that you may be advised to employ; and be assured
beforehand of my entire and implicit submission. My lawyers have
the necessary instructions on this subject. Your uncle has only
to communicate with them, and I think he will be satisfied of my
resolution to do you justice. The one interest that I have now
left in life is my interest in your welfare and your happiness in
the time to come. Your welfare and your happiness are no longer
to be found in your union with Me.
"I can write no more. This letter will wait for you at the hotel.
It will be useless to attempt to trace me. I know my own
weakness. My heart is all yours: I might yield to you if I let
you see me again.
"Show these lines to your uncle, and to any friends whose
opinions you may value. I have only to sign my dishonored name,
and every one will understand and applaud my motive for writing
as I do. The name justifies--amply justifies--the letter. Forgive
and forget me. Farewell.
"EUSTACE MACALLAN."
In those words he took his leave of me. We had then been
married--six days.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE WOMAN'S ANSWER.
THUS far I have written of myself with perfect frankness, and, I
think I may fairly add, with some courage as well. My frankness
fails me and my courage fails me when I look back to my husband's
farewell letter, and try to recall the storm of contending
passions that it roused in my mind. No! I cannot tell the truth
about myself--I dare not tell the truth about myself--at that
terrible time. Men! consult your observation of women, and
imagine what I felt; women! look into your own hearts, and see
what I felt, for yourselves.
What I _did,_ when my mind was quiet again, is an easier matter
to deal with. I answered my husband's letter. My reply to him
shall appear in these pages. It will show, in some degree, what
effect (of the lasting sort) his desertion of me produced on my
mind. It will also reveal the motives that sustained me, the
hopes that animated me, in the new and strange life which my next
chapters must describe.
I was removed from the hotel in the care of my fatherly old
friend, Benjamin. A bedroom was prepared for me in his little
villa. There I passed the first night of my separation from my
husband. Toward the morning my weary brain got some rest--I
slept.
At breakfast-time Major Fitz-David called to inquire about me. He
had kindly volunteered to go and speak for me to my husband's
lawyers on the preceding day. They had admitted that they knew
where Eustace had gone, but they declared at the same time that
they were positively forbidden to communicate his address to any
one. In other respects their "instructions" in relation to the
wife of their client were (as they were pleased to express it)
"generous to a fault." I had only to write to them, and they
would furnish me with a copy by return of post.
This was the Major's news. He refrained, with the tact that
distinguished him, from putting any questions to me beyond
questions relating to the state of my health. These answered, he
took his leave of me for that day. He and Benjamin had a long
talk together afterward in the garden of the villa.
I retired to my room and wrote to my uncle Starkweather, telling
him exactly what had happened, and inclosing him a copy of my
husband's letter. This done, I went out for a little while to
breathe the fresh air and to think. I was soon weary, and went
back again to my room to rest. My kind old Benjamin left me at
perfect liberty to be alone as long as I pleased. Toward the
afternoon I began to feel a little more like my old self again. I
mean by this that I could think of Eustace without bursting out
crying, and could speak to Benjamin without distressing and
frightening the dear old man.
That night I had a little more sleep. The next morning I was
strong enough to confront the first and foremost duty that I now
owed to myself--the duty of answering my husband's letter.
I wrote to him in these words:
"I am still too weak and weary, Eustace, to write to you at any
length. But my mind is clear. I have formed my own opinion of you
and your letter; and I know what I mean to do now you have left
me. Some women, in my situation, might think that you had
forfeited all right to their confidence. I don't think that. So I
write and tell you what is in my mind in the plainest and fewest
words that I can use.
"You say you love me--and you leave me. I don't understand loving
a woman and leaving her. For my part, in spite of the hard things
you have said and written to me, and in spite of the cruel manner
in which you have left me, I love you--and I won't give you up.
No! As long as I live I mean to live your wife.
"Does this surprise you? It surprises _me._ If another woman
wrote in this manner to a man who had behaved to her as you have
behaved, I should be quite at a loss to account for her conduct.
I am quite at a loss to account for my own conduct. I ought to
hate you, and yet I can't help loving you. I am ashamed of
myself; but so it is.
"You need feel no fear of my attempting to find out where you
are, and of my trying to persuade you to return to me. I am not
quite foolish enough to do that. You are not in a fit state of
mind to return to me. You are all wrong, all over, from head to
foot. When you get right again, I am vain enough to think that
you will return to me of your own accord. And shall I be weak
enough to forgive you? Yes! I shall certainly be weak enough to
forgive you.
"But how are you to get right again?
"I have puzzled my brains over this question by night and by day,
and my opinion is that you will never get right again unless I
help you.
"How am I to help you?
"That question is easily answered. What the Law has failed to do
for you, your Wife must do for you. Do you remember what I said
when we were together in the back room at Major Fitz-David's
house? I told you that the first thought that came to me, when I
heard what the Scotch jury had done, was the thought of setting
their vile Verdict right. Well! Your letter has fixed this idea
more firmly in my mind than ever. The only chance that I can see
of winning you back to me, in the character of a penitent and
loving husband, is to change that underhand Scotch Verdict of Not
Proven into an honest English Verdict of Not Guilty.
"Are you surprised at the knowledge of the law which this way of
writing betrays in an ignorant woman? I have been learning, my
dear: the Law and the Lady have begun by understanding one
another. In plain English, I have looked into Ogilvie's 'Imperial
Dictionary,' and Ogilvie tells me, 'A verdict of Not Proven only
indicates that, in the opinion of the jury, there is a deficiency
in the evidence to convict the prisoner. A verdict of Not Guilty
imports the jury's opinion that the prisoner is innocent.'
Eustace, that shall be the opinion of the world in general, and
of the Scotch jury in particular, in your case. To that one
object I dedicate my life to come, if God spare me!
"Who will help me, when I need help, is more than I yet know.
There was a time when I had hoped that we should go hand in hand
together in doing this good work. That hope is at an end. I no
longer expect you, or ask you, to help me. A man who thinks as
you think can give no help to anybody--it is his miserable
condition to have no hope. So be it! I will hope for two, and
will work for two; and I shall find some one to help me--never
fear--if I deserve it.
"I will say nothing about my plans--I have not read the Trial
yet. It is quite enough for me that I know you are i nnocent.
When a man is innocent, there _must_ be a way of proving it: the
one thing needful is to find the way. Sooner or later, with or
without assistance, I shall find it. Yes! before I know any
single particular of the Case, I tell you positively--I shall
find it!
"You may laugh over this blind confidence on my part, or you may
cry over it. I don't pretend to know whether I am an object for
ridicule or an object for pity. Of one thing only I am certain: I
mean to win you back, a man vindicated before the world, without
a stain on his character or his name--thanks to his wife.
"Write to me, sometimes, Eustace; and believe me, through all the
bitterness of this bitter business, your faithful and loving
"VALERIA."
There was my reply! Poor enough as a composition (I could write a
much better letter now), it had, if I may presume to say so, one
merit. It was the honest expression of what I really meant and
felt.
I read it to Benjamin. He held up his hands with his customary
gesture when he was thoroughly bewildered and dismayed. "It seems
the rashest letter that ever was written," said the dear old man.
"I never heard, Valeria, of a woman doing what you propose to do.
Lord help us! the new generation is beyond my fathoming. I wish
your uncle Starkweather was here: I wonder what he would say? Oh,
dear me, what a letter from a wife to a husband! Do you really
mean to send it to him?"
I added immeasurably to my old friend's surprise by not even
employing the post-office. I wished to see the "instructions"
which my husband had left behind him. So I took the letter to his
lawyers myself.
The firm consisted of two partners. They both received me
together. One was a soft, lean man, with a sour smile. The other
was a hard, fat man, with ill-tempered eyebrows. I took a great
dislike to both of them. On their side, they appeared to feel a
strong distrust of me. We began by disagreeing. They showed me my
husband's "instructions," providing, among other things, for the
payment of one clear half of his income as long as he lived to
his wife. I positively refused to touch a farthing of his money.
The lawyers were unaffectedly shocked and astonished at this
decision. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in the
whole course of their experience. They argued and remonstrated
with me. The partner with the ill-tempered eyebrows wanted to
know what my reasons were. The partner with the sour smile
reminded his colleague satirically that I was a lady, and had
therefore no reasons to give. I only answered, "Be so good as to
forward my letter, gentlemen," and left them.
I have no wish to claim any credit to myself in these pages which
I do not honestly deserve. The truth is that my pride forbade me
to accept help from Eustace, now that he had left me. My own
little fortune (eight hundred a year) had been settled on myself
when I married. It had been more than I wanted as a single woman,
and I was resolved that it should be enough for me now. Benjamin
had insisted on my considering his cottage as my home. Under
these circumstances, the expenses in which my determination to
clear my husband's character might involve me were the only
expenses for which I had to provide. I could afford to be
independent, and independent I resolved that I would be.
While I am occupied in confessing my weakness and my errors, it
is only right to add that, dearly as I still loved my unhappy,
misguided husband, there was one little fault of his which I
found it not easy to forgive.
Pardoning other things, I could not quite pardon his concealing
from me that he had been married to a first wife. Why I should
have felt this so bitterly as I did, at certain times and
seasons, I am not able to explain. Jealousy was at the bottom of
it, I suppose. And yet I was not conscious of being
jealous--especially when I thought of the poor creature's
miserable death. Still, Eustace ought not to have kept _that_
secret from me, I used to think to myself, at odd times when I
was discouraged and out of temper. What would _he_ have said if I
had been a widow, and had never told him of it?
It was getting on toward evening when I returned to the cottage.
Benjamin appeared to have been on the lookout for me. Before I
could ring at the bell he opened the garden gate.
"Prepare yourself for a surprise, my dear," he said. "Your uncle,
the Reverend Doctor Starkweather, has arrived from the North, and
is waiting to see you. He received your letter this morning, and
he took the first train to London as soon as he had read it."
In another minute my uncle's strong arms were round me. In my
forlorn position, I felt the good vicar's kindness, in traveling
all the way to London to see me, very gratefully. It brought the
tears into my eyes--tears, without bitterness, that did me good.
"I have come, my dear child, to take you back to your old home,"
he said. "No words can tell how fervently I wish you had never
left your aunt and me. Well! well! we won't talk about it. The
mischief is done, and the next thing is to mend it as well as we
can. If I could only get within arm's-length of that husband of
yours, Valeria--There! there! God forgive me, I am forgetting
that I am a clergyman. What shall I forget next, I wonder?
By-the-by, your aunt sends you her dearest love. She is more
superstitious than ever. This miserable business doesn't surprise
her a bit. She says it all began with your making that mistake
about your name in signing the church register. You remember? Was
there ever such stuff? Ah, she's a foolish woman, that wife of
mine! But she means well--a good soul at bottom. She would have
traveled all the way here along with me if I would have let her.
I said, 'No; you stop at home, and look after the house and the
parish, and I'll bring the child back.' You shall have your old
bedroom, Valeria, with the white curtains, you know, looped up
with blue! We will return to the Vicarage (if you can get up in
time) by the nine-forty train to-morrow morning."
Return to the Vicarage! How could I do that? How could I hope to
gain what was now the one object of my existence if I buried
myself in a remote north-country village? It was simply
impossible for me to accompany Doctor Starkweather on his return
to his own house.
"I thank you, uncle, with all my heart," I said. "But I am afraid
I can't leave London for the present."
"You can't leave London for the present?" he repeated. "What does
the girl mean, Mr. Benjamin?" Benjamin evaded a direct reply.
"She is kindly welcome here, Doctor Starkweather," he said, "as
long as she chooses to stay with me."
"That's no answer," retorted my uncle, in his rough-and-ready
way. He turned to me. "What is there to keep you in London?" he
asked. "You used to hate London. I suppose there is some reason?"
It was only due to my good guardian and friend that I should take
him into my confidence sooner or later. There was no help for it
but to rouse my courage, and tell him frankly what I had it in my
mind to do. The vicar listened in breathless dismay. He turned to
Benjamin, with distress as well as surprise in his face, when I
had done.
"God help her!" cried the worthy man. "The poor thing's troubles
have turned her brain!"
"I thought you would disapprove of it, sir," said Benjamin, in
his mild and moderate way. "I confess I disapprove of it myself."
"'Disapprove of it' isn't the word," retorted the vicar. "Don't
put it in that feeble way, if you please. An act of
madness--that's what it is, if she really mean what she says." He
turned my way, and looked as he used to look at the afternoon
service when he was catechising an obstinate child. "You don't
mean it," he said, "do you?"
"I am sorry to forfeit your good opinion, uncle," I replied. "But
I must own that I do certainly mean it."
"In plain English," retorted the vicar, "you are conceited enough
to think that you can succeed where the greatest lawyers in
Scotland have failed. _They_ couldn't prove this man's innocence,
all working together. And _you_ are going to prove it
single-handed? Upon my word, you are a wonderful woman," cried my
uncle, suddenly descending from indignation
to irony. "May a plain country parson, who isn't used to lawyers
in petticoats, be permitted to ask how you mean to do it?"
"I mean to begin by reading the Trial, uncle."
"Nice reading for a young woman! You will be wanting a batch of
nasty French novels next. Well, and when you have read the
Trial--what then? Have you thought of that?"
"Yes, uncle; I have thought of that. I shall first try to form
some conclusion (after reading the Trial) as to the guilty person
who really committed the crime. Then I shall make out a list of
the witnesses who spoke in my husband's defense. I shall go to
those witnesses, and tell them who I am and what I want. I shall
ask all sorts of questions which grave lawyers might think it
beneath their dignity to put. I shall be guided, in what I do
next, by the answers I receive. And I shall not be discouraged,
no matter what difficulties are thrown in my way. Those are my
plans, uncle, so far as I know them now."
The vicar and Benjamin looked at each other as if they doubted
the evidence of their own senses. The vicar spoke.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you are going roaming
about the country to throw yourself on the mercy of strangers,
and to risk whatever rough reception you may get in the course of
your travels? You! A young woman! Deserted by your husband! With
nobody to protect you! Mr. Benjamin, do you hear her? And can you
believe your ears? I declare to Heaven _I_ don't know whether I
am awake or dreaming. Look at her--just look at her! There she
sits as cool and easy as if she had said nothing at all
extraordinary, and was going to do nothing out of the common way!
What am I to do with her?--that's the serious question--what on
earth am I to do with her?"
"Let me try my experiment, uncle, rash as it may look to you," I
said. "Nothing else will comfort and support me; and God knows I
want comfort and support. Don't think me obstinate. I am ready to
admit that there are serious difficulties in my way."
The vicar resumed his ironical tone.
"Oh!" he said. "You admit that, do you? Well, there is something
gained, at any rate."
"Many another woman before me," I went on, "has faced serious
difficulties, and has conquered them--for the sake of the man she
loved."
Doctor Starkweather rose slowly to his feet, with the air of a
person whose capacity of toleration had reached its last limits.
"Am I to understand that you are still in love with Mr. Eustace
Macallan?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered.
"The hero of the great Poison Trial?" pursued my uncle. "The man
who has deceived and deserted you? You love him?"
"I love him more dearly than ever."
"Mr. Benjamin," said the vicar, "if she recover her senses
between this and nine o'clock to-morrow morning, send her with
her luggage to Loxley's Hotel, where I am now staying.
Good-night, Valeria. I shall consult with your aunt as to what is
to be done next. I have no more to say."
"Give me a kiss, uncle, at parting."
"Oh yes, I'll give you a kiss. Anything you like, Valeria. I
shall be sixty-five next birthday; and I thought I knew something
of women, at my time of life. It seems I know nothing. Loxley's
Hotel is the address, Mr. Benjamin. Good-night."
Benjamin looked very grave when he returned to me after
accompanying Doctor Starkweather to the garden gate.
"Pray be advised, my dear," he said. "I don't ask you to consider
_my_ view of this matter, as good for much. But your uncle's
opinion is surely worth considering?"
I did not reply. It was useless to say any more. I made up my
mind to be misunderstood and discouraged, and to bear it.
"Good-night, my dear old friend," was all I said to Benjamin.
Then I turned away--I confess with the tears in my eyes--and took
refuge in my bedroom.
The window-blind was up, and the autumn moonlight shone
brilliantly into the little room.
As I stood by the window, looking out, the memory came to me of
another moonlight night, when Eustace and I were walking together
in the Vicarage garden before our marriage. It was the night of
which I have written, many pages back, when there were obstacles
to our union, and when Eustace had offered to release me from my
engagement to him. I saw the dear face again looking at me in the
moonlight; I heard once more his words and mine. "Forgive me," he
had said, "for having loved you--passionately, devotedly loved
you. Forgive me, and let me go."
And I had answered, "Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman--don't madden
me! I can't live without you. I must and will be your wife!" And
now, after marriage had united us, we were parted! Parted, still
loving each as passionately as ever. And why? Because he had been
accused of a crime that he had never committed, and because a
Scotch jury had failed to see that he was an innocent man.
I looked at the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and
these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. "No!" I said to myself.
"Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and
fail in my husband's cause.
The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will
begin it to-night."
I drew down the blind and lighted the candles. In the quiet
night, alone and unaided, I took my first step on the toilsome
and terrible journey that lay before me. From the title-page to
the end, without stopping to rest and without missing a word, I
read the Trial of my husband for the murder of his wife.
PART II.
PARADISE REGAINED.
CHAPTER XV.
THE STORY OF THE TRIAL. THE PRELIMINARIES.
LET me confess another weakness, on my part, before I begin the
Story of the Trial. I cannot prevail upon myself to copy, for the
second time, the horrible title-page which holds up to public
ignominy my husband's name. I have copied it once in my tenth
chapter. Let once be enough.
Turning to the second page of the Trial, I found a Note, assuring
the reader of the absolute correctness of the Report of the
Proceedings. The compiler described himself as having enjoyed
certain special privileges. Thus, the presiding Judge had himself
revised his charge to the jury. And, again, the chief lawyers for
the prosecution and the defense, following the Judge's example,
had revised their speeches for and against the prisoner. Lastly,
particular care had been taken to secure a literally correct
report of the evidence given by the various witnesses. It was
some relief to me to discover this Note, and to be satisfied at
the outset that the Story of the Trial was, in every particular,
fully and truly given.
The next page interested me more nearly still. It enumerated the
actors in the Judicial Drama--the men who held in their hands my
husband's honor and my husband's life. Here is the List:
THE LORD JUSTICE CLERK,}
LORD DRUMFENNICK, }Judges on the Bench.
LORD NOBLEKIRK, }
THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mintlaw), } DONALD DREW, Esquire
(Advocate-Depute).} Counsel for the Crown.
MR. JAMES ARLISS, W. S., Agent for the Crown.
THE DEAN OF FACULTY (Farmichael), } Counsel for the Panel
ALEXANDER CROCKET, Esquire (Advocate),} (otherwise the Prisoner)
MR. THORNIEBANK, W. S.,}
MR. PLAYMORE, W. S., } Agents for the Panel.
The Indictment against the prisoner then followed. I shall not
copy the uncouth language, full of needless repetitions (and, if
I know anything of the subject, not guiltless of bad grammar as
well), in which my innocent husband was solemnly and falsely
accused of poisoning his first wife. The less there is of that
false and hateful Indictment on this page, the better and truer
the page will look, to _my_ eyes.
To be brief, then, Eustace Macallan was "indicted and accused, at
the instance of David Mintlaw, Esquire, Her Majesty's Advocate,
for Her Majesty's interest," of the Murder of his Wife by poison,
at his residence called Gleninch, in the county of Mid-Lothian.
The poison was alleged to have been wickedly and feloniously
given by the prisoner to his wife Sara, on two occasions, in the
form of arsenic, administered in tea, medicine, "or other article
or articles of food or drink, to the prosecutor unknown." It was
further declared that the prisoner's wife had died of the poison
thus administered b y her husband, on one or other, or both, of
the stated occasions; and that she was thus murdered by her
husband. The next paragraph asserted that the said Eustace
Macallan, taken before John Daviot, Esquire, advocate,
Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian, did in his presence at
Edinburgh (on a given date, viz., the 29th of October), subscribe
a Declaration stating his innocence of the alleged crime: this
Declaration being reserved in the Indictment--together with
certain documents, papers and articles, enumerated in an
Inventory--to be used in evidence against the prisoner. The
Indictment concluded by declaring that, in the event of the
offense charged against the prisoner being found proven by the
Verdict, he, the said Eustace Macallan, "ought to be punished
with the pains of the law, to deter others from committing like
crimes in all time coming."
So much for the Indictment! I have done with it--and I am
rejoiced to be done with it.
An Inventory of papers, documents, and articles followed at great
length on the next three pages. This, in its turn, was succeeded
by the list of the witnesses, and by the names of the jurors
(fifteen in number) balloted for to try the case. And then, at
last, the Report of the Trial began. It resolved itself, to my
mind, into three great Questions. As it appeared to me at the
time, so let me present it here.
CHAPTER XVI.
FIRST QUESTION--DID THE WOMAN DIE POISONED?
THE proceedings began at ten o'clock. The prisoner was placed at
the Bar, before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh. He
bowed respectfully to the Bench, and pleaded Not Guilty, in a low
voice.
It was observed by every one present that the prisoner's face
betrayed traces of acute mental suffering. He was deadly pale.
His eyes never once wandered to the crowd in the Court. When
certain witnesses appeared against him, he looked at them with a
momentary attention. At other times he kept his eyes on the
ground. When the evidence touched on his wife's illness and
death, he was deeply affected, and covered his face with his
hands. It was a subject of general remark and general surprise
that the prisoner, in this case (although a man), showed far less
self-possession than the last prisoner tried in that Court for
murder--a woman, who had been convicted on overwhelming evidence.
There were persons present (a small minority only) who considered
this want of composure on the part of the prisoner to be a sign
in his favor. Self-possession, in his dreadful position,
signified, to their minds, the stark insensibility of a heartless
and shameless criminal, and afforded in itself a presumption, not
of innocence, but of guilt.
The first witness called was John Daviot, Esquire,
Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian. He was examined by the Lord
Advocate (as counsel for the prosecution); and said:
"The prisoner was brought before me on the present charge. He
made and subscribed a Declaration on the 29th of October. It was
freely and voluntarily made, the prisoner having been first duly
warned and admonished."
Having identified the Declaration, the Sheriff-Substitute--being
cross-examined by the Dean of Faculty (as counsel for the
defense)--continued his evidence in these words:
"The charge against the prisoner was Murder. This was
communicated to him before he made the Declaration. The questions
addressed to the prisoner were put partly by me, partly by
another officer, the procurator-fiscal. The answers were given
distinctly, and, so far as I could judge, without reserve. The
statements put forward in the Declaration were all made in answer
to questions asked by the procurator-fiscal or by myself."
A clerk in the Sheriff-Clerk's office then officially produced
the Declaration, and corroborated the evidence of the witness who
had preceded him.
The appearance of the next witness created a marked sensation in
the Court. This was no less a person than the nurse who had
attended Mrs. Macallan in her last illness--by name Christina
Ormsay.
After the first formal answers, the nurse (examined by the Lord
Advocate) proceeded to say:
"I was first sent for to attend the deceased lady on the 7th of
October. She was then suffering from a severe cold, accompanied
by a rheumatic affection of the left knee-joint. Previous to this
I understood that her health had been fairly good. She was not a
very difficult person to nurse when you got used to her, and
understood how to manage her. The main difficulty was caused by
her temper. She was not a sullen person; she was headstrong and
violent--easily excited to fly into a passion, and quite reckless
in her fits of anger as to what she said or did. At such times I
really hardly think she knew what she was about. My own idea is
that her temper was made still more irritable by unhappiness in
her married life. She was far from being a reserved person.
Indeed, she was disposed (as I thought) to be a little too
communicative about herself and her troubles with persons like me
who were beneath her in station. She did not scruple, for
instance, to tell me (when we had been long enough together to
get used to each other) that she was very unhappy, and fretted a
good deal about her husband. One night, when she was wakeful and
restless, she said to me--"
The Dean of Faculty here interposed, speaking on the prisoner's
behalf. He appealed to the Judges to say whether such loose and
unreliable evidence as this was evidence which could be received
by the Court.
The Lord Advocate (speaking on behalf of the Crown) claimed it as
his right to produce the evidence. It was of the utmost
importance in this case to show (on the testimony of an
unprejudiced witness) on what terms the husband and wife were
living. The witness was a most respectable woman. She had won,
and deserved, the confidence of the unhappy lady whom she
attended on her death-bed.
After briefly consulting together, the Judges unanimously decided
that the evidence could not be admitted. What the witness had
herself seen and observed of the relations between the husband
and wife was the only evidence that they could receive.
The Lord Advocate thereupon continued his examination of the
witness. Christina Ormsay resumed her evidence as follows:
"My position as nurse led necessarily to my seeing more of Mrs.
Macallan than any other person in the house. I am able to speak
from experience of many things not known to others who were only
in her room at intervals.
"For instance, I had more than one opportunity of personally
observing that Mr. and Mrs. Macallan did not live together very
happily. I can give you an example of this, not drawn from what
others told me, but from what I noticed for myself.
"Toward the latter part of my attendance on Mrs. Macallan, a
young widow lady named Mrs. Beauly--a cousin of Mr.
Macallan's--came to stay at Gleninch. Mrs. Macallan was jealous
of this lady; and she showed it in my presence only the day
before her death, when Mr. Macallan came into her room to inquire
how she had passed the night. 'Oh,' she said, 'never mind how _I_
have slept! What do you care whether I sleep well or ill? How has
Mrs. Beauly passed the night? Is she more beautiful than ever
this morning? Go back to her--pray go back to her! Don't waste
your time with me!' Beginning in that manner, she worked herself
into one of her furious rages. I was brushing her hair at the
time; and feeling that my presence was an impropriety under the
circumstances, I attempted to leave the room. She forbade me to
go. Mr. Macallan felt, as I did, that my duty was to withdraw,
and he said so in plain words. Mrs. Macallan insisted on my
staying in language so insolent to her husband that he said, 'If
you cannot control yourself, either the nurse leaves the room or
I do.' She refused to yield even then. 'A good excuse,' she said,
'for getting back to Mrs. Beauly. Go!' He took her at her word,
and walked out of the room. He had barely closed the door before
she began reviling him to me in the most shocking manner. She
declared, among other things she said of him, that the news of
all others which he would be most glad to hear would be the news
of her death. I ventured, quite respectfully, on r emonstrating
with her. She took up the hair-brush and threw it at me, and then
and there dismissed me from my attendance on her. I left her, and
waited below until her fit of passion had worn itself out. Then I
returned to my place at the bedside, and for a while things went
on again as usual.
"It may not be amiss to add a word which may help to explain Mrs.
Macallan's jealousy of her husband's cousin. Mrs. Macallan was a
very plain woman. She had a cast in one of her eyes, and (if I
may use the expression) one of the most muddy, blotchy
complexions it was ever my misfortune to see in a person's face.
Mrs. Beauly, on the other hand, was a most attractive lady. Her
eyes were universally admired, and she had a most beautifully
clear and delicate color. Poor Mrs. Macallan said of her, most
untruly, that she painted.
"No; the defects in the complexion of the deceased lady were not
in any way attributable to her illness. I should call them born
and bred defects in herself.
"Her illness, if I am asked to describe it, I should say was
troublesome--nothing more. Until the last day there were no
symptoms in the least degree serious about the malady that had
taken her. Her rheumatic knee was painful, of course--acutely
painful, if you like--when she moved it; and the confinement to
bed was irksome enough, no doubt. But otherwise there was nothing
in the lady's condition, before the fatal attack came, to alarm
her or anybody about her. She had her books and her writing
materials on an invalid table, which worked on a pivot, and could
be arranged in any position most agreeable to her. At times she
read and wrote a good deal. At other times she lay quiet,
thinking her own thoughts, or talking with me, and with one or
two lady friends in the neighborhood who came regularly to see
her.
"Her writing, so far as I knew, was almost entirely of the
poetical sort. She was a great hand at composing poetry. On one
occasion only she showed me some of her poems. I am no judge of
such things. Her poetry was of the dismal kind, despairing about
herself, and wondering why she had ever been born, and nonsense
like that. Her husband came in more than once for some hard hits
at his cruel heart and his ignorance of his wife's merits. In
short, she vented her discontent with her pen as well as with her
tongue. There were times--and pretty often too--when an angel
from heaven would have failed to have satisfied Mrs. Macallan.
"Throughout the period of her illness the deceased lady occupied
the same room--a large bedroom situated (like all the best
bedrooms) on the first floor of the house.
"Yes: the plan of the room now shown to me is quite accurately
taken, according to my remembrance of it. One door led into the
great passage, or corridor, on which all the doors opened. A
second door, at one side (marked B on the plan), led to Mr.
Macallan's sleeping-room. A third door, on the opposite side
(marked C on the plan), communicated with a little study, or
book-room, used, as I was told, by Mr. Macallan's mother when she
was staying at Gleninch, but seldom or never entered by any one
else. Mr. Macallan's mother was not at Gleninch while I was
there. The door between the bedroom and this study was locked,
and the key was taken out. I don't know who had the key, or
whether there were more keys than one in existence. The door was
never opened to my knowledge. I only got into the study, to look
at it along with the housekeeper, by entering through a second
door that opened on to the corridor.
"I beg to say that I can speak from my own knowledge positively
about Mrs. Macallan's illness, and about the sudden change which
ended in her death. By the doctor's advice I made notes at the
time of dates and hours, and such like. I looked at my notes
before coming here.
"From the 7th of October, when I was first called in to nurse
her, to the 20th of the same month, she slowly but steadily
improved in health. Her knee was still painful, no doubt; but the
inflammatory look of it was disappearing. As to the other
symptoms, except weakness from lying in bed, and irritability of
temper, there was really nothing the matter with her. She slept
badly, I ought perhaps to add. But we remedied this by means of
composing draughts prescribed for that purpose by the doctor.
"On the morning of the 21st, at a few minutes past six, I got my
first alarm that something was going wrong with Mrs. Macallan.
"I was awoke at the time I have mentioned by the ringing of the
hand-bell which she kept on her bed-table. Let me say for myself
that I had only fallen asleep on the sofa in the bedroom at past
two in the morning from sheer fatigue. Mrs. Macallan was then
awake. She was in one of her bad humors with me. I had tried to
prevail on her to let me remove her dressing-case from her
bed-table, after she had used it in making her toilet for the
night. It took up a great deal of room; and she could not
possibly want it again before the morning. But no; she insisted
on my letting it be. There was a glass inside the case; and,
plain as she was, she never wearied of looking at herself in that
glass. I saw that she was in a bad state of temper, so I gave her
her way, and let the dressing-case be. Finding that she was too
sullen to speak to me after that, and too obstinate to take her
composing draught from me when I offered it, I laid me down on
the sofa at her bed foot, and fell asleep, as I have said.
"The moment her bell rang I was up and at the bedside, ready to
make myself useful.
"I asked what was the matter with her. She complained of
faintness and depression, and said she felt sick. I inquired if
she had taken anything in the way of physic or food while I had
been asleep. She answered that her husband had come in about an
hour since, and, finding her still sleepless, had himself
administered the composing draught. Mr. Macallan (sleeping in the
next room) joined us while she was speaking. He too had been
aroused by the bell. He heard what Mrs. Macallan said to me about
the composing draught, and made no remark upon it. It seemed to
me that he was alarmed at his wife's faintness. I suggested that
she should take a little wine, or brandy and water. She answered
that she could swallow nothing so strong as wine or brandy,
having a burning pain in her stomach already. I put my hand on
her stomach--quite lightly. She screamed when I touched her.
"This symptom alarmed us. We went to the village for the medical
man who had attended Mrs. Macallan during her illness: one Mr.
Gale.
"The doctor seemed no better able to account for the change for
the worse in his patient than we were. Hearing her complain of
thirst, he gave her some milk. Not long after taking it she was
sick. The sickness appeared to relieve her. She soon grew drowsy
and slumbered. Mr. Gale left us, with strict injunctions to send
for him instantly if she was taken ill again.
"Nothing of the sort happened; no change took place for the next
three hours or more. She roused up toward half-past nine and
inquired about her husband. I informed her that he had returned
to his own room, and asked if I should send for him. She said
'No.' I asked next if she would like anything to eat or drink.
She said 'No' again, in rather a vacant, stupefied way, and then
told me to go downstairs and get my breakfast. On my way down I
met the housekeeper. She invited me to breakfast with her in her
room, instead of in the servants' hall as usual. I remained with
the housekeeper but a short time--certainly not more than half an
hour.
"Coming upstairs again, I met the under-housemaid sweeping on one
of the landings.
"The girl informed me that Mrs. Macallan had taken a cup of tea
during my absence in the housekeeper's room. Mr. Macallan's valet
had ordered the tea for his mistress by his master's directions.
The under-housemaid made it, and took it upstairs herself to Mrs.
Macallan's room. Her master, she said, opened the door when she
knocked, and took the tea-cup from her with his own hand. He
opened the door widely enough for her to see into the bedroom,
and to notice that nobody was with Mrs. Macallan but himself.
"After a little talk with the under-housemaid, I returned to the
bedroom. No one was there. Mrs. Macallan was lying perfectly
quiet, with her face turned away from me on the pillow.
Approaching the bedside, I kicked against something on the floor.
It was a broken tea-cup. I said to Mrs. Macallan, 'How comes the
tea-cup to be broken, ma'am?' She answered, without turning
toward me, in an odd, muffled kind of voice, 'I dropped it.'
'Before you drank your tea, ma'am?' I asked. 'No,' she said; 'in
handing the cup back to Mr. Macallan, after I had done.' I had
put my question, wishing to know, in case she had spilled the tea
when she dropped the cup, whether it would be necessary to get
her any more. I am quite sure I remember correctly my question
and her answer. I inquired next if she had been long alone. She
said, shortly, 'Yes; I have been trying to sleep.' I said, 'Do
you feel pretty comfortable?' She answered, 'Yes,' again. All
this time she still kept her face sulkily turned from me toward
the wall. Stooping over her to arrange the bedclothes, I looked
toward her table. The writing materials which were always kept on
it were disturbed, and there was wet ink on one of the pens. I
said, 'Surely you haven't been writing, ma'am?' 'Why not?' she
said; 'I couldn't sleep.' 'Another poem?' I asked. She laughed to
herself--a bitter, short laugh. 'Yes,' she said, 'another poem.'
'That's good,' I said; 'it looks as if you were getting quite
like yourself again. We shan't want the doctor any more to-day.'
She made no answer to this, except an impatient sign with her
hand. I didn't understand the sign. Upon that she spoke again,
and crossly enough, too--'I want to be alone; leave me.'
"I had no choice but to do as I was told. To the best of my
observation, there was nothing the matter with her, and nothing
for the nurse to do. I put the bell-rope within reach of her
hand, and I went downstairs again.
"Half an hour more, as well as I can guess it, passed. I kept
within hearing of the bell; but it never rang. I was not quite at
my ease--without exactly knowing why. That odd, muffled voice in
which she had spoken to me hung on my mind, as it were. I was not
quite satisfied about leaving her alone for too long a time
together--and then, again, I was unwilling to risk throwing her
into one of her fits of passion by going back before she rang for
me. It ended in my venturing into the room on the ground-floor
called the Morning-Room, to consult Mr. Macallan. He was usually
to be found there in the forenoon of the day.
"On this occasion, however, when I looked into the Morning-Room
it was empty.
"At the same moment I heard the master's voice on the terrace
outside. I went out, and found him speaking to one Mr. Dexter, an
old friend of his, and (like Mrs. Beauly) a guest staying in the
house. Mr. Dexter was sitting at the window of his room upstairs
(he was a cripple, and could only move himself about in a chair
on wheels), and Mr. Macallan was speaking to him from the terrace
below.
"'Dexter!' I heard Mr. Macallan say. 'Where is Mrs. Beauly? Have
you seen anything of her?'
"Mr. Dexter answered, in his quick, off-hand way of speaking,
'Not I. I know nothing about her.'
"Then I advanced, and, begging pardon for intruding, I mentioned
to Mr. Macallan the difficulty I was in about going back or not
to his wife's room without waiting until she rang for me. Before
he could advise me in the matter, the footman made his appearance
and informed me that Mrs. Macallan's bell was then ringing--and
ringing violently.
"It was then close on eleven o'clock. As fast as I could mount
the stairs I hastened back to the bedroom.
"Before I opened the door I heard Mrs. Macallan groaning. She was
in dreadful pain; feeling a burning heat in the stomach and in
the throat, together with the same sickness which had troubled
her in the early morning. Though no doctor, I could see in her
face that this second attack was of a far more serious nature
than the first. After ringing the bell for a messenger to send to
Mr. Macallan, I ran to the door to see if any of the servants
happened to be within call.
"The only person I saw in the corridor was Mrs. Beauly. She was
on her way from her own room, she said, to inquire after Mrs.
Macallan's health. I said to her, 'Mrs. Macallan is seriously ill
again, ma'am. Would you please tell Mr. Macallan, and send for
the doctor?' She ran downstairs at once to do as I told her.
"I had not been long back at the bedside when Mr. Macallan and
Mrs. Beauly both came in together. Mrs. Macallan cast a strange
look on them (a look I cannot at all describe), and bade them
leave her. Mrs. Beauly, looking very much frightened, withdrew
immediately. Mr. Macallan advanced a step or two nearer to the
bed. His wife looked at him again in the same strange way, and
cried out--half as if she was threatening him, half as if she was
entreating him--'Leave me with the nurse. Go!' He only waited to
say to me in a whisper, 'The doctor is sent for,' and then he
left the room.
"Before Mr. Gale arrived Mrs. Macallan was violently sick. What
came from her was muddy and frothy, and faintly streaked with
blood. When Mr. Gale saw it he looked very serious. I heard him
say to himself, 'What does this mean?' He did his best to relieve
Mrs. Macallan, but with no good result that I could see. After a
time she seemed to suffer less. Then more sickness came on. Then
there was another intermission. Whether she was suffering or not,
I observed that her hands and feet (whenever I touched them)
remained equally cold. Also, the doctor's report of her pulse was
always the same--'very small and feeble.' I said to Mr. Gale,
'What is to be done, sir?' And Mr. Gale said to me, 'I won't take
the responsibility on myself any longer; I must have a physician
from Edinburgh.'
"The fastest horse in the stables at Gleninch was put into a
dog-cart, and the coachman drove away full speed to Edinburgh to
fetch the famous Doctor Jerome.
"While we were waiting for the physician, Mr. Macallan came into
his wife's room with Mr. Gale. Exhausted as she was, she
instantly lifted her hand and signed to him to leave her. He
tried by soothing words to persuade her to let him stay. No! She
still insisted on sending him out of her room. He seemed to feel
it--at such a time, and in the presence of the doctor. Before she
was aware of him, he suddenly stepped up to the bedside and
kissed her on the forehead. She shrank from him with a scream.
Mr. Gale interfered, and led him out of the room.
"In the afternoon Doctor Jerome arrived.
"The great physician came just in time to see her seized with
another attack of sickness. He watched her attentively, without
speaking a word. In the interval when the sickness stopped, he
still studied her, as it were, in perfect silence. I thought he
would never have done examining her. When he was at last
satisfied, he told me to leave him alone with Mr. Gale. 'We will
ring,' he said, 'when we want you here again.'
"It was a long time before they rang for me. The coachman was
sent for before I was summoned back to the bedroom. He was
dispatched to Edinburgh for the second time, with a written
message from Dr. Jerome to his head servant, saying that there
was no chance of his returning to the city and to his patients
for some hours to come. Some of us thought this looked badly for
Mrs. Macallan. Others said it might mean that the doctor had
hopes of saving her, but expected to be a long time in doing it.
"At last I was sent for. On my presenting myself in the bedroom,
Doctor Jerome went out to speak to Mr. Macallan, leaving Mr. Gale
along with me. From that time as long as the poor lady lived I
was never left alone with her. One of the two doctors was always
in her room. Refreshments were prepared for them; but still they
took it in turns to eat their meal, one relieving the other at
the bedside. If they had administered remedies to their patient,
I should not have been surprised by this proceeding. But they
were at the end of their remedies; their only business the seemed
to be to keep watch. I was puzzled to account for this. Keeping
watch was the nurse's business. I thought the conduct of the
doctors very strange.
" By the time that the lamp was lighted in the sick-room I could
see that the end was near. Excepting an occasional feeling of
cramp in her legs, she seemed to suffer less. But her eyes looked
sunk in her head; her skin was cold and clammy; her lips had
turned to a bluish paleness. Nothing roused her now--excepting
the last attempt made by her husband to see her. He came in with
Doctor Jerome, looking like a man terror-struck. She was past
speaking; but the moment she saw him she feebly made signs and
sounds which showed that she was just as resolved as ever not to
let him come near her. He was so overwhelmed that Mr. Gale was
obliged to help him out of the room. No other person was allowed
to see the patient. Mr. Dexter and Mrs. Beauly made their
inquiries outside the door, and were not invited in. As the
evening drew on the doctors sat on either side of the bed,
silently watching her, silently waiting for her death.
"Toward eight o'clock she seemed to have lost the use of her
hands and arms: they lay helpless outside the bed-clothes. A
little later she sank into a sort of dull sleep. Little by little
the sound of her heavy breathing grew fainter. At twenty minutes
past nine Doctor Jerome told me to bring the lamp to the bedside.
He looked at her, and put his hand on her heart. Then he said to
me, 'You can go downstairs, nurse: it is all over.' He turned to
Mr. Gale. 'Will you inquire if Mr. Macallan can see us?' he said.
I opened the door for Mr. Gale, and followed him out. Doctor
Jerome called me back for a moment, and told me to give him the
key of the door. I did so, of course; but I thought this also
very strange. When I got down to the servants' hall I found there
was a general feeling that something was wrong. We were all
uneasy--without knowing why.
"A little later the two doctors left the house. Mr. Macallan had
been quite incapable of receiving them and hearing what they had
to say. In this difficulty they had spoken privately with Mr.
Dexter, as Mr. Macallan's old friend, and the only gentleman then
staying at Gleninch.
"Before bed-time I went upstairs to prepare the remains of the
deceased lady for the coffin. The room in which she lay was
locked, the door leading into Mr. Macallan's room being secured,
as well as the door leading into the corridor. The keys had been
taken away by Mr. Gale. Two of the men-servants were posted
outside the bedroom to keep watch. They were to be relieved at
four in the morning--that was all they could tell me.
"In the absence of any explanations or directions, I took the
liberty of knocking at the door of Mr. Dexter's room. From his
lips I first heard the startling news. Both the doctors had
refused to give the usual certificate of death! There was to be a
medical examination of the body the next morning."
There the examination of the nurse, Christina Ormsay, came to an
end.
Ignorant as I was of the law, I could see what impression the
evidence (so far) was intended to produce on the minds of the
jury. After first showing that my husband had had two
opportunities of administering the poison--once in the medicine
and once in the tea--the counsel for the Crown led the jury to
infer that the prisoner had taken those opportunities to rid
himself of an ugly and jealous wife, whose detestable temper he
could no longer endure.
Having directed his examination to the attainment of this object,
the Lord Advocate had done with the witness. The Dean of
Faculty--acting in the prisoner's interests--then rose to bring
out the favorable side of the wife's character by cross-examining
the nurse. If he succeeded in this attempt, the jury might
reconsider their conclusion that the wife was a person who had
exasperated her husband beyond endurance. In that case, where (so
far) was the husband's motive for poisoning her? and where was
the presumption of the prisoner's guilt?
Pressed by this skillful lawyer, the nurse was obliged to exhibit
my husband's first wife under an entirely new aspect. Here is the
substance of what the Dean of Faculty extracted from Christina
Ormsay:
"I persist in declaring that Mrs. Macallan had a most violent
temper. But she was certainly in the habit of making amends for
the offense that she gave by her violence. When she was quiet
again she always made her excuses to me, and she made them with a
good grace. Her manners were engaging at such times as these. She
spoke and acted like a well-bred lady. Then, again, as to her
personal appearance. Plain as she was in face, she had a good
figure; her hands and feet, I was told, had been modeled by a
sculptor. She had a very pleasant voice, and she was reported
when in health to sing beautifully. She was also (if her maid's
account was to be trusted) a pattern in the matter of dressing
for the other ladies in the neighborhood. Then, as to Mrs.
Beauly, though she was certainly jealous of the beautiful young
widow, she had shown at the same time that she was capable of
controlling that feeling. It was through Mrs. Macallan that Mrs.
Beauly was in the house. Mrs. Beauly had wished to postpone her
visit on account of the state of Mrs. Macallan's health. It was
Mrs. Macallan herself--not her husband--who decided that Mrs.
Beauly should not be disappointed, and should pay her visit to
Gleninch then and there. Further, Mrs. Macallan (in spite of her
temper) was popular with her friends and popular with her
servants. There was hardly a dry eye in the house when it was
known she was dying. And, further still, in those little domestic
disagreements at which the nurse had been present, Mr. Macallan
had never lost his temper, and had never used harsh language: he
seemed to be more sorry than angry when the quarrels took
place."--Moral for the jury: Was this the sort of woman who would
exasperate a man into poisoning her? And was this the sort of man
who would be capable of poisoning his wife?
Having produced this salutary counter-impression, the Dean of
Faculty sat down; and the medical witnesses were called next.
Here the evidence was simply irresistible.
Dr. Jerome and Mr. Gale positively swore that the symptoms of the
illness were the symptoms of poisoning by arsenic. The surgeon
who had performed the post-mortem examination followed. He
positively swore that the appearance of the internal organs
proved Doctor Jerome and Mr. Gale to be right in declaring that
their patient had died poisoned. Lastly, to complete this
overwhelming testimony, two analytical chemists actually produced
in Court the arsenic which they had found in the body, in a
quantity admittedly sufficient to have killed two persons instead
of one. In the face of such evidence as this, cross-examination
was a mere form. The first Question raised by the Trial--Did the
Woman Die Poisoned?--was answered in the affirmative, and
answered beyond the possibility of doubt.
The next witnesses called were witnesses concerned with the
question that now followed--the obscure and terrible question,
Who Poisoned Her?
CHAPTER XVII.
SECOND QUESTION--WHO POISONED HER?.
THE evidence of the doctors and the chemists closed the
proceedings on the first day of the Trial.
On the second day the evidence to be produced by the prosecution
was anticipated with a general feeling of curiosity and interest.
The Court was now to hear what had been seen and done by the
persons officially appointed to verify such cases of suspected
crime as the case which had occurred at Gleninch. The
Procurator-Fiscal--being the person officially appointed to
direct the preliminary investigations of the law--was the first
witness called on the second day of the Trial.
Examined by the Lord Advocate, the Fiscal gave his evidence, as
follows:
"On the twenty-sixth of October I received a communication from
Doctor Jerome, of Edinburgh, and from Mr. Alexander Gale, medical
practitioner, residing in the village or hamlet of Dingdovie,
near Edinburgh. The communication related to the death, under
circumstances of suspicion, of Mrs. Eustace Macallan, at her
husband's house, hard by Dingdovie, called Gleninch. There were
also forwarded to me, inclosed in the document just mentioned,
two reports. One described the results of a postmortem
examination of the deceased lady, and the other stated the
discoveries made after a chemical analysis of certain of the
interior organs of her body. The result in both instances proved
to demonstration that Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died of poisoning
by arsenic.
"Under these circumstances, I set in motion a search and inquiry
in the house at Gleninch and elsewhere, simply for the purpose of
throwing light on the circumstances which had attended the lady's
death.
"No criminal charge in connection with the death was made at my
office against any person, either in the communication which I
received from the medical men or in any other form. The
investigations at Gleninch and elsewhere, beginning on the
twenty-sixth of October, were not completed until the
twenty-eighth. Upon this latter date--acting on certain
discoveries which were reported to me, and on my own examination
of letters and other documents brought to my office--I made a
criminal charge against the prisoner, and obtained a warrant for
his apprehension. He was examined before the Sheriff on the
twenty-ninth of October, and was committed for trial before this
Court."
The Fiscal having made his statement, and having been
cross-examined (on technical matters only), the persons employed
in his office were called next. These men had a story of
startling interest to tell. Theirs were the fatal discoveries
which had justified the Fiscal in charging my husband with the
murder of his wife. The first of the witnesses was a sheriff's
officer. He gave his name as Isaiah Schoolcraft.
Examined by Mr. Drew--Advocate-Depute, and counsel for the Crown,
with the Lord Advocate--Isaiah Schoolcraft said:
"I got a warrant on the twenty-sixth of October to go to the
country-house near Edinburgh called Gleninch. I took with me
Robert Lorrie, assistant to the Fiscal. We first examined the
room in which Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died. On the bed, and on
a movable table which was attached to it, we found books and
writing materials, and a paper containing some unfinished verses
in manuscript, afterward identified as being in the handwriting
of the deceased. We inclosed these articles in paper, and sealed
them up.
"We next opened an Indian cabinet in the bedroom. Here we found
many more verses on many more sheets of paper in the same
hand-writing. We also discovered, first some letters, and next a
crumpled piece of paper thrown aside in a corner of one of the
shelves. On closer examination, a chemist's printed label was
discovered on this morsel of paper. We also found in the folds of
it a few scattered grains of some white powder. The paper and the
letters were carefully inclosed, and sealed up as before.
"Further investigation of the room revealed nothing which could
throw any light on the purpose of our inquiry. We examined the
clothes, jewelry, and books of the deceased. These we left under
lock and key. We also found her dressing-case, which we protected
by seals, and took away with us to the Fiscal's office, along
with all the other articles that we had discovered in the room.
"The next day we continued our examination in the house, having
received in the interval fresh instructions from the Fiscal. We
began our work in the bedroom communicating with the room in
which Mrs. Macallan had died. It had been kept locked since the
death. Finding nothing of any importance here, we went next to
another room on the same floor, in which we were informed the
prisoner was then lying ill in bed.
"His illness was described to us as a nervous complaint, caused
by the death of his wife, and by the proceedings which had
followed it. He was reported to be quite incapable of exerting
himself, and quite unfit to see strangers. We insisted
nevertheless (in deference to our instructions) on obtaining
admission to his room. He made no reply when we inquired whether
he had or had not removed anything from the sleeping-room next to
his late wife's, which he usually occupied, to the sleeping-room
in which he now lay. All he did was to close his eyes, as if he
were too feeble to speak to us or to notice us. Without further
disturbing him, we began to examine the room and the different
objects in it.
"While we were so employed, we were interrupted by a strange
sound. We likened it to the rumbling of wheels in the corridor
outside.
"The door opened, and there came swiftly in a gentleman--a
cripple--wheeling himself along in a chair. He wheeled his chair
straight up to a little table which stood by the prisoner's
bedside, and said something to him in a whisper too low to be
overheard. The prisoner opened his eyes, and quickly answered by
a sign. We informed the crippled gentleman, quite respectfully,
that we could not allow him to be in the room at this time. He
appeared to think nothing of what we said. He only answered, 'My
name is Dexter. I am one of Mr. Macallan's old friends. It is you
who are intruding here--not I.' We again notified to him that he
must leave the room; and we pointed out particularly that he had
got his chair in such a position against the bedside table as to
prevent us from examining it. He only laughed. 'Can't you see for
yourselves,' he said, 'that it is a table, and nothing more?' In
reply to this we warned him that we were acting under a legal
warrant, and that he might get into trouble if he obstructed us
in the execution of our duty. Finding there was no moving him by
fair means, I took his chair and pulled it away, while Robert
Lorrie laid hold of the table and carried it to the other end of
the room. The crippled gentleman flew into a furious rage with me
for presuming to touch his chair. 'My chair is Me,' he said: 'how
dare you lay hands on Me?' I first opened the door, and then, by
way of accommodating him, gave the chair a good push behind with
my stick instead of my hand, and so sent it and him safely and
swiftly out of the room.
"Having locked the door, so as to prevent any further intrusion,
I joined Robert Lorrie in examining the bedside table. It had one
drawer in it, and that drawer we found secured.
"We asked the prisoner for the key.
"He flatly refused to give it to us, and said we had no right to
unlock his drawers. He was so angry that he even declared it was
lucky for us he was too weak to rise from his bed. I answered
civilly that our duty obliged us to examine the drawer, and that
if he still declined to produce the key, he would only oblige us
to take the table away and have the lock opened by a smith.
"While we were still disputing there was a knock at the door of
the room.
"I opened the door cautiously. Instead of the crippled gentleman,
whom I had expected to see again, there was another stranger
standing outside. The prisoner hailed him as a friend and
neighbor, and eagerly called upon him for protection from us. We
found this second gentleman pleasant enough to deal with. He
informed us readily that he had been sent for by Mr. Dexter, and
that he was himself a lawyer, and he asked to see our warrant.
Having looked at it, he at once informed the prisoner (evidently
very much to the prisoner's surprise) that he must submit to have
the drawer examined, under protest. And then, without more ado,
he got the key, and opened the table drawer for us himself.
"We found inside several letters, and a large book with a lock to
it, having the words 'My Diary' inscribed on it in gilt letters.
As a matter of course, we took possession of the letters and the
Diary, and sealed them up, to be given to the Fiscal. At the same
time the gentleman wrote out a protest on the prisoner's behalf,
and handed us his card. The card informed us that he was Mr.
Playmore, now one of the Agents for the prisoner. The card and
the protest were deposited, with the other documents, in the care
of the Fiscal. No other discoveries of any importance were made
at Gleninch.
"Our next inquiries took us to Edinburgh--to the druggist whose
label we had found on the crumpled morsel of paper, and to other
druggists likewise whom we were instructed to question. On the
twenty-eighth of October the Fiscal was in possession of all the
information that we could collect, and our duties for the time
being came to an end."
This concluded the evidence of Schoolcraft and Lorrie. It was not
shaken on cross-examination, and it was plainly unfavorable to
the prisoner.
Matters grew worse still when the next witnesses were called. The
druggist whose label had been found on the crumpled bit of paper
now appeared on the stand, to make the position of my unhappy
husband more critical than ever.
Andrew Kinlay, druggist, of Edinburgh, deposed as follows:
"I keep a special registry book of the poisons sold by me. I
produce the book. On the date therein mentioned the prisoner at
the bar, Mr. Eustace Macallan, came into my shop, and said that
he wished to purchase some arsenic. I asked him what it was
wanted for. He told me it was wanted by his gardener, to be used,
in solution, for the killing of insects in the greenhouse. At the
same time he mentioned his name--Mr. Macallan, of Gleninch. I at
once directed my assistant to put up the arsenic (two ounces of
it), and I made the necessary entry in my book. Mr. Macallan
signed the entry, and I signed it afterward as witness. He paid
for the arsenic, and took it away with him wrapped up in two
papers, the outer wrapper being labeled with my name and address,
and with the word 'Poison' in large letters--exactly like the
label now produced on the piece of paper found at Gleninch."
The next witness, Peter Stockdale (also a druggist of Edinburgh),
followed, and said:
"The prisoner at the bar called at my shop on the date indicated
on my register, some days later than the date indicated in the
register of Mr. Kinlay. He wished to purchase sixpenny-worth of
arsenic. My assistant, to whom he had addressed himself, called
me. It is a rule in my shop that no one sells poisons but myself.
I asked the prisoner what he wanted the arsenic for. He answered
that he wanted it for killing rats at his house, called Gleninch.
I said, 'Have I the honor of speaking to Mr. Macallan, of
Gleninch?' He said that was his name. I sold him the
arsenic--about an ounce and a half--and labeled the bottle in
which I put it with the word 'Poison' in my own handwriting. He
signed the register, and took the arsenic away with him, after
paying for it."
The cross-examination of the two men succeeded in asserting
certain technical objections to their evidence. But the terrible
fact that my husband himself had actually purchased the arsenic
in both cases remained unshaken.
The next witnesses--the gardener and the cook at Gleninch--wound
the chain of hostile evidence around the prisoner more
mercilessly still.
On examination the gardener said, on his oath:
"I never received any arsenic from the prisoner, or from any one
else, at the date to which you refer, of at any other date. I
never used any such thing as a solution of arsenic, or ever
allowed the men working under me to use it, in the conservatories
or in the garden at Gleninch. I disapprove of arsenic as a means
of destroying noxious insects infesting flowers and plants."
The cook, being called next, spoke as positively as the gardener:
"Neither my master nor any other person gave me any arsenic to
destroy rats at any time. No such thing was wanted. I declare, on
my oath, that I never saw any rats in or about the house, or ever
heard of any rats infesting it."
Other household servants at Gleninch gave similar evidence.
Nothing could be extracted from them on cross-examination except
that there might have been rats in the house, though they were
not aware of it. The possession of the poison was traced directly
to my husband, and to no one else. That he had bought it was
actually proved, and that he had kept it was the one conclusion
that the evidence justified.
The witnesses who came next did their best to press the charge
against the prisoner home to him. Having the arsenic in his
possession, what had he done with it? The evidence led the jury
to infer what he had done with it.
The prisoner's valet deposed that his master had rung for him at
twenty minutes to ten on the morning of the day on which his
mistress died, and had ordered a cup of tea for her. The man had
received the order at the open door of Mrs. Macallan's room, and
could positively swear that no other person but his master was
there at the time.
The under-housemaid, appearing next, said that she had made the
tea, and had herself taken it upstairs before ten o'clock to Mrs.
Macallan's room. Her master had received it from her at the open
door. She could look in, and could see that he was alone in her
mistress's room.
The nurse, Christina Ormsay, being recalled, repeated what Mrs.
Macallan had said to her on the day when that lady was first
taken ill. She had said (speaking to the nurse at six o'clock in
the morning), "Mr. Macallan came in about an hour since; he found
me still sleepless, and gave me my composing draught." This was
at five o'clock in the morning, while Christina Ormsay was asleep
on the sofa. The nurse further swore that she had looked at the
bottle containing the composing mixture, and had seen by the
measuring marks on the bottle that a dose had been poured out
since the dose previously given, administered by herself.
On this occasion special interest was excited by the
cross-examination. The closing questions put to the
under-housemaid and the nurse revealed for the first time what
the nature of the defense was to be.
Cross-examining the under-housemaid, the Dean of Faculty said:
"Did you ever notice when you were setting Mrs. Eustace
Macallan's room to rights whether the water left in the basin was
of a blackish or bluish color?" The witness answered, "I never
noticed anything of the sort."
The Dean of Faculty went on:
"Did you ever find under the pillow of the bed, or in any other
hiding place in Mrs. Macallan's room, any books or pamphlets
telling of remedies used for improving a bad complexion?" The
witness answered, "No."
The Dean of Faculty persisted:
"Did you ever hear Mrs. Macallan speak of arsenic, taken as a
wash or taken as a medicine, as a good thing to improve the
complexion?" The witness answered, "Never."
Similar questions were next put to the nurse, and were all
answered by this witness also in the negative.
Here, then, in spite of the negative answers, was the plan of the
defense made dimly visible for the first time to the jury and to
the audience. By way of preventing the possibility of a mistake
in so serious a matter, the Chief Judge (the Lord Justice Clerk)
put this plain question, when the witnesses had retired, to the
Counsel for the defense:
"The Court and the jury," said his lordship, "wish distinctly to
understand the object of your cross-examination of the housemaid
and the nurse. Is it the theory of the defense that Mrs. Eustace
Macallan used the arsenic which--her husband purchased for the
purpose of improving the defects of her complexion?"
The Dean of Faculty answered:
"That is what we say, my lord, and what we propose to prove as
the foundation of the defense. We cannot dispute the medical
evidence which declares that Mrs. Macallan died poisoned. But we
assert that she died of an overdose of arsenic, ignorantly taken,
in the privacy of her own room, as a remedy for the defects--the
proved and admitted defects--of her complexion. The prisoner's
Declaration before the Sheriff expressly sets forth that he
purchased the arsenic at the request of his wife."
The Lord Justice Clerk inquired upon this if there were any
objection on the part of either of the learned counsel to have
the Declaration read in Court before the Trial proceeded further.
To this the Dean of Faculty replied that he would be glad to have
the Declaration read. If he might use the expression, it would
usefully pave the way in the minds of the jury for the defense
which he had to submit to them.
The Lord Advocate (speaking on the other side) was happy to be
able to accommodate his learned brother in this matter. So long
as the mere assertions which the Declaration contained were not
supported by proof, he looked upon that document as evidence for
the prosecution, and he too was quite willing to have it read.
Thereupon the prisoner's Declaration of his innocence--on being
char ged before the Sheriff with the murder of his wife--was
read, in the following terms:
"I bought the two packets of arsenic, on each occasion at my
wife's own request. On the first occasion she told me the poison
was wanted by the gardener for use in the conservatories. On the
second occasion she said it was required by the cook for ridding
the lower part of the house of rats.
"I handed both packets of arsenic to my wife immediately on my
return home. I had nothing to do with the poison after buying it.
My wife was the person who gave orders to the gardener and
cook--not I. I never held any communication with either of them.
"I asked my wife no questions about the use of the arsenic,
feeling no interest in the subject. I never entered the
conservatories for months together; I care little about flowers.
As for the rats, I left the killing of them to the cook and the
other servants, just as I should have left any other part of the
domestic business to the cook and the other servants.
"My wife never told me she wanted the arsenic to improve her
complexion. Surely I should be the last person admitted to the
knowledge of such a secret of her toilet as that? I implicitly
believed what she told me; viz., that the poison was wanted for
the purposes specified by the gardener and the cook.
"I assert positively that I lived on friendly terms with my wife,
allowing, of course, for the little occasional disagreements and
misunderstandings of married life. Any sense of disappointment in
connection with my marriage which I might have felt privately I
conceived it to be my duty as a husband and a gentleman to
conceal from my wife. I was not only shocked and grieved by her
untimely death--I was filled with fear that I had not, with all
my care, behaved affectionately enough to her in her lifetime.
"Furthermore, I solemnly declare that I know no more of how she
took the arsenic found in her body than the babe unborn. I am
innocent even of the thought of harming that unhappy woman. I
administered the composing draught exactly as I found it in the
bottle. I afterward gave her the cup of tea exactly as I received
it from the under-housemaid's hand. I never had access to the
arsenic after I placed the two packages in my wife's possession.
I am entirely ignorant of what she did with them or of where she
kept them. I declare before God I am innocent of the horrible
crime with which I am charged."
With the reading of those true and touching words the proceedings
on the second day of the Trial came to an end.
So far, I must own, the effect on me of reading the Report was
to depress my spirits and to lower my hopes. The whole weight of
the evidence at the close of the second day was against my
unhappy husband. Woman as I was, and partisan as I was, I could
plainly see that.
The merciless Lord Advocate (I confess I hated him!) had proved
(1) that Eustace had bought the poison; (2) that the reason which
he had given to the druggists for buying the poison was not the
true reason; (3) that he had had two opportunities of secretly
administering the poison to his wife. On the other side, what had
the Dean of Faculty proved? As yet--nothing. The assertions in
the prisoner's Declaration of his innocence were still, as the
Lord Advocate had remarked, assertions not supported by proof.
Not one atom of evidence had been produced to show that it was
the wife who had secretly used the arsenic, and used it for her
complexion.
My one consolation was that the reading of the Trial had already
revealed to me the helpful figures of two friends on whose
sympathy I might surely rely. The crippled Mr. Dexter had
especially shown himself to be a thorough good ally of my
husband's. My heart warmed to the man who had moved his chair
against the bedside table--the man who had struggled to the last
to defend Eustace's papers from the wretches who had seized them.
I decided then and there that the first person to whom I would
confide my aspirations and my hopes should be Mr. Dexter. If he
felt any difficulty about advising me, I would then apply next to
the agent, Mr. Playmore--the second good friend, who had formally
protested against the seizure of my husband's papers.
Fortified by this resolution, I turned the page, and read the
history of the third day of the Trial.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THIRD QUESTION--WHAT WAS HIS MOTIVE?
THE first question (Did the Woman Die Poisoned?) had been
answered, positively. The second question (Who Poisoned Her?) had
been answered, apparently. There now remained the third and final
question--What was His Motive? The first evidence called in
answer to that inquiry was the evidence of relatives and friends
of the dead wife.
Lady Brydehaven, widow of Rear-Admiral Sir George Brydehaven,
examined by Mr. Drew (counsel for the Crown with the Lord
Advocate), gave evidence as follows:
"The deceased lady (Mrs. Eustace Macallan) was my niece. She was
the only child of my sister, and she lived under my roof after
the time of her mother's death. I objected to her marriage, on
grounds which were considered purely fanciful and sentimental by
her other friends. It is extremely painful to me to state the
circumstances in public, but I am ready to make the sacrifice if
the ends of justice require it.
"The prisoner at the bar, at the time of which I am now speaking,
was staying as a guest in my house. He met with an accident while
he was out riding which caused a serious injury to one of his
legs. The leg had been previously hurt while he was serving with
the army in India. This circumstance tended greatly to aggravate
the injury received in the accident. He was confined to a
recumbent position on a sofa for many weeks together; and the
ladies in the house took it in turns to sit with him, and while
away the weary time by reading to him and talking to him. My
niece was foremost among these volunteer nurses. She played
admirably on the piano; and the sick man happened--most
unfortunately, as the event proved--to be fond of music.
"The consequences of the perfectly innocent intercourse thus
begun were deplorable consequences for my niece. She became
passionately attached to Mr. Eustace Macallan, without awakening
any corresponding affection on his side.
"I did my best to interfere, delicately and usefully, while it
was still possible to interfere with advantage. Unhappily, my
niece refused to place any confidence in me. She persistently
denied that she was actuated by any warmer feeling toward Mr.
Macallan than a feeling of friendly interest. This made it
impossible for me to separate them without openly acknowledging
my reason for doing so, and thus producing a scandal which might
have affected my niece's reputation. My husband was alive at that
time; and the one thing I could do under the circumstances was
the thing I did. I requested him to speak privately to Mr.
Macallan, and to appeal to his honor to help us out of the
difficulty without prejudice to my niece.
"Mr. Macallan behaved admirably. He was still helpless. But he
made an excuse for leaving us which it was impossible to dispute.
In two days after my husband had spoken to him he was removed
from the house.
"The remedy was well intended; but it came too late, and it
utterly failed. The mischief was done. My niece pined away
visibly; neither medical help nor change of air and scene did
anything for her. In course of time--after Mr. Macallan had
recovered from the effects of his accident--I found that she was
carrying on a clandestine correspondence with him by means of her
maid. His letters, I am bound to say, were most considerately and
carefully written. Nevertheless, I felt it my duty to stop the
correspondence.
"My interference--what else could I do but interfere?--brought
matters to a crisis. One day my niece was missing at
breakfast-time. The next day we discovered that the poor
infatuated creature had gone to Mr. Macallan's chambers in
London, and had been found hidden in his bedroom by some bachelor
friends who came to visit him.
"For this disaster Mr. Macallan was in no respect to blame.
Hearing footsteps outside, he had only time to take measures for
saving her character by concealing her i n the nearest room--and
the nearest room happened to be his bedchamber. The matter was
talked about, of course, and motives were misinterpreted in the
vilest manner. My husband had another private conversation with
Mr. Macallan. He again behaved admirably. He publicly declared
that my niece had visited him as his betrothed wife. In a
fortnight from that time he silenced scandal in the one way that
was possible--he married her.
"I was alone in opposing the marriage. I thought it at the time
what it has proved to be since--a fatal mistake.
"It would have been sad enough if Mr. Macallan had only married
her without a particle of love on his side. But to make the
prospect more hopeless still, he was at that very time the victim
of a misplaced attachment to a lady who was engaged to another
man. I am well aware that he compassionately denied this, just as
he compassionately affected to be in love with my niece when he
married her. But his hopeless admiration of the lady whom I have
mentioned was a matter of fact notorious among his friends. It
may not be amiss to add that _her_ marriage preceded _his_
marriage. He had irretrievably lost the woman he really loved--he
was without a hope or an aspiration in life--when he took pity on
my niece.
"In conclusion, I can only repeat that no evil which could have
happened (if she had remained a single woman) would have been
comparable, in my opinion, to the evil of such a marriage as
this. Never, I sincerely believe, were two more ill-assorted
persons united in the bonds of matrimony than the prisoner at the
bar and his deceased wife."
The evidence of this witness produced a strong sensation among
the audience, and had a marked effect on the minds of the jury.
Cross-examination forced Lady Brydehaven to modify some of her
opinions, and to acknowledge that the hopeless attachment of the
prisoner to another woman was a matter of rumor only. But the
facts in her narrative remained unshaken, and, for that one
reason, they invested the crime charged against the prisoner with
an appearance of possibility, which it had entirely failed to
assume during the earlier part of the Trial.
Two other ladies (intimate friends of Mrs. Eustace Macallan) were
called next. They differed from Lady Brydehaven in their opinions
on the propriety of the marriage but on all the material points
they supported her testimony, and confirmed the serious
impression which the first witness had produced on every person
in Court.
The next evidence which the prosecution proposed to put in was
the silent evidence of the letters and the Diary found at
Gleninch.
In answer to a question from the Bench, the Lord Advocate stated
that the letters were written by friends of the prisoner and his
deceased wife, and that passages in them bore directly on the
terms on which the two associated in their married life. The
Diary was still more valuable as evidence. It contained the
prisoner's daily record of domestic events, and of the thoughts
and feelings which they aroused in him at the time.
A most painful scene followed this explanation.
Writing, as I do, long after the events took place, I still
cannot prevail upon myself to describe in detail what my unhappy
husband said and did at this distressing period of the Trial.
Deeply affected while Lady Brydehaven was giving her evidence, he
had with difficulty restrained himself from interrupting her. He
now lost all control over his feelings. In piercing tones, which
rang through the Court, he protested against the contemplated
violation of his own most sacred secrets and his wife's most
sacred secrets. "Hang me, innocent as I am!" he cried, "but spare
me _that!_" The effect of this terrible outbreak on the audience
is reported to have been indescribable. Some of the women present
were in hysterics. The Judges interfered from the Bench, but with
no good result. Quiet was at length restored by the Dean of
Faculty, who succeeded in soothing the prisoner, and who then
addressed the Judges, pleading for indulgence to his unhappy
client in most touching and eloquent language. The speech, a
masterpiece of impromptu oratory, concluded with a temperate yet
strongly urged protest against the reading of the papers
discovered at Gleninch.
The three Judges retired to consider the legal question submitted
to them. The sitting was suspended for more than half an hour.
As usual in such cases, the excitement in the Court communicated
itself to the crowd outside in the street. The general opinion
here--led, as it was supposed, by one of the clerks or other
inferior persons connected with the legal proceedings--was
decidedly adverse to the prisoner's chance of escaping a sentence
of death. "If the letters and the Diary are read," said the
brutal spokesman of the mob, "the letters and the Diary will hang
him."
On the return of the Judges into Court, it was announced that
they had decided, by a majority of two to one, on permitting the
documents in dispute to be produced in evidence. Each of the
Judges, in turn, gave his reasons for the decision at which he
had arrived. This done, the Trial proceeded. The reading of the
extracts from the letters and the extracts from the Diary began.
The first letters produced were the letters found in the Indian
cabinet in Mrs. Eustace Macallan's room. They were addressed to
the deceased lady by intimate (female) friends of hers, with whom
she was accustomed to correspond. Three separate extracts from
letters written by three different correspondents were selected
to be read in Court.
FIRST CORRESPONDENT: "I despair, my dearest Sara, of being able
to tell you how your last letter has distressed me. Pray forgive
me if I own to thinking that your very sensitive nature
exaggerates or misinterprets, quite unconsciously, of course, the
neglect that you experience at the hands of your husband. I
cannot say anything about _his_ peculiarities of character,
because I am not well enough acquainted with him to know what
they are. But, my dear, I am much older than you, and I have had
a much longer experience than yours of what somebody calls 'the
lights and shadows of married life.' Speaking from that
experience, I must tell you what I have observed. Young married
women, like you, who are devotedly attached to their husbands,
are apt to make one very serious mistake. As a rule, they all
expect too much from their husbands. Men, my poor Sara, are not
like _us._ Their love, even when it is quite sincere, is not like
our love. It does not last as it does with us. It is not the one
hope and one thought of their lives, as it is with us. We have no
alternative, even when we most truly respect and love them, but
to make allowance for this difference between the man's nature
and the woman's. I do not for one moment excuse your husband's
coldness. He is wrong, for example, in never looking at you when
he speaks to you, and in never noticing the efforts that you make
to please him. He is worse than wrong--he is really cruel, if you
like--in never returning your kiss when you kiss him. But, my
dear, are you quite sure that he is always _designedly_ cold and
cruel? May not his conduct be sometimes the result of troubles
and anxieties which weigh on his mind, and which are troubles and
anxieties that you cannot share? If you try to look at his
behavior in this light, you will understand many things which
puzzle and pain you now. Be patient with him, my child. Make no
complaints, and never approach him with your caresses at times
when his mind is preoccupied or his temper ruffled. This may be
hard advice to follow, loving him as ardently as you do. But,
rely on it, the secret of happiness for us women is to be found
(alas! only too often) in such exercise of restraint and
resignation as your old friend now recommends. Think, my dear,
over what I have written, and let me hear from you again."
SECOND CORRESPONDENT: "How can you be so foolish, Sara, as to
waste your love on such a cold-blooded brute as your husband
seems to be? To be sure, I am not married yet, or perhaps I
should not be so surprised at you. But I shall be married one of
these days, and if my husband ever treat me as Mr. Macallan tre
ats you, I shall insist on a separation. I declare, I think I
would rather be actually beaten, like the women among the lower
orders, than be treated with the polite neglect and contempt
which you describe. I burn with indignation when I think of it.
It must be quite insufferable. Don't bear it any longer, my poor
dear. Leave him, and come and stay with me. My brother is a
lawyer, as you know. I read to him portions of your letter, and
he is of opinion that you might get what he calls a judicial
separation. Come and consult him."
THIRD CORRESPONDENT: "YOU know, my dear Mrs. Macallan, what _my_
experience of men has been. Your letter does not surprise me in
the least. Your husband's conduct to you points to one
conclusion. He is in love with some other woman. There is
Somebody in the dark, who gets from him everything that he denies
to you. I have been through it all--and I know! Don't give way.
Make it the business of your life to find out who the creature
is. Perhaps there may be more than one of them. It doesn't
matter. One or many, if you can only discover them, you may make
his existence as miserable to him as he makes your existence to
you. If you want my experience to help you, say the word, and it
is freely at your service. I can come and stay with you at
Gleninch any time after the fourth of next month."
With those abominable lines the readings from the letters of the
women came to an end. The first and longest of the Extracts
produced the most vivid impression in Court. Evidently the writer
was in this case a worthy and sensible person. It was generally
felt, however, that all three of the letters, no matter how
widely they might differ in tone, justified the same conclusion.
The wife's position at Gleninch (if the wife's account of it were
to be trusted) was the position of a neglected and an unhappy
woman.
The correspondence of the prisoner, which had been found, with
his Diary, in the locked bed-table drawer, was produced next. The
letters in this case were with one exception all written by men.
Though the tone of them was moderation itself as compared with
the second and third of the women's letters, the conclusion still
pointed the same way. The life of the husband at Gleninch
appeared to be just as intolerable as the life of the wife.
For example, one of the prisoner's male friends wrote inviting
him to make a yacht voyage around the world. Another suggested an
absence of six months on the Continent. A third recommended
field-sports and fishing. The one object aimed at by all the
writers was plainly to counsel a separation, more or less
plausible and more or less complete, between the married pair.
The last letter read was addressed to the prisoner in a woman's
handwriting, and was signed by a woman's Christian name only.
"Ah, my poor Eustace, what a cruel destiny is ours!" the letter
began. "When I think of your life, sacrificed to that wretched
woman, my heart bleeds for you. If _we_ had been man and wife--if
it had been _my_ unutterable happiness to love and cherish the
best, the dearest of men--what a paradise of our own we might
have lived in! what delicious hours we might have known! But
regret is vain; we are separated in this life--separated by ties
which we both mourn, and yet which we must both respect. My
Eustace, there is a world beyond this. There our souls will fly
to meet each other, and mingle in one long heavenly embrace--in a
rapture forbidden to us on earth. The misery described in your
letter--oh, why, why did you marry her?--has wrung this
confession of feeling from me. Let it comfort you, but let no
other eyes see it. Burn my rashly written lines, and look (as I
look) to the better life which you may yet share with your own
HELENA."
The reading of this outrageous letter provoked a question from
the Bench. One of the Judges asked if the writer had attached any
date or address to her letter.
In answer to this the Lord Advocate stated that neither the one
nor the other appeared. The envelope showed that the letter had
been posted in London. "We propose," the learned counsel
continued, "to read certain passages from the prisoner's Diary,
in which the name signed at the end of the letter occurs more
than once; and we may possibly find other means of identifying
the writer, to the satisfaction of your lordships, before the
Trial is over."
The promised passages from my husband's private Diary were now
read. The first extract related to a period of nearly a year
before the date of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death. It was
expressed in these terms:
"News, by this morning's post, which has quite overwhelmed me.
Helena's husband died suddenly two days since of heart-disease.
She is free--my beloved Helena is free! And I?
"I am fettered to a woman with whom I have not a single feeling
in common. Helena is lost to me, by my own act. Ah! I can
understand now, as I never understood before, how irresistible
temptation can be, and how easily sometimes crime may follow it.
I had better shut up these leaves for the night. It maddens me to
no purpose to think of my position or to write of it."
The next passage, dated a few days later, dwelt on the same
subject.
"Of all the follies that a man can commit, the greatest is acting
on impulse. I acted on impulse when I married the unfortunate
creature who is now my wife.
"Helena was then lost to me, as I too hastily supposed. She had
married the man to whom she rashly engaged herself before she met
with me. He was younger than I, and, to all appearance, heartier
and stronger than I. So far as I could see, my fate was sealed
for life. Helena had written her farewell letter, taking leave of
me in this world for good. My prospects were closed; my hopes had
ended. I had not an aspiration left; I had no necessity to
stimulate me to take refuge in work. A chivalrous action, an
exertion of noble self-denial, seemed to be all that was left to
me, all that I was fit for.
"The circumstances of the moment adapted themselves, with a fatal
facility, to this idea. The ill-fated woman who had become
attached to me (Heaven knows--without so much as the shadow of
encouragement on my part!) had, just at that time, rashly placed
her reputation at the mercy of the world. It rested with me to
silence the scandalous tongues that reviled her. With Helena lost
to me, happiness was not to be expected. All women were equally
indifferent to me. A generous action would be the salvation of
this woman. Why not perform it? I married her on that
impulse--married her just as I might have jumped into the water
and saved her if she had been drowning; just as I might have
knocked a man down if I had seen him ill-treating her in the
street!
"And now the woman for whom I have made this sacrifice stands
between me and my Helena--my Helena, free to pour out all the
treasures of her love on the man who adores the earth that she
touches with her foot!
"Fool! madman! Why don't I dash out my brains against the wall
that I see opposite to me while I write these lines?
"My gun is there in the corner. I have only to tie a string to
the trigger and to put the muzzle to my mouth--No! My mother is
alive; my mother's love is sacred. I have no right to take the
life which she gave me. I must suffer and submit. Oh, Helena!
Helena!"
The third extract--one among many similar passages--had been
written about two months before the death of the prisoner's wife.
"More reproaches addressed to me! There never was such a woman
for complaining; she lives in a perfect atmosphere of ill-temper
and discontent.
"My new offenses are two in number: I never ask her to play to me
now; and when she puts on a new dress expressly to please me, I
never notice it. Notice it! Good Heavens! The effort of my life
is _not_ to notice her in anything she does or says. How could I
keep my temper, unless I kept as much as possible out of the way
of private interviews with her? And I do keep my temper. I am
never hard on her; I never use harsh language to her. She has a
double claim on my forbearance---she is a woman, and the law has
made her my wife. I remember this; but I am human. The less I see
of her--exc ept when visitors are present--the more certain I can
feel of preserving my self-control.
"I wonder what it is that makes her so utterly distasteful to me?
She is a plain woman; but I have seen uglier women than she whose
caresses I could have endured without the sense of shrinking that
comes over me when I am obliged to submit to _her_ caresses. I
keep the feeling hidden from her. She loves me, poor thing--and I
pity her. I wish I could do more; I wish I could return in the
smallest degree the feeling with which she regards me. But no--I
can only pity her. If she would be content to live on friendly
terms with me, and never to exact demonstrations of tenderness,
we might get on pretty well. But she wants love. Unfortunate
creature, she wants love!
"Oh, my Helena! I have no love to give her. My heart is yours.
"I dreamed last night that this unhappy wife of mine was dead.
The dream was so vivid that I actually got out of my bed and
opened the door of her room and listened.
"Her calm, regular breathing was distinctly audible in the
stillness of the night. She was in a deep sleep: I closed the
door again and lighted my candle and read. Helena was in all my
thoughts; it was hard work to fix my attention on the book. But
anything was better than going to bed again, and dreaming perhaps
for the second time that I too was free.
"What a life mine is! what a life my wife's is! If the house were
to take fire, I wonder whether I should make an effort to save
myself or to save her?"
The last two passages read referred to later dates still.
"A gleam of brightness has shone over this dismal existence of
mine at last.
"Helena is no longer condemned to the seclusion of widowhood.
Time enough has passed to permit of her mixing again in society.
She is paying visits to friends in our part of Scotland; and, as
she and I are cousins, it is universally understood that she
cannot leave the North without also spending a few days at my
house. She writes me word that the visit, however embarrassing it
may be to us privately, is nevertheless a visit that must be made
for the sake of appearances. Blessings on appearances! I shall
see this angel in my purgatory--and all because Society in
Mid-Lothian would think it strange that my cousin should be
visiting in my part of Scotland and not visit Me!
"But we are to be very careful. Helena says, in so many words, 'I
come to see you, Eustace, as a sister. You must receive me as a
brother, or not receive me at all. I shall write to your wife to
propose the day for my visit. I shall not forget--do you not
forget--that it is by your wife's permission that I enter your
house.'
"Only let me see her! I will submit to anything to obtain the
unutterable happiness of seeing her!"
The last extract followed, and consisted of these lines only:
"A new misfortune! My wife has fallen ill. She has taken to her
bed with a bad rheumatic cold, just at the time appointed for
Helena's visit to Gleninch. But on this occasion (I gladly own
it!) she has behaved charmingly. She has written to Helena to say
that her illness is not serious enough to render a change
necessary in the arrangements, and to make it her particular
request that my cousin's visit shall take place upon the day
originally decided on.
"This is a great sacrifice made to me on my wife's part. Jealous
of every woman under forty who comes near me, she is, of course,
jealous of Helena--and she controls herself, and trusts me!
"I am bound to show my gratitude for this and I will show it.
From this day forth I vow to live more affectionately with my
wife. I tenderly embraced her this very morning, and I hope, poor
soul, she did not discover the effort that it cost me."
There the readings from the Diary came to an end.
The most unpleasant pages in the whole Report of the Trial
were--to me--the pages which contained the extracts from my
husband's Diary. There were expressions here and there which not
only pained me, but which almost shook Eustace's position in my
estimation. I think I would have given everything I possessed to
have had the power of annihilating certain lines in the Diary. As
for his passionate expressions of love for Mrs. Beauly, every one
of them went through me like a sting. He had whispered words
quite as warm into my ears in the days of his courtship. I had no
reason to doubt that he truly and dearly loved me. But the
question was, Had he just as truly and dearly loved Mrs. Beauly
before me? Had she or I--won the first love of his heart? He had
declared to me over and over again that he had only fancied
himself to be in love before the day when we met. I had believed
him then. I determined to believe him still. I did believe him.
But I hated Mrs. Beauly!
As for the painful impression produced in Court by the readings
from the letters and the Diary, it seemed to be impossible to
increase it. Nevertheless it _was_ perceptibly increased. In
other words, it was rendered more unfavorable still toward the
prisoner by the evidence of the next and last witness called on
the part of the prosecution.
William Enzie, under-gardener at Gleninch, was sworn, and deposed
as follows:
On the twentieth of October, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, I
was sent to work in the shrubbery, on the side next to the garden
called the Dutch Garden. There was a summer-house in the Dutch
Garden, having its back set toward the shrubbery. The day was
wonderfully fine and--warm for the time of year.
"Passing to my work, I passed the back of the summer-house. I
heard voices inside--a man's voice and a lady's voice. The lady's
voice was strange to me. The man's voice I recognized as the
voice of my master. The ground in the shrubbery was soft, and my
curiosity was excited. I stepped up to the back of the
summer-house without being heard, and I listened to what was
going on inside.
"The first words I could distinguish were spoken in my master's
voice. He said, 'If I could only have foreseen that you might one
day be free, what a happy man I might have been!' The lady's
voice answered, 'Hush! you must not talk so.' My master said upon
that, 'I must talk of what is in my mind; it is always in my mind
that I have lost you.' He stopped a bit there, and then he said
on a sudden, 'Do me one favor, my angel! Promise me not to marry
again.' The lady's voice spoke out thereupon sharply enough,
'What do you mean?' My master said, 'I wish no harm to the
unhappy creature who is a burden on my life; but suppose--'
'Suppose nothing,' the lady said; 'come back to the house.'
"She led the way into the garden, and turned round, beckoning my
master to join her. In that position I saw her face plainly, and
I knew it for the face of the young widow lady who was visiting
at the house. She was pointed out to me by the head-gardener when
she first arrived, for the purpose of warning me that I was not
to interfere if I found her picking the flowers. The gardens at
Gleninch were shown to tourists on certain days, and we made a
difference, of course, in the matter of the flowers between
strangers and guests staying in the house. I am quite certain of
the identity of the lady who was talking with my master. Mrs.
Beauly was a comely person--and there was no mistaking her for
any other than herself. She and my master withdrew together on
the way to the house. I heard nothing more of what passed between
them."
This witness was severely cross-examined as to the correctness of
his recollection of the talk in the summer-house, and as to his
capacity for identifying both the speakers. On certain minor
points he was shaken. But he firmly asserted his accurate
remembrance of the last words exchanged between his master and
Mrs. Beauly; and he personally described the lady in terms which
proved that he had corruptly identified her.
With this the answer to the third question raised by the
Trial--the question of the prisoner's motive for poisoning his
wife--came to an end.
The story for the prosecution was now a story told. The
staunchest friends of the prisoner in Court were compelled to
acknowledge that the evidence thus far pointed clearly and
conclusively against him. He seemed to feel this himself. When he
withdrew at the close of the third day of the Trial he was so
depressed and exhausted that he was obliged to lean on the arm of
the governor of the jail.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE EVIDENCE FOR THE DEFENSE.
THE feeling of interest excited by the Trial was prodigiously
increased on the fourth day. The witnesses for the defense were
now to be heard, and first and foremost among them appeared the
prisoner's mother. She looked at her son as she lifted her veil
to take the oath. He burst into tears. At that moment the
sympathy felt for the mother was generally extended to the
unhappy son.
Examined by the Dean of Faculty, Mrs. Macallan the elder gave her
answers with remarkable dignity and self-control.
Questioned as to certain private conversations which had passed
between her late daughter-in-law and herself, she declared that
Mrs. Eustace Macallan was morbidly sensitive on the subject of
her personal appearance. She was devotedly attached to her
husband; the great anxiety of her life was to make herself as
attractive to him as possible. The imperfections in her personal
appearance--and especially in her complexion--were subjects to
her of the bitterest regret. The witness had heard her say, over
and over again (referring to her complexion), that there was no
risk she would not run, and no pain she would not suffer, to
improve it. "Men" (she had said) "are all caught by outward
appearances: my husband might love me better if I had a better
color."
Being asked next if the passages from her son's Diary were to be
depended on as evidence--that is to say, if they fairly
represented the peculiarities in his character, and his true
sentiments toward his wife--Mrs. Macallan denied it in the
plainest and strongest terms.
"The extracts from my son's Diary are a libel on his character,"
she said. "And not the less a libel because they happen to be
written by himself. Speaking from a mother's experience of him, I
know that he must have written the passages produced in moments
of uncontrollable depression and despair. No just person judges
hastily of a man by the rash words which may escape him in his
moody and miserable moments. Is my son to be so judged because he
happens to have written _his_ rash words, instead of speaking
them? His pen has been his most deadly enemy, in this case--it
has presented him at his very worst. He was not happy in his
marriage--I admit that. But I say at the same time that he was
invariably considerate toward his wife. I was implicitly trusted
by both of them; I saw them in their most private moments. I
declare--in the face of what she appears to have written to her
friends and correspondents--that my son never gave his wife any
just cause to assert that he treated her with cruelty or
neglect."
The words, firmly and clearly spoken, produced a strong
impression. The Lord Advocate--evidently perceiving that any
attempt to weaken that impression would not be likely to
succeed--confined himself, in cross-examination, to two
significant questions.
"In speaking to you of the defects in her complexion," he said,
"did your daughter-in-law refer in any way to the use of arsenic
as a remedy?"
The answer to this was, "No."
The Lord Advocate proceeded:
"Did you yourself ever recommend arsenic, or mention it casually,
in the course of the private conversations which you have
described?"
The answer to this was, "Never."
The Lord Advocate resumed his seat. Mrs. Macallan the elder
withdrew.
An interest of a new kind was excited by the appearance of the
next witness. This was no less a person than Mrs. Beauly herself.
The Report describes her as a remarkably attractive person;
modest and lady-like in her manner, and, to all appearance,
feeling sensitively the public position in which she was placed.
The first portion of her evidence was almost a recapitulation of
the evidence given by the prisoner's mother--with this
difference, that Mrs. Beauly had been actually questioned by the
deceased lady on the subject of cosmetic applications to the
complexion. Mrs. Eustace Macallan had complimented her on the
beauty of her complexion, and had asked what artificial means she
used to keep it in such good order. Using no artificial means,
and knowing nothing whatever of cosmetics, Mrs. Beauly had
resented the question, and a temporary coolness between the two
ladies had been the result.
Interrogated as to her relations with the prisoner, Mrs. Beauly
indignantly denied that she or Mr. Macallan had ever given the
deceased lady the slightest cause for jealousy. It was impossible
for Mrs. Beauly to leave Scotland, after visiting at the houses
of her cousin's neighbors, without also visiting at her cousin's
house. To take any other course would have been an act of
downright rudeness, and would have excited remark. She did not
deny that Mr. Macallan had admired her in the days when they were
both single people. But there was no further expression of that
feeling when she had married another man, and when he had married
another woman. From that time their intercourse was the innocent
intercourse of a brother and sister. Mr. Macallan was a
gentleman: he knew what was due to his wife and to Mrs.
Beauly--she would not have entered the house if experience had
not satisfied her of that. As for the evidence of the
under-gardener, it was little better than pure invention. The
greater part of the conversation which he had described himself
as overhearing had never taken place. The little that was really
said (as the man reported it) was said jestingly; and she had
checked it immediately--as the witness had himself confessed. For
the rest, Mr. Macallan's behavior toward his wife was invariably
kind and considerate. He was constantly devising means to
alleviate her sufferings from the rheumatic affection which
confined her to her bed; he had spoken of her, not once but many
times, in terms of the sincerest sympathy. When she ordered her
husband and witness to leave the room, on the day of her death,
Mr. Macallan said to witness afterward, "We must bear with her
jealousy, poor soul: we know that we don't deserve it." In that
patient manner he submitted to her infirmities of temper from
first to last.
The main interest in the cross-examination of Mrs. Beauly
centered in a question which was put at the end. After reminding
her that she had given her name, on being sworn, as "Helena
Beauly," the Lord Advocate said:
"A letter addressed to the prisoner, and signed 'Helena,' has
been read in Court. Look at it, if you please. Are you the writer
of that letter?"
Before the witness could reply the Dean of Faculty protested
against the question. The Judges allowed the protest, and refused
to permit the question to be put. Mrs. Beauly thereupon withdrew.
She had betrayed a very perceptible agitation on hearing the
letter referred to, and on having it placed in her hands. This
exhibition of feeling was variously interpreted among the
audience. Upon the whole, however, Mrs. Beauly's evidence was
considered to have aided the impression which the mother's
evidence had produced in the prisoner's favor.
The next witnesses--both ladies, and both school friends of Mrs.
Eustace Macallan--created a new feeling of interest in Court.
They supplied the missing link in the evidence for the defense.
The first of the ladies declared that she had mentioned arsenic
as a means of improving the complexion in conversation with Mrs.
Eustace Macallan. She had never used it herself, but she had read
of the practice of eating arsenic among the Styrian peasantry for
the purpose of clearing the color, and of producing a general
appearance of plumpness and good health. She positively swore
that she had related this result of her reading to the deceased
lady exactly as she now related it in Court.
The second witness, present at the conversation already
mentioned, corroborated the first witness in every particular;
and added that she had procured the book relating to the
arsenic-eating practices of the Styrian peasantry, and their
results, at Mrs. Eustace Macallan's own request. This book she
had herself dispatched by post to Mrs. Eustace Macallan at
Gleninch.
There was but one assailable p oint in this otherwise conclusive
evidence. The cross-examination discovered it.
Both the ladies were asked, in turn, if Mrs. Eustace Macallan had
expressed to them, directly or indirectly, any intention of
obtaining arsenic, with a view to the improvement of her
complexion. In each case the answer to that all-important
question was, No. Mrs. Eustace Macallan had heard of the remedy,
and had received the book. But of her own intentions in the
future she had not said one word. She had begged both the ladies
to consider the conversation as strictly private--and there it
had ended.
It required no lawyer's eye to discern the fatal defect which was
now revealed in the evidence for the defense. Every intelligent
person present could see that the prisoner's chance of an
honorable acquittal depended on tracing the poison to the
possession of his wife--or at least on proving her expressed
intention to obtain it. In either of these cases the prisoner's
Declaration of his innocence would claim the support of
testimony, which, however indirect it might be, no honest and
intelligent men would be likely to resist. Was that testimony
forthcoming? Was the counsel for the defense not at the end of
his resources yet?
The crowded audience waited in breathless expectation for the
appearance of the next witness. A whisper went round among
certain well-instructed persons that the Court was now to see and
hear the prisoner's old friend--already often referred to in the
course of the Trial as "Mr. Dexter."
After a brief interval of delay there was a sudden commotion
among the audience, accompanied by suppressed exclamations of
curiosity and surprise. At the same moment the crier summoned the
new witness by the extraordinary name of
"MISERRIMUS DEXTER"
CHAPTER XX.
THE END OF THE TRIAL.
THE calling of the new witness provoked a burst of laughter
among the audience due partly, no doubt, to the strange name by
which he had been summoned; partly, also, to the instinctive
desire of all crowded assemblies, when their interest is
painfully excited, to seize on any relief in the shape of the
first subject of merriment which may present itself. A severe
rebuke from the Bench restored order among the audience. The Lord
Justice Clerk declared that he would "clear the Court" if the
interruption to the proceedings were renewed.
During the silence which followed this announcement the new
witness appeared.
Gliding, self-propelled in his chair on wheels, through the
opening made for him among the crowd, a strange and startling
creature--literally the half of a man--revealed himself to the
general view. A coverlet which had been thrown over his chair had
fallen off during his progress through the throng. The loss of it
exposed to the public curiosity the head, the arms, and the trunk
of a living human being: absolutely deprived of the lower limbs.
To make this deformity all the more striking and all the more
terrible, the victim of it was--as to his face and his body--an
unusually handsome and an unusually well-made man. His long silky
hair, of a bright and beautiful chestnut color, fell over
shoulders that were the perfection of strength and grace. His
face was bright with vivacity and intelligence. His large clear
blue eyes and his long delicate white hands were like the eyes
and hands of a beautiful woman. He would have looked effeminate
but for the manly proportions of his throat and chest, aided in
their effect by his flowing beard and long mustache, of a lighter
chestnut shade than the color of his hair. Never had a
magnificent head and body been more hopelessly ill-bestowed than
in this instance! Never had Nature committed a more careless or a
more cruel mistake than in the making of this man!
He was sworn, seated, of course, in his chair. Having given his
name, he bowed to the Judges and requested their permission to
preface his evidence with a word of explanation.
"People generally laugh when they first hear my strange Christian
name," he said, in a low, clear, resonant voice which penetrated
to the remotest corners of the Court. "I may inform the good
people here that many names, still common among us, have their
significations, and that mine is one of them. 'Alexander,' for
instance, means, in the Greek, 'a helper of men.' 'David' means,
in Hebrew, 'well-beloved.' 'Francis' means, in German, 'free.' My
name, 'Miserrimus,' means, in Latin, 'most unhappy.' It was given
to me by my father, in allusion to the deformity which you all
see--the deformity with which it was my misfortune to be born.
You won't laugh at 'Miserrimus' again, will you?" He turned to
the Dean of Faculty, waiting to examine him for the defense. "Mr.
Dean. I am at your service. I apologize for delaying, even for a
moment, the proceedings of the Court."
He delivered his little address with perfect grace and
good-humor. Examined by the Dean, he gave his evidence clearly,
without the slightest appearance of hesitation or reserve.
"I was staying at Gleninch as a guest in the house at the time of
Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death," he began. "Doctor Jerome and Mr.
Gale desired to see me at a private interview--the prisoner being
then in a state of prostration which made it impossible for him
to attend to his duties as master of the house. At this interview
the two doctors astonished and horrified me by declaring that
Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died poisoned. They left it to me to
communicate the dreadful news to her husband, and they warned me
that a post-mortem examination must be held on the body.
"If the Fiscal had seen my old friend when I communicated the
doctors' message, I doubt if he would have ventured to charge the
prisoner with the murder of his wife. To my mind the charge was
nothing less than an outrage. I resisted the seizure of the
prisoner's Diary and letters, animated by that feeling. Now that
the Diary has been produced, I agree with the prisoner's mother
in denying that it is fair evidence to bring against him. A Diary
(when it extends beyond a bare record of facts and dates) is
nothing but an expression of the poorest and weakest side in the
character of the person who keeps it. It is, in nine cases out of
ten, the more or less contemptible outpouring of vanity and
conceit which the writer dare not exhibit to any mortal but
himself. I am the prisoner's oldest friend. I solemnly declare
that I never knew he could write downright nonsense until I heard
his Diary read in this Court!
"_He_ kill his wife! _He_ treat his wife with neglect and
cruelty! I venture to say, from twenty years' experience of him,
that there is no man in this assembly who is constitutionally
more incapable of crime and more incapable of cruelty than the
man who stands at the Bar. While I am about it, I go further
still. I even doubt whether a man capable of crime and capable of
cruelty could have found it in his heart to do evil to the woman
whose untimely death is the subject of this inquiry.
"I have heard what the ignorant and prejudiced nurse, Christina
Ormsay, has said of the deceased lady. From my own personal
observation, I contradict every word of it. Mrs. Eustace
Macallan--granting her personal defects--was nevertheless one of
the most charming women I ever met with. She was highly bred, in
the best sense of the word. I never saw in any other person so
sweet a smile as hers, or such grace and beauty of movement as
hers. If you liked music, she sang beautifully; and few professed
musicians had such a touch on the piano as hers. If you preferred
talking, I never yet met with the man (or even the woman, which
is saying a great deal more) whom her conversation could not
charm. To say that such a wife as this could be first cruelly
neglected, and then barbarously murdered, by the man--no! by the
martyr--who stands there, is to tell me that the sun never shines
at noonday, or that the heaven is not above the earth.
"Oh yes! I know that the letters of her friends show that she
wrote to them in bitter complaint of her husband's conduct to
her. But remember what one of those friends (the wisest and the
best of them) says in reply. 'I own to thinking,' she writes,
'that your sensitive nature exaggerates
or misinterprets the neglect that you experience at the hands of
your husband.' There, in that one sentence, is the whole truth!
Mrs. Eustace Macallan's nature was the imaginative,
self-tormenting nature of a poet. No mortal love could ever have
been refined enough for _her._ Trifles which women of a coarser
moral fiber would have passed over without notice, were causes of
downright agony to that exquisitely sensitive temperament. There
are persons born to be unhappy. That poor lady was one of them.
When I have said this, I have said all.
"No! There is one word more still to be added.
"It may be as well to remind the prosecution that Mrs. Eustace
Macallan's death was in the pecuniary sense a serious loss to her
husband. He had insisted on having the whole of her fortune
settled on herself, and on her relatives after her, when he
married. Her income from that fortune helped to keep in splendor
the house and grounds at Gleninch. The prisoner's own resources
(aided even by his mother's jointure) were quite inadequate fitly
to defray the expenses of living at his splendid country-seat.
Knowing all the circumstances, I can positively assert that the
wife's death has deprived the husband of two-thirds of his
income. And the prosecution, viewing him as the basest and
cruelest of men, declares that he deliberately killed her--with
all his pecuniary interests pointing to the preservation of her
life!
"It is useless to ask me whether I noticed anything in the
conduct of the prisoner and Mrs. Beauly which might justify a
wife's jealousy. I never observed Mrs. Beauly with any attention,
and I never encouraged the prisoner in talking to me about her.
He was a general admirer of pretty women--so far as I know, in a
perfectly innocent way. That he could prefer Mrs. Beauly to his
wife is inconceivable to me, unless he were out of his senses. I
never had any reason to believe that he was out of his senses.
"As to the question of the arsenic--I mean the question of
tracing that poison to the possession of Mrs. Eustace Macallan--I
am able to give evidence which may, perhaps, be worthy of the
attention of the Court.
"I was present in the Fiscal's office during the examination of
the papers, and of the other objects discovered at Gleninch. The
dressing-case belonging to the deceased lady was shown to me
after its contents had been officially investigated by the Fiscal
himself. I happen to have a very sensitive sense of touch. In
handling the lid of the dressing-case, on the inner side I felt
something at a certain place which induced me to examine the
whole structure of the lid very carefully. The result was the
discovery of a private repository concealed in the space between
the outer wood and the lining. In that repository I found the
bottle which I now produce."
The further examination of the witness was suspended while the
hidden bottle was compared with the bottles properly belonging to
the dressing-case.
These last were of the finest cut glass, and of a very elegant
form--entirely unlike the bottle found in the private repository,
which was of the commonest manufacture, and of the shape
ordinarily in use among chemists. Not a drop of liquid, not the
smallest atom of any solid substance, remained in it. No smell
exhaled from it--and, more unfortunately still for the interests
of the defense, no label was found attached to the bottle when it
had been discovered.
The chemist who had sold the second supply of arsenic to the
prisoner was recalled and examined. He declared that the bottle
was exactly like the bottle in which he had placed the arsenic.
It was, however, equally like hundreds of other bottles in his
shop. In the absence of the label (on which he had himself
written the word "Poison"), it was impossible for him to identify
the bottle. The dressing-case and the deceased lady's bedroom had
been vainly searched for the chemist's missing label--on the
chance that it might have become accidentally detached from the
mysterious empty bottle. In both instances the search had been
without result. Morally, it was a fair conclusion that this might
be really the bottle which had contained the poison. Legally,
there was not the slightest proof of it.
Thus ended the last effort of the defense to trace the arsenic
purchased by the prisoner to the possession of his wife. The book
relating the practices of the Styrian peasantry (found in the
deceased lady's room) had been produced But could the book prove
that she had asked her husband to buy arsenic for her? The
crumpled paper, with the grains of powder left in it, had been
identified by the chemist, and had been declared to contain
grains of arsenic. But where was the proof that Mrs. Eustace
Macallan's hand had placed the packet in the cabinet, and had
emptied it of its contents? No direct evidence anywhere! Nothing
but conjecture!
The renewed examination of Miserrimus Dexter touched on matters
of no general interest. The cross-examination resolved itself, in
substance, into a mental trial of strength between the witness
and the Lord Advocate; the struggle terminating (according to the
general opinion) in favor of the witness. One question and one
answer only I will repeat here. They appeared to me to be of
serious importance to the object that I had in view in reading
the Trial.
"I believe, Mr. Dexter," the Lord Advocate remarked, in his most
ironical manner, "that you have a theory of your own, which makes
the death of Mrs. Eustace Macallan no mystery to _you?_"
"I may have my own ideas on that subject, as on other subjects,"
the witness replied. "But let me ask their lordships, the Judges:
Am I here to declare theories or to state facts?"
I made a note of that answer. Mr. Dexter's "ideas" were the ideas
of a true friend to my husband, and of a man of far more than
average ability. They might be of inestimable value to me in the
coming time--if I could prevail on him to communicate them.
I may mention, while I am writing on the subject, that I added to
this first note a second, containing an observation of my own. In
alluding to Mrs. Beauly, while he was giving his evidence, Mr.
Dexter had spoken of her so slightingly--so rudely, I might
almost say--as to suggest he had some strong private reasons for
disliking (perhaps for distrusting) this lady. Here, again, it
might be of vital importance to me to see Mr. Dexter, and to
clear up, if I could, what the dignity of the Court had passed
over without notice.
The last witness had been now examined. The chair on wheels
glided away with the half-man in it, and was lost in a distant
corner of the Court. The Lord Advocate rose to address the Jury
for the prosecution.
I do not scruple to say that I never read anything so infamous as
this great lawyer's speech. He was not ashamed to declare, at
starting, that he firmly believed the prisoner to be guilty. What
right had he to say anything of the sort? Was it for _him_ to
decide? Was he the Judge and Jury both, I should like to know?
Having begun by condemning the prisoner on his own authority, the
Lord Advocate proceeded to pervert the most innocent actions of
that unhappy man so as to give them as vile an aspect as
possible. Thus: When Eustace kissed his poor wife's forehead on
her death-bed, he did it to create a favorable impression in the
minds of the doctor and the nurse! Again, when his grief under
his bereavement completely overwhelmed him, he was triumphing in
secret, and acting a part! If you looked into his heart, you
would see there a diabolical hatred for his wife and an
infatuated passion for Mrs. Beauly! In everything he had said he
had lied; in everything he had done he had acted like a crafty
and heartless wretch! So the chief counsel for the prosecution
spoke of the prisoner, standing helpless before him at the Bar.
In my husband's place, if I could have done nothing more, I would
have thrown something at his head. As it was, I tore the pages
which contained the speech for the prosecution out of the Report
and trampled them under my feet--and felt all the better too for
having done it. At the same time I feel a little ashamed of
having revenged myself on the harmless printed leaves n ow.
The fifth day of the Trial opened with the speech for the
defense. Ah, what a contrast to the infamies uttered by the Lord
Advocate was the grand burst of eloquence by the Dean of Faculty,
speaking on my husband's side!
This illustrious lawyer struck the right note at starting.
"I yield to no one," he began, "in the pity I feel for the wife.
But I say, the martyr in this case, from first to last, is the
husband. Whatever the poor woman may have endured, that unhappy
man at the Bar has suffered, and is now suffering, more. If he
had not been the kindest of men, the most docile and most devoted
of husbands, he would never have occupied his present dreadful
situation. A man of a meaner and harder nature would have felt
suspicions of his wife's motives when she asked him to buy
poison--would have seen through the wretchedly commonplace
excuses she made for wanting it--and would have wisely and
cruelly said, 'No.' The prisoner is not that sort of man. He is
too good to his wife, too innocent of any evil thought toward
her, or toward any one, to foresee the inconveniences and the
dangers to which his fatal compliance may expose him. And what is
the result? He stands there, branded as a murderer, because he
was too high-minded and too honorable to suspect his wife."
Speaking thus of the husband, the Dean was just as eloquent and
just as unanswerable when he came to speak of the wife.
"The Lord Advocate," he said, "has asked, with the bitter irony
for which he is celebrated at the Scottish Bar, why we have
failed entirely to prove that the prisoner placed the two packets
of poison in the possession of his wife. I say, in answer, we
have proved, first, that the wife was passionately attached to
the husband; secondly, that she felt bitterly the defects in her
personal appearance, and especially the defects in her
complexion; and, thirdly, that she was informed of arsenic as a
supposed remedy for those defects, taken internally. To men who
know anything of human nature, there is proof enough. Does my
learned friend actually suppose that women are in the habit of
mentioning the secret artifices and applications by which they
improve their personal appearance? Is it in his experience of the
sex that a woman who is eagerly bent on making herself attractive
to a man would tell that man, or tell anybody else who might
communicate with him, that the charm by which she hoped to win
his heart--say the charm of a pretty complexion--had been
artificially acquired by the perilous use of a deadly poison? The
bare idea of such a thing is absurd. Of course nobody ever heard
Mrs. Eustace Macallan speak of arsenic. Of course nobody ever
surprised her in the act of taking arsenic. It is in the evidence
that she would not even confide her intention to try the poison
to the friends who had told her of it as a remedy, and who had
got her the book. She actually begged them to consider their
brief conversation on the subject as strictly private. From first
to last, poor creature, she kept her secret; just as she would
have kept her secret if she had worn false hair, or if she had
been indebted to the dentist for her teeth. And there you see her
husband, in peril of his life, because a woman acted _like_ a
woman--as your wives, gentlemen of the Jury, would, in a similar
position, act toward You."
After such glorious oratory as this (I wish I had room to quote
more of it!), the next, and last, speech delivered at the
Trial--that is to say, the Charge of the Judge to the Jury--is
dreary reading indeed.
His lordship first told the Jury that they could not expect to
have direct evidence of the poisoning. Such evidence hardly ever
occurred in cases of poisoning. They must be satisfied with the
best circumstantial evidence. All quite true, I dare say. But,
having told the Jury they might accept circumstantial evidence,
he turned back again on his own words, and warned them against
being too ready to trust it! "You must have evidence satisfactory
and convincing to your own minds," he said, "in which you find no
conjectures--but only irresistible and just inferences." Who is
to decide what is a just inference? And what is circumstantial
evidence _but_ conjecture?
After this specimen, I need give no further extracts from the
summing up. The Jury, thoroughly bewildered no doubt, took refuge
in a compromise. They occupied an hour in considering and
debating among themselves in their own room. (A jury of women
would not have taken a minute!) Then they returned into Court,
and gave their timid and trimming Scotch Verdict in these words:
"Not Proven."
Some slight applause followed among the audience, which was
instantly checked. The prisoner was dismissed from the Bar. He
slowly retired, like a man in deep grief: his head sunk on his
breast--not looking at any one, and not replying when his friends
spoke to him. He knew, poor fellow, the slur that the Verdict
left on him. "We don't say you are innocent of the crime charged
against you; we only say there is not evidence enough to convict
you." In that lame and impotent conclusion the proceedings ended
at the time. And there they would have remained for all time--but
for Me.
CHAPTER XXI.
I SEE MY WAY.
IN the gray light of the new morning I closed the Report of my
husband's Trial for the Murder of his first Wife.
No sense of fatigue overpowered me. I had no wish, after my long
hours of reading and thinking, to lie down and sleep. It was
strange, but it was so. I felt as if I _had_ slept, and had now
just awakened--a new woman, with a new mind.
I could now at last understand Eustace's desertion of me. To a
man of his refinement it would have been a martyrdom to meet his
wife after she had read the things published of him to all the
world in the Report. I felt that as he would have felt it. At the
same time I thought he might have trusted Me to make amends to
him for the martyrdom, and might have come back. Perhaps it might
yet end in his coming back. In the meanwhile, and in that
expectation, I pitied and forgave him with my whole heart.
One little matter only dwelt on my mind disagreeably, in spite of
my philosophy. Did Eustace still secretly love Mrs. Beauly? or
had I extinguished that passion in him? To what order of beauty
did this lady belong? Were we by any chance, the least in the
world like one another?
The window of my room looked to the east. I drew up the blind,
and saw the sun rising grandly in a clear sky. The temptation to
go out and breathe the fresh morning air was irresistible. I put
on my hat and shawl, and took the Report of the Trial under my
arm. The bolts of the back door were easily drawn. In another
minute I was out in Benjamin's pretty little garden.
Composed and strengthened by the inviting solitude and the
delicious air, I found courage enough to face the serious
question that now confronted me--the question of the future.
I had read the Trial. I had vowed to devote my life to the sacred
object of vindicating my husband's innocence. A solitary,
defenseless woman, I stood pledged to myself to carry that
desperate resolution through to an end. How was I to begin?
The bold way of beginning was surely the wise way in such a
position as mine. I had good reasons (founded, as I have already
mentioned, on the important part played by this witness at the
Trial) for believing that the fittest person to advise and assist
me was--Miserrimus Dexter. He might disappoint the expectations
that I had fixed on him, or he might refuse to help me, or (like
my uncle Starkweather) he might think I had taken leave of my
senses. All these events were possible. Nevertheless, I held to
my resolution to try the experiment. If he were in the land of
the living, I decided that my first step at starting should take
me to the deformed man with the strange name.
Supposing he received me, sympathized with me, understood me?
What would he say? The nurse, in her evidence, had reported him
as speaking in an off-hand manner. He would say, in all
probability, "What do you mean to do? And how can I help you to
do it?"
Had I answers ready if those two plain questions were put to me?
Yes! if I dared own to any human creatu re what was at that very
moment secretly fermenting in my mind. Yes! if I could confide to
a stranger a suspicion roused in me by the Trial which I have
been thus far afraid to mention even in these pages!
It must, nevertheless, be mentioned now. My suspicion led to
results which are part of my story and part of my life.
Let me own, then, to begin with, that I closed the record of the
Trial actually agreeing in one important particular with the
opinion of my enemy and my husband's enemy--the Lord Advocate! He
had characterized the explanation of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's
death offered by the defense as a "clumsy subterfuge, in which no
reasonable being could discern the smallest fragment of
probability." Without going quite so far as this, I, too, could
see no reason whatever in the evidence for assuming that the poor
woman had taken an overdose of the poison by mistake. I believed
that she had the arsenic secretly in her possession, and that she
had tried, or intended to try, the use of it internally, for the
purpose of improving her complexion. But further than this I
could not advance. The more I thought of it, the more plainly
justified the lawyers for the prosecution seemed to me to be in
declaring that Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died by the hand of a
poisoner--although they were entirely and certainly mistaken in
charging my husband with the crime.
My husband being innocent, somebody else, on my own showing, must
be guilty. Who among the persons inhabiting the house at the time
had poisoned Mrs. Eustace Macallan? My suspicion in answering
that question pointed straight to a woman. And the name of that
woman was--Mrs. Beauly!
Yes! To that startling conclusion I had arrived. It was, to my
mind, the inevitable result of reading the evidence.
Look back for a moment to the letter produced in court, signed
"Helena," and addressed to Mr. Macallan. No reasonable person can
doubt (though the Judges excused her from answering the question)
that Mrs. Beauly was the writer. Very well. The letter offers, as
I think, trustworthy evidence to show the state of the woman's
mind when she paid her visit to Gleninch.
Writing to Mr. Macallan, at a time when she was married to
another man--a man to whom she had engaged herself before she met
with Mr. Macallan what does she say? She says, "When I think of
your life sacrificed to that wretched woman, my heart bleeds for
you." And, again, she says, "If it had been my unutterable
happiness to love and cherish the best, the dearest of men, what
a paradise of our own we might have lived in, what delicious
hours we might have known!"
If this is not the language of a woman shamelessly and furiously
in love with a man--not her husband--what is? She is so full of
him that even her idea of another world (see the letter) is the
idea of "embracing" Mr. Macallan's "soul." In this condition of
mind and morals, the lady one day finds herself and her embraces
free, through the death of her husband. As soon as she can
decently visit she goes visiting; and in due course of time she
becomes the guest of the man whom she adores. His wife is ill in
her bed. The one other visitor at Gleninch is a cripple, who can
only move in his chair on wheels. The lady has the house and the
one beloved object in it all to herself. No obstacle stands
between her and "the unutterable happiness of loving and
cherishing the best, the dearest of men" but a poor, sick, ugly
wife, for whom Mr. Macallan never has felt, and never can feel,
the smallest particle of love.
Is it perfectly absurd to believe that such a woman as this,
impelled by these motives, and surrounded by these circumstances,
would be capable of committing a crime--if the safe opportunity
offered itself?
What does her own evidence say?
She admits that she had a conversation with Mrs. Eustace
Macallan, in which that lady questioned her on the subject of
cosmetic applications to the complexion." Did nothing else take
place at that interview? Did Mrs. Beauly make no discoveries
(afterward turned to fatal account) of the dangerous experiment
which her hostess was then trying to improve her ugly complexion?
All we know is that Mrs. Beauly said nothing about it.
What does the under-gardener say?
He heard a conversation between Mr. Macallan and Mrs. Beauly,
which shows that the possibility of Mrs. Beauly becoming Mrs.
Eustace Macallan had certainly presented itself to that lady's
mind, and was certainly considered by her to be too dangerous a
topic of discourse to be pursued. Innocent Mr. Macallan would
have gone on talking. Mrs. Beauly is discreet and stops him.
And what does the nurse (Christina Ormsay) tell us?
On the day of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death, the nurse is
dismissed from attendance, and is sent downstairs. She leaves the
sick woman, recovered from her first attack of illness, and able
to amuse herself with writing. The nurse remains away for half an
hour, and then gets uneasy at not hearing the invalid's bell. She
goes to the Morning-Room to consult Mr. Macallan, and there she
hears that Mrs. Beauly is missing. Mr. Macallan doesn't know
where she is, and asks Mr. Dexter if he has seen her. Mr. Dexter
had not set eyes on her. At what time does the disappearance of
Mrs. Beauly take place? At the very time when Christina Ormsay
had left Mrs. Eustace Macallan alone in her room!
Meanwhile the bell rings at last--rings violently. The nurse goes
back to the sick-room at five minutes to eleven, or thereabouts,
and finds that the bad symptoms of the morning have returned in a
gravely aggravated form. A second dose of poison--larger than the
dose administered in the early morning--has been given during the
absence of the nurse, and (observe) during the disappearance also
of Mrs. Beauly. The nurse looking out into the corridor for help,
encounters Mrs. Beauly herself, innocently on her way from her
own room--just up, we are to suppose, at eleven in the
morning!--to inquire after the sick woman.
A little later Mrs. Beauly accompanies Mr. Macallan to visit the
invalid. The dying woman casts a strange look at both of them,
and tells them to leave her. Mr. Macallan understands this as the
fretful outbreak of a person in pain, and waits in the room to
tell the nurse that the doctor is sent for. What does Mrs. Beauly
do?
She runs out panic-stricken the instant Mrs. Eustace Macallan
looks at her. Even Mrs. Beauly, it seems, has a conscience!
Is there nothing to justify suspicion in such circumstances as
these--circumstances sworn to on the oaths of the witnesses?
To me the conclusion is plain. Mrs. Beauly's hand gave that
second dose of poison. Admit this; and the inference follows that
she also gave the first dose in the early morning. How could she
do it? Look again at the evidence. The nurse admits that she was
asleep from past two in the morning to six. She also speaks of a
locked door of communication with the sickroom, the key of which
had been removed, nobody knew by whom. Some person must have
stolen that key. Why not Mrs. Beauly?
One word more, and all that I had in my mind at that time will be
honestly revealed.
Miserrimus Dexter, under cross-examination, had indirectly
admitted that he had ideas of his own on the subject of Mrs.
Eustace Macallan's death. At the same time he had spoken of Mrs.
Beauly in a tone which plainly betrayed that he was no friend to
that lady. Did _he_ suspect her too? My chief motive in deciding
to ask his advice before I applied to any one else was to find an
opportunity of putting that question to him. If he really thought
of her as I did, my course was clear before me. The next step to
take would be carefully to conceal my identity--and then to
present myself, in the character of a harmless stranger, to Mrs.
Beauly.
There were difficulties, of course, in my way. The first and
greatest difficulty was to obtain an introduction to Miserrimus
Dexter.
The composing influence of the fresh air in the garden had by
this time made me readier to lie down and rest than to occupy my
mind in reflecting on my difficulties. Little by little I grew
too drowsy to think--then too lazy to go on walking. My bed
looked wonderfully inviting as I passed
by the open window of my room.
In five minutes more I had accepted the invitation of the bed,
and had said farewell to my anxieties and my troubles. In five
minutes more I was fast asleep.
A discreetly gentle knock at my door was the first sound that
aroused me. I heard the voice of my good old Benjamin speaking
outside.
"My dear! I am afraid you will be starved if I let you sleep any
longer. It is half-past one o'clock; and a friend of yours has
come to lunch with us."
A friend of mine? What friends had I? My husband was far away;
and my uncle Starkweather had given me up in despair.
"Who is it?" I cried out from my bed, through the door.
"Major Fitz-David," Benjamin answered, by the same medium.
I sprang out of bed. The very man I wanted was waiting to see me!
Major Fitz-David, as the phrase is, knew everybody. Intimate with
my husband, he would certainly know my husband's old
friend--Miserrimus Dexter.
Shall I confess that I took particular pains with my toilet, and
that I kept the luncheon waiting? The woman doesn't live who
would have done otherwise--when she had a particular favor to ask
of Major Fitz-David.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE MAJOR MAKES DIFFICULTIES.
As I opened the dining-room door the Major hastened to meet me.
He looked the brightest and the youngest of living elderly
gentlemen, with his smart blue frock-coat, his winning smile, his
ruby ring, and his ready compliment. It was quite cheering to
meet the modern Don Juan once more.
"I don't ask after your health," said the old gentleman; "your
eyes answer me, my dear lady, before I can put the question. At
your age a long sleep is the true beauty-draught. Plenty of
bed--there is the simple secret of keeping your good looks and
living a long life--plenty of bed!"
"I have not been so long in my bed, Major, as you suppose. To
tell the truth, I have been up all night, reading."
Major Fitz-David lifted his well-painted eyebrows in polite
surprise.
"What is the happy book which has interested you so deeply?" he
asked.
"The book," I answered, "is the Trial of my husband for the
murder of his first wife."
"Don't mention that horrid book!" he exclaimed. "Don't speak of
that dreadful subject! What have beauty and grace to do with
Trials, Poisonings, Horrors? Why, my charming friend, profane
your lips by talking of such things? Why frighten away the Loves
and the Graces that lie hid in your smile. Humor an old fellow
who adores the Loves and the Graces, and who asks nothing better
than to sun himself in your smiles. Luncheon is ready. Let us be
cheerful. Let us laugh and lunch."
He led me to the table, and filled my plate and my glass with the
air of a man who considered himself to be engaged in one of the
most important occupations of his life. Benjamin kept the
conversation going in the interval.
"Major Fitz-David brings you some news, my dear," he said. "Your
mother-in-law, Mrs. Macallan, is coming here to see you to-day."
My mother-in-law coming to see me! I turned eagerly to the Major
for further information.
"Has Mrs. Macallan heard anything of my husband?" I asked. "Is
she coming here to tell me about him?"
"She has heard from him, I believe," said the Major, "and she has
also heard from your uncle the vicar. Our excellent Starkweather
has written to her--to what purpose I have not been informed. I
only know that on receipt of his letter she has decided on paying
you a visit. I met the old lady last night at a party, and I
tried hard to discover whether she were coming to you as your
friend or your enemy. My powers of persuasion were completely
thrown away on her. The fact is," said the Major, speaking in the
character of a youth of five-and-twenty making a modest
confession, "I don't get on well with old women. Take the will
for the deed, my sweet friend. I have tried to be of some use to
you and have failed."
Those words offered me the opportunity for which I was waiting. I
determined not to lose it.
"You can be of the greatest use to me," I said, "if you will
allow me to presume, Major, on your past kindness. I want to ask
you a question; and I may have a favor to beg when you have
answered me."
Major Fitz-David set down his wine-glass on its way to his lips,
and looked at me with an appearance of breathless interest.
"Command me, my dear lady--I am yours and yours only," said the
gallant old gentleman. "What do you wish to ask me?"
"I wish to ask if you know Miserrimus Dexter."
"Good Heavens!" cried the Major; "that _is_ an unexpected
question! Know Miserrimus Dexter? I have known him for more years
than I like to reckon up. What _can_ be your object--"
"I can tell you what my object is in two words," I interposed. "I
want you to give me an introduction to Miserrimus Dexter."
My impression is that the Major turned pale under his paint.
This, at any rate, is certain--his sparkling little gray eyes
looked at me in undisguised bewilderment and alarm.
"You want to know Miserrimus Dexter?" he repeated, with the air
of a man who doubted the evidence of his own senses. "Mr.
Benjamin, have I taken too much of your excellent wine? Am I the
victim of a delusion--or did our fair friend really ask me to
give her an introduction to Miserrimus Dexter?"
Benjamin looked at me in some bewilderment on his side, and
answered, quite seriously,
"I think you said so, my dear."
"I certainly said so," I rejoined. "What is there so very
surprising in my request?"
"The man is mad!" cried the Major. "In all England you could not
have picked out a person more essentially unfit to be introduced
to a lady--to a young lady especially--than Dexter. Have you
heard of his horrible deformity?"
"I have heard of it--and it doesn't daunt me."
"Doesn't daunt you? My dear lady, the man's mind is as deformed
as his body. What Voltaire said satirically of the character of
his countrymen in general is literally true of Miserrimus Dexter.
He is a mixture of the tiger and the monkey. At one moment he
would frighten you, and at the next he would set you screaming
with laughter. I don't deny that he is clever in some
respects--brilliantly clever, I admit. And I don't say that he
has ever committed any acts of violence, or ever willingly
injured anybody. But, for all that, he is mad, if ever a man were
mad yet. Forgive me if the inquiry is impertinent. What can your
motive possibly be for wanting an introduction to Miserrimus
Dexter?"
"I want to consult him?"
"May I ask on what subject?"
"On the subject of my husband's Trial."
Major Fitz-David groaned, and sought a momentary consolation in
his friend Benjamin's claret.
"That dreadful subject again!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Benjamin, why
does she persist in dwelling on that dreadful subject?"
"I must dwell on what is now the one employment and the one hope
of my life," I said. "I have reason to hope that Miserrimus
Dexter can help me to clear my husband's character of the stain
which the Scotch Verdict has left on it. Tiger and monkey as he
may be, I am ready to run the risk of being introduced to him.
And I ask you again--rashly and obstinately as I fear you will
think--to give me the introduction. It will put you to no
inconvenience. I won't trouble you to escort me; a letter to Mr.
Dexter will do."
The Major looked piteously at Benjamin, and shook his head.
Benjamin looked piteously at the Major, and shook _his_ head.
"She appears to insist on it," said the Major.
"Yes," said Benjamin. "She appears to insist on it."
"I won't take the responsibility, Mr. Benjamin, of sending her
alone to Miserrimus Dexter."
"Shall I go with her, sir?"
The Major reflected. Benjamin, in the capacity of protector, did
not appear to inspire our military friend with confidence. After
a moment's consideration a new idea seemed to strike him. He
turned to me.
"My charming friend," he said, "be more charming than
ever--consent to a compromise. Let us treat this difficulty about
Dexter from a social point of view. What do you say to a little
dinner?"
"A little dinner?" I repeated, not in the least understanding
him.
"A little dinner," the Major reiterated, "at my house. You insist
on my introducing you to Dexter, and I refuse to trust you alone
with th at crack-brained personage. The only alternative under
the circumstances is to invite him to meet you, and to let you
form your own opinion of him--under the protection of my roof.
Who shall we have to meet you besides?" pursued the Major,
brightening with hospitable intentions. "We want a perfect galaxy
of beauty around the table, as a species of compensation when we
have got Miserrimus Dexter as one the guests. Madame Mirliflore
is still in London. You would be sure to like her--she is
charming; she possesses your firmness, your extraordinary
tenacity of purpose. Yes, we will have Madame Mirliflore. Who
else? Shall we say Lady Clarinda? Another charming person, Mr.
Benjamin! You would be sure to admire her--she is so sympathetic,
she resembles in so many respects our fair friend here. Yes, Lady
Clarinda shall be one of us; and you shall sit next to her, Mr.
Benjamin, as a proof of my sincere regard for you. Shall we have
my young prima donna to sing to us in the evening? think so. She
is pretty; she will assist in obscuring the deformity of Dexter.
Very well; there is our party complete! I will shut myself up
this evening and approach the question of dinner with my cook.
Shall we say this day week," asked the Major, taking out his
pocketbook, "at eight o'clock?"
I consented to the proposed compromise--but not very willingly.
With a letter of introduction, I might have seen Miserrimus
Dexter that afternoon. As it was, the "little dinner" compelled
me to wait in absolute inaction through a whole week. However,
there was no help for it but to submit. Major Fitz-David, in his
polite way, could be as obstinate as I was. He had evidently made
up his mind; and further opposition on my part would be of no
service to me.
"Punctually at eight, Mr. Benjamin," reiterated the Major. "Put
it down in your book."
Benjamin obeyed--with a side look at me, which I was at no loss
to interpret. My good old friend did not relish meeting a man at
dinner who was described as "half tiger, half monkey;" and the
privilege of sitting next to Lady Clarinda rather daunted than
delighted him. It was all my doing, and he too had no choice but
to submit. "Punctually at eight, sir," said poor old Benjamin,
obediently recording his formidable engagement. "Please to take
another glass of wine."
The Major looked at his watch, and rose--with fluent apologies
for abruptly leaving the table.
"It is later than I thought," he said. "I have an appointment
with a friend--a female friend; a most attractive person. You a
little remind me of her, my dear lady--you resemble her in
complexion: the same creamy paleness. I adore creamy paleness. As
I was saying, I have an appointment with my friend; she does me
the honor to ask my opinion on some very remarkable specimens of
old lace. I have studied old lace. I study everything that can
make me useful or agreeable to your enchanting sex. You won't
forget our little dinner? I will send Dexter his invitation the
moment I get home. "He took my hand and looked at it critically,
with his head a little on one side. "A delicious hand," he said;
"you don't mind my looking at it--you don't mind my kissing it,
do you? A delicious hand is one of my weaknesses. Forgive my
weaknesses. I promise to repent and amend one of these days."
"At your age, Major, do you think you have much time to lose?"
asked a strange voice, speaking behind us.
We all three looked around toward the door. There stood my
husband's mother, smiling satirically, with Benjamin's shy little
maid-servant waiting to announce her.
Major Fitz-David was ready with his answer.
The old soldier was not easily taken by surprise.
"Age, my dear Mrs. Macallan, is a purely relative expression," he
said. "There are some people who are never young, and there are
other people who are never old. I am one of the other people. _Au
revoir!_"
With that answer the incorrigible Major kissed the tips of his
fingers to us and walked out. Benjamin, bowing with his
old-fashioned courtesy, threw open the door of his little
library, and, inviting Mrs. Macallan and myself to pass in, left
us together in the room.
CHAPTER XXIII
MY MOTHER-IN-LAW SURPRISES ME.
I TOOK a chair at a respectful distance from the sofa on which
Mrs. Macallan seated herself. The old lady smiled, and beckoned
to me to take my place by her side. Judging by appearances, she
had certainly not come to see me in the character of an enemy. It
remained to be discovered I whether she were really disposed to
be my friend.
"I have received a letter from your uncle the vicar," she began.
"He asks me to visit you, and I am happy--for reasons which you
shall presently hear--to comply with his request. Under other
circumstances I doubt very much, my dear child--strange as the
confession may appear--whether I should have ventured into your
presence. My son has behaved to you so weakly, and (in my
opinion) so inexcusably, that I am really, speaking as his
mother, almost ashamed to face you."
Was she in earnest? I listened to her and looked at her in
amazement.
"Your uncle's letter," pursued Mrs. Macallan, "tells me how you
have behaved under your hard trial, and what you propose to do
now Eustace has left you. Doctor Starkweather, poor man, seems to
be inexpressibly shocked by what you said to him when he was in
London. He begs me to use my influence to induce you to abandon
your present ideas, and to make you return to your old home at
the Vicarage. I don't in the least agree with your uncle, my
dear. Wild as I believe your plans to be--you have not the
slightest chance of succeeding in carrying them out--I admire
your courage, your fidelity, your unshaken faith in my unhappy
son, after his unpardonable behavior to you. You are a fine
creature, Valeria, and I have come here to tell you so in plain
words. Give me a kiss, child. You deserve to be the wife of a
hero, and you have married one of the weakest of living mortals.
God forgive me for speaking so of my own son; but it's in my
mind, and it must come out!"
This way of speaking of Eustace was more than I could suffer,
even from his mother. I recovered the use of my tongue in my
husband's defense.
"I am sincerely proud of your good opinion, dear Mrs. Macallan,"
I said. "But you distress me--forgive me if I own it
plainly--when I hear you speak so disparagingly of Eustace. I
cannot agree with you that my husband is the weakest of living
mortals."
"Of course not!" retorted the old lady. "You are like all good
women--you make a hero of the man you love,--whether he deserve
it or not. Your husband has hosts of good qualities, child--and
perhaps I know them better than you do. But his whole conduct,
from the moment when he first entered your uncle's house to the
present time, has been, I say again, the conduct of an
essentially weak man. What do you think he has done now by way of
climax? He has joined a charitable brotherhood; and he is off to
the war in Spain with a red cross on his arm, when he ought to be
here on his knees, asking his wife to forgive him. I say that is
the conduct of a weak man. Some people might call it by a harder
name."
This news startled and distressed me. I might be resigned to his
leaving me for a time; but all my instincts as a woman revolted
at his placing himself in a position of danger during his
separation from his wife. He had now deliberately added to my
anxieties. I thought it cruel of him--but I would not confess
what I thought to his mother. I affected to be as cool as she
was; and I disputed her conclusions with all the firmness that I
could summon to help me. The terrible old woman only went on
abusing him more vehemently than ever.
"What I complain of in my son," proceeded Mrs. Macallan, "is that
he has entirely failed to understand you. If he had married a
fool, his conduct would be intelligible enough. He would have
done wisely to conceal from a fool that he had been married
already, and that he had suffered the horrid public exposure of a
Trial for the murder of his wife. Then, again, he would have been
quite right, when this same fool had discovered the truth, to
take himself out of her way before she could suspect him of
poisoning he r--for the sake of the peace and quiet of both
parties. But you are not a fool. I can see that, after only a
short experience of you. Why can't he see it too? Why didn't he
trust you with his secret from the first, instead of stealing his
way into your affections under an assumed name? Why did he plan
(as he confessed to me) to take you away to the Mediterranean,
and to keep you abroad, for fear of some officious friends at
home betraying him to you as the prisoner of the famous Trial?
What is the plain answer to all these questions? What is the one
possible explanation of this otherwise unaccountable conduct?
There is only one answer, and one explanation. My poor, wretched
son--he takes after his father; he isn't the least like me!--is
weak: weak in his way of judging, weak in his way of acting, and,
like all weak people, headstrong and unreasonable to the last
degree. There is the truth! Don't get red and angry. I am as fond
of him as you are. I can see his merits too. And one of them is
that he has married a woman of spirit and resolution--so faithful
and so fond of him that she won't even let his own mother tell
her of his faults. Good child! I like you for hating me!"
"Dear madam, don't say that I hate you!" I exclaimed (feeling
very much as if I did hate her, though, for all that). "I only
presume to think that you are confusing a delicate-minded man
with a weak-minded man. Our dear unhappy Eustace--"
"Is a delicate-minded man," said the impenetrable Mrs. Macallan,
finishing my sentence for me. "We will leave it there, my dear,
and get on to another subject. I wonder whether we shall disagree
about that too?"
"What is the subject, madam?"
"I won't tell you if you call me madam. Call me mother. Say,
'What is the subject, mother?'"
"What is the subject, mother?"
"Your notion of turning yourself into a Court of Appeal for a new
Trial of Eustace, and forcing the world to pronounce a just
verdict on him. Do you really mean to try it?"
"I do!"
Mrs. Macallan considered for a moment grimly with herself.
"You know how heartily I admire your courage, and your devotion
to my unfortunate son," she said. "You know by this time that _I_
don't cant. But I cannot see you attempt to perform
impossibilities; I cannot let you uselessly risk your reputation
and your happiness without warning you before it is too late. My
child, the thing you have got it in your head to do is not to be
done by you or by anybody. Give it up."
"I am deeply obliged to you, Mrs. Macallan--"
"'Mother!'"
"I am deeply obliged to you, mother, for the interest that you
take in me, but I cannot give it up. Right or wrong, risk or no
risk, I must and I will try it!"
Mrs. Macallan looked at me very attentively, and sighed to
herself.
"Oh, youth, youth!" she said to herself, sadly. "What a grand
thing it is to be young!" She controlled the rising regret, and
turned on me suddenly, almost fiercely, with these words: "What,
in God's name, do you mean to do?"
At the instant when she put the question, the idea crossed my
mind that Mrs. Macallan could introduce me, if she pleased, to
Miserrimus Dexter. She must know him, and know him well, as a
guest at Gleninch and an old friend of her son.
"I mean to consult Miserrimus Dexter," I answered, boldly.
Mrs. Macallan started back from me with a loud exclamation of
surprise.
"Are you out of your senses?" she asked.
I told her, as I had told Major Fitz-David, that I had reason to
think Mr. Dexter's advice might be of real assistance to me at
starting.
"And I," rejoined Mrs. Macallan, "have reason to think that your
whole project is a mad one, and that in asking Dexter's advice on
it you appropriately consult a madman. You needn't start, child!
There is no harm in the creature. I don't mean that he will
attack you, or be rude to you. I only say that the last person
whom a young woman, placed in your painful and delicate position,
ought to associate herself with is Miserrimus Dexter."
Strange! Here was the Major's warning repeated by Mrs. Macallan,
almost in the Major's own words. Well! It shared the fate of most
warnings. It only made me more and more eager to have my own way.
"You surprise me very much," I said. "Mr. Dexter's evidence,
given at the Trial, seems as clear and reasonable as evidence can
be."
"Of course it is!" answered Mrs. Macallan. "The shorthand writers
and reporters put his evidence into presentable language before
they printed it. If you had heard what he really said, as I did,
you would have been either very much disgusted with him or very
much amused by him, according to your way of looking at things.
He began, fairly enough, with a modest explanation of his absurd
Christian name, which at once checked the merriment of the
audience. But as he went on the mad side of him showed itself. He
mixed up sense and nonsense in the strangest confusion; he was
called to order over and over again; he was even threatened with
fine and imprisonment for contempt of Court. In short, he was
just like himself--a mixture of the strangest and the most
opposite qualities; at one time perfectly clear and reasonable,
as you said just now; at another breaking out into rhapsodies of
the most outrageous kind, like a man in a state of delirium. A
more entirely unfit person to advise anybody, I tell you again,
never lived. You don't expect Me to introduce you to him, I
hope?"
"I did think of such a thing," I answered. "But after what you
have said, dear Mrs. Macallan, I give up the idea, of course. It
is not a great sacrifice--it only obliges me to wait a week for
Major Fitz-David's dinner-party. He has promised to ask
Miserrimus Dexter to meet me."
"There is the Major all over!" cried the old lady. "If you pin
your faith on that man, I pity you. He is as slippery as an eel.
I suppose you asked him to introduce you to Dexter?"
"Yes."
"Exactly! Dexter despises him, my dear. He knows as well as I do
that Dexter won't go to his dinner. And he takes that roundabout
way of keeping you apart, instead of saying No to you plainly,
like an honest man.
This was bad news. But I was, as usual, too obstinate to own
myself defeated.
"If the worst comes to the worst," I said, "I can but write to
Mr. Dexter, and beg him to grant me an interview."
"And go to him by yourself, if he does grant it?" inquired Mrs.
Macallan.
"Certainly. By myself."
"You really mean it?"
"I do, indeed."
"I won't allow you to go by yourself."
"May I venture to ask, ma'am how you propose to prevent me?"
"By going with you, to be sure, you obstinate hussy! Yes, yes--I
can be as headstrong as you are when I like. Mind! I don't want
to know what your plans are. I don't want to be mixed up with
your plans. My son is resigned to the Scotch Verdict. I am
resigned to the Scotch Verdict. It is you who won't let matters
rest as they are. You are a vain and foolhardy young person. But,
somehow, I have taken a liking to you, and I won't let you go to
Miserrimus Dexter by yourself. Put on your bonnet!"
"Now?" I asked.
"Certainly! My carriage is at the door. And the sooner it's over
the better I shall be pleased. Get ready--and be quick about it!"
I required no second bidding. In ten minutes more we were on our
way to Miserrimus Dexter.
Such was the result of my mother-in-law's visit!
CHAPTER XXIV.
MISERRIMUS DEXTER--FIRST VIEW.
WE had dawdled over our luncheon before Mrs. Macallan arrived at
Benjamin's cottage. The ensuing conversation between the old lady
and myself (of which I have only presented a brief abstract)
lasted until quite late in the afternoon. The sun was setting in
heavy clouds when we got into the carriage, and the autumn
twilight began to fall around us while we were still on the road.
The direction in which we drove took us (as well as I could
judge) toward the great northern suburb of London.
For more than an hour the carriage threaded its way through a
dingy brick labyrinth of streets, growing smaller and smaller and
dirtier and dirtier the further we went. Emerging from the
labyrinth, I noticed in the gathering darkness dreary patches of
waste ground which seemed to be neither town nor country.
Crossing these, we passed some forlorn outlying groups of houses
with dim little scattered shops among them, looking like lost
country villages wandering on the way to London, disfigured and
smoke-dried already by their journey. Darker and darker and
drearier and drearier the prospect drew, until the carriage
stopped at last, and Mrs. Macallan announced, in her sharply
satirical way, that we had reached the end of our journey.
"Prince Dexter's Palace, my dear," she said. "What do you think
of it?"
I looked around me, not knowing what to think of it, if the truth
must be told.
We had got out of the carriage, and we were standing on a rough
half-made gravel-path. Right and left of me, in the dim light, I
saw the half-completed foundations of new houses in their first
stage of existence. Boards and bricks were scattered about us. At
places gaunt scaffolding poles rose like the branchless trees of
the brick desert. Behind us, on the other side of the high-road,
stretched another plot of waste ground, as yet not built on. Over
the surface of this second desert the ghostly white figures of
vagrant ducks gleamed at intervals in the mystic light. In front
of us, at a distance of two hundred yards or so as well as I
could calculate, rose a black mass, which gradually resolved
itself, as my eyes became accustomed to the twilight, into a
long, low, and ancient house, with a hedge of evergreens and a
pitch-black paling in front of it. The footman led the way toward
the paling through the boards and the bricks, the oyster shells
and the broken crockery, that strewed the ground. And this was
"Prince Dexter's Palace!"
There was a gate in the pitch-black paling, and a
bell-handle--discovered with great difficulty. Pulling at the
handle, the footman set in motion, to judge by the sound
produced, a bell of prodigious size, fitter for a church than a
house.
While we were waiting for admission, Mrs. Macallan pointed to the
low, dark line of the old building.
"There is one of his madnesses," she said. "The speculators in
this new neighborhood have offered him I don't know how many
thousand pounds for the ground that house stands on. It was
originally the manor-house of the district. Dexter purchased it
many years since in one of his freaks of fancy. He has no old
family associations with the place; the walls are all but
tumbling about his ears; and the money offered would really be of
use to him. But no! He refused the proposal of the enterprising
speculators by letter in these words: 'My house is a standing
monument of the picturesque and beautiful, amid the mean,
dishonest, and groveling constructions of a mean, dishonest, and
groveling age. I keep my house, gentlemen, as a useful lesson to
you. Look at it while you are building around me, and blush, if
you can, for your work.' Was there ever such an absurd letter
written yet? Hush! I hear footsteps in the garden. Here comes his
cousin. His cousin is a woman. I may as well tell you that, or
you might mistake her for a man in the dark."
A rough, deep voice, which I should certainly never have supposed
to be the voice of a woman, hailed us from the inner side of the
paling.
"Who's there?"
"Mrs. Macallan," answered my mother-in-law.
"What do you want?"
"We want to see Dexter."
"You can't see him."
"Why not?"
"What did you say your name was?"
"Macallan. Mrs. Macallan. Eustace Macallan's mother. _Now_ do you
understand?"
The voice muttered and grunted behind the paling, and a key
turned in the lock of the gate.
Admitted to the garden, in the deep shadow of the shrubs, I could
see nothing distinctly of the woman with the rough voice, except
that she wore a man's hat. Closing the gate behind us, without a
word of welcome or explanation, she led the way to the house.
Mrs. Macallan followed her easily, knowing the place; and I
walked in Mrs. Macallan's footsteps as closely as I could. "This
is a nice family," my mother-in-law whispered to me. "Dexter's
cousin is the only woman in the house--and Dexter's cousin is an
idiot."
We entered a spacious hall with a low ceiling, dimly lighted at
its further end by one small oil-lamp. I could see that there
were pictures on the grim, brown walls, but the subjects
represented were invisible in the obscure and shadowy light.
Mrs. Macallan addressed herself to the speechless cousin with the
man's hat.
"Now tell me," she said. "Why can't we see Dexter?"
The cousin took a sheet of paper off the table, and handed it to
Mrs. Macallan.
"The Master's writing," said this strange creature, in a hoarse
whisper, as if the bare idea of "the Master" terrified her. "Read
it. And stay or go, which you please."
She opened an invisible side door in the wall, masked by one of
the pictures--disappeared through it like a ghost--and left us
together alone in the hall.
Mrs. Macallan approached the oil-lamp, and looked by its light at
the sheet of paper which the woman had given to her. I followed
and peeped over her shoulder without ceremony. The paper
exhibited written characters, traced in a wonderfully large and
firm handwriting. Had I caught the infection of madness in the
air of the house? Or did I really see before me these words?
"NOTICE.--My immense imagination is at work. Visions of heroes
unroll themselves before me. I reanimate in myself the spirits of
the departed great. My brains are boiling in my head. Any persons
who disturb me, under existing circumstances, will do it at the
peril of their lives.--DEXTER."
Mrs. Macallan looked around at me quietly with her sardonic
smile.
"Do you still persist in wanting to be introduced to him?" she
asked.
The mockery in the tone of the question roused my pride. I
determined that I would not be the first to give way.
"Not if I am putting you in peril of your life, ma'am," I
answered, pertly enough, pointing to the paper in her hand.
My mother-in-law returned to the hall table, and put the paper
back on it without condescending to reply. She then led the way
to an arched recess on our right hand, beyond which I dimly
discerned a broad flight of oaken stairs.
"Follow me," said Mrs. Macallan, mounting the stairs in the dark.
"I know where to find him."
We groped our way up the stairs to the first landing. The next
flight of steps, turning in the reverse direction, was faintly
illuminated, like the hall below, by one oil-lamp, placed in some
invisible position above us. Ascending the second flight of
stairs and crossing a short corridor, we discovered the lamp,
through the open door of a quaintly shaped circular room, burning
on the mantel-piece. Its light illuminated a strip of thick
tapestry, hanging loose from the ceiling to the floor, on the
wall opposite to the door by which we had entered.
Mrs. Macallan drew aside the strip of tapestry, and, signing me
to follow her, passed behind it.
"Listen!" she whispered.
Standing on the inner side of the tapestry, I found myself in a
dark recess or passage, at the end of which a ray of light from
the lamp showed me a closed door. I listened, and heard on the
other side of the door a shouting voice, accompanied by an
extraordinary rumbling and whistling sound, traveling backward
and forward, as well as I could judge, over a great space. Now
the rumbling and the whistling would reach their climax of
loudness, and would overcome the resonant notes of the shouting
voice. Then again those louder sounds gradually retreated into
distance, and the shouting voice made itself heard as the more
audible sound of the two. The door must have been of prodigious
solidity. Listen as intently as I might, I failed to catch the
articulate words (if any) which the voice was pronouncing, and I
was equally at a loss to penetrate the cause which produced the
rumbling and whistling sounds.
"What can possibly be going on," I whispered to Mrs. Macallan,
"on the other side of that door?"
"Step softly," my mother-in-law answered, "and come and see."
She arranged the tapestry behind us so as completely to shut out
the light in the circular room. Then noiselessly turning the
handle, she opened the heavy door.
We kept ourselves concealed in the shadow of the recess, and
looked through the open doorway.
I saw (or fancied I saw, in the ob scurity) a long room with a
low ceiling. The dying gleam of an ill-kept fire formed the only
light by which I could judge of objects and distances. Redly
illuminating the central portion of the room, opposite to which
we were standing, the fire-light left the extremities shadowed in
almost total darkness. I had barely time to notice this before I
heard the rumbling and whistling sounds approaching me. A high
chair on wheels moved by, through the field of red light,
carrying a shadowy figure with floating hair, and arms furiously
raised and lowered working the machinery that propelled the chair
at its utmost rate of speed. "I am Napoleon, at the sunrise of
Austerlitz!" shouted the man in the chair as he swept past me on
his rumbling and whistling wheels, in the red glow of the
fire-light. "I give the word, and thrones rock, and kings fall,
and nations tremble, and men by tens of thousands fight and bleed
and die!" The chair rushed out of sight, and the shouting man in
it became another hero. "I am Nelson!" the ringing voice cried
now. "I am leading the fleet at Trafalgar. I issue my commands,
prophetically conscious of victory and death. I see my own
apotheosis, my public funeral, my nation's tears, my burial in
the glorious church. The ages remember me, and the poets sing my
praise in immortal verse!" The strident wheels turned at the far
end of the room and came back. The fantastic and frightful
apparition, man and machinery blended in one--the new Centaur,
half man, half chair--flew by me again in the dying light. "I am
Shakespeare!" cried the frantic creature now. "I am writing
'Lear,' the tragedy of tragedies. Ancients and moderns, I am the
poet who towers over them all. Light! light! the lines flow out
like lava from the eruption of my volcanic mind. Light! light!
for the poet of all time to write the words that live forever!"
He ground and tore his way back toward the middle of the room. As
he approached the fire-place a last morsel of unburned coal (or
wood) burst into momentary flame, and showed the open doorway. In
that moment he saw us! The wheel-chair stopped with a shock that
shook the crazy old floor of the room, altered its course, and
flew at us with the rush of a wild animal. We drew back, just in
time to escape it, against the wall of the recess. The chair
passed on, and burst aside the hanging tapestry. The light of the
lamp in the circular room poured in through the gap. The creature
in the chair checked his furious wheels, and looked back over his
shoulder with an impish curiosity horrible to see.
"Have I run over them? Have I ground them to powder for presuming
to intrude on me?" he said to himself. As the expression of this
amiable doubt passed his lips his eyes lighted on us. His mind
instantly veered back again to Shakespeare and King Lear.
"Goneril and Regan!" he cried. "My two unnatural daughters, my
she-devil children come to mock at me!"
"Nothing of the sort," said my mother-in-law, as quietly as if
she were addressing a perfectly reasonable being. "I am your old
friend, Mrs. Macallan; and I have brought Eustace Macallan's
second wife to see you."
The instant she pronounced those last words, "Eustace Macallan's
second wife," the man in the chair sprang out of it with a shrill
cry of horror, as if she had shot him. For one moment we saw a
head and body in the air, absolutely deprived of the lower limbs.
The moment after, the terrible creature touched the floor as
lightly as a monkey, on his hands. The grotesque horror of the
scene culminated in his hopping away on his hands, at a
prodigious speed, until he reached the fire-place in the long
room. There he crouched over the dying embers, shuddering and
shivering, and muttering, "Oh, pity me, pity me!" dozens and
dozens of times to himself.
This was the man whose advice I had come to ask--who assistance I
had confidently counted on in my hour of need.
CHAPTER XXV.
MISERRIMUS DEXTER--SECOND VIEW
THOROUGHLY disheartened and disgusted, and (if I must honestly
confess it) thoroughly frightened too, I whispered to Mrs.
Macallan, "I was wrong, and you were right. Let us go."
The ears of Miserrimus Dexter must have been as sensitive as the
ears of a dog. He heard me say, "Let us go."
"No!" he called out. "Bring Eustace Macallan's second wife in
here. I am a gentleman--I must apologize to her. I am a student
of human character--I wish to see her."
The whole man appeared to have undergone a complete
transformation. He spoke in the gentlest of voices, and he sighed
hysterically when he had done, like a woman recovering from a
burst of tears. Was it reviving courage or reviving curiosity?
When Mrs. Macallan said to me, "The fit is over now; do you still
wish to go away?" I answered, "No; I am ready to go in."
"Have you recovered your belief in him already?" asked my
mother-in-law, in her mercilessly satirical way.
"I have recovered from my terror of him," I replied.
"I am sorry I terrified you," said the soft voice at the
fire-place. "Some people think I am a little mad at times. You
came, I suppose, at one of the times--if some people are right. I
admit that I am a visionary. My imagination runs away with me,
and I say and do strange things. On those occasions, anybody who
reminds me of that horrible Trial throws me back again into the
past, and causes me unutterable nervous suffering. I am a very
tender-hearted man. As the necessary consequence (in such a world
as this), I am a miserable wretch. Accept my excuses. Come in,
both of you. Come in and pity me."
A child would not have been frightened of him now. A child would
have gone in and pitied him.
The room was getting darker and darker. We could just see the
crouching figure of Miserrimus Dexter at the expiring fire--and
that was all.
"Are we to have no light?" asked Mrs. Macallan. "And is this lady
to see you, when the light comes, out of your chair?"
He lifted something bright and metallic, hanging round his neck,
and blew on it a series of shrill, trilling, bird-like notes.
After an interval he was answered by a similar series of notes
sounding faintly in some distant region of the house.
"Ariel is coming," he said. "Compose yourself, Mamma Macallan;
Ariel with make me presentable to a lady's eyes."
He hopped away on his hands into the darkness at the end of the
room. "Wait a little, said Mrs. Macallan, "and you will have
another surprise--you will see the 'delicate Ariel.'"
We heard heavy footsteps in the circular room.
"Ariel!" sighed Miserrimus Dexter out of the darkness, in his
softest notes.
To my astonishment the coarse, masculine voice of the cousin in
the man's hat--the Caliban's, rather than the Ariel's
voice--answered, "Here!"
"My chair, Ariel!"
The person thus strangely misnamed drew aside the tapestry, so as
to let in more light; then entered the room, pushing the wheeled
chair before her. She stooped and lifted Miserrimus Dexter from
the floor, like a child. Before she could put him into the chair,
he sprang out of her arms with a little gleeful cry, and alighted
on his seat, like a bird alighting on its perch!
"The lamp," said Miserrimus Dexter, "and the
looking-glass.--Pardon me," he added, addressing us, "for turning
my back on you. You mustn't see me until my hair is set to
rights.--Ariel! the brush, the comb, and the perfumes!"
Carrying the lamp in one hand, the looking-glass in the other,
and the brush (with the comb stuck in it) between her teeth,
Ariel the Second, otherwise Dexter's cousin, presented herself
plainly before me for the first time. I could now see the girl's
round, fleshy, inexpressive face, her rayless and colorless eyes,
her coarse nose and heavy chin. A creature half alive; an
imperfectly developed animal in shapeless form clad in a man's
pilot jacket, and treading in a man's heavy laced boots, with
nothing but an old red-flannel petticoat, and a broken comb in
her frowzy flaxen hair, to tell us that she was a woman--such was
the inhospitable person who had received us in the darkness when
we first entered the house.
This wonderful valet, collecting her materials for dressing her
still more wonderful master's hair, gave him the looking-glass (a
hand -mirror), and addressed herself to her work.
She combed, she brushed, she oiled, she perfumed the flowing
locks and the long silky beard of Miserrimus Dexter with the
strangest mixture of dullness and dexterity that I ever saw. Done
in brute silence, with a lumpish look and a clumsy gait, the work
was perfectly well done nevertheless. The imp in the chair
superintended the whole proceeding critically by means of his
hand-mirror. He was too deeply interested in this occupation to
speak until some of the concluding touches to his beard brought
the misnamed Ariel in front of him, and so turned her full face
toward the part of the room in which Mrs. Macallan and I were
standing. Then he addressed us, taking especial care, however,
not to turn his head our way while his toilet was still
incomplete.
"Mamma Macallan," he said, "what is the Christian name of your
son's second wife?"
"Why do you want to know?" asked my mother-in-law.
"I want to know because I can't address her as 'Mrs. Eustace
Macallan.'"
"Why not?"
"It recalls _the other_ Mrs. Eustace Macallan. If I am reminded
of those horrible days at Gleninch my fortitude will give way--I
shall burst out screaming again."
Hearing this, I hastened to interpose.
"My name is Valeria," I said.
"A Roman name," remarked Miserrimus Dexter. "I like it. My mind
is cast in the Roman mold. My bodily build would have been Roman
if I had been born with legs. I shall call you Mrs. Valeria,
unless you disapprove of it."
I hastened to say that I was far from disapproving of it.
"Very good," said Miserrimus Dexter "Mrs. Valeria, do you see the
face of this creature in front of me?"
He pointed with the hand-mirror to his cousin as unconcernedly as
he might have pointed to a dog. His cousin, on her side, took no
more notice than a dog would have taken of the contemptuous
phrase by which he had designated her. She went on combing and
oiling his beard as composedly as ever.
"It is the face of an idiot, isn't it?" pursued Miserrimus
Dexter! "Look at her! She is a mere vegetable. A cabbage in a
garden has as much life and expression in it as that girl
exhibits at the present moment. Would you believe there was
latent intelligence, affection, pride, fidelity, in such a
half-developed being as this?"
I was really ashamed to answer him. Quite needlessly! The
impenetrable young woman went on with her master's beard. A
machine could not have taken less notice of the life and the talk
around it than this incomprehensible creature.
"_I_ have got at that latent affection, pride, fidelity, and the
rest of it," resumed Miserrimus Dexter. "_I_ hold the key to that
dormant Intelligence. Grand thought! Now look at her when I
speak. (I named her, poor wretch, in one of my ironical moments.
She has got to like her name, just as a dog gets to like his
collar.) Now, Mrs. Valeria, look and listen.--Ariel!"
The girl's dull face began to brighten. The girl's mechanically
moving hand stopped, and held the comb in suspense.
"Ariel! you have learned to dress my hair and anoint my beard,
haven't you?"
Her face still brightened. "Yes! yes! yes!" she answered,
eagerly. "And you say I have learned to do it well, don't you?"
"I say that. Would you like to let anybody else do it for you?"
Her eyes melted softly into light and life. Her strange unwomanly
voice sank to the gentlest tones that I had heard from her yet.
"Nobody else shall do it for me," she said at once proudly and
tenderly. "Nobody, as long as I live, shall touch you but me."
"Not even the lady there?" asked Miserrimus Dexter, pointing
backward with his hand-mirror to the place at which I was
standing.
Her eyes suddenly flashed, her hand suddenly shook the comb at
me, in a burst of jealous rage.
"Let her try!" cried the poor creature, raising her voice again
to its hoarsest notes. "Let her touch you if she dares!"
Dexter laughed at the childish outbreak. "That will do, my
delicate Ariel," he said. "I dismiss your Intelligence for the
present. Relapse into your former self. Finish my beard."
She passively resumed her work. The new light in her eyes, the
new expression in her face, faded little by little and died out.
In another minute the face was as vacant and as lumpish as
before; the hands did their work again with the lifeless
dexterity which had so painfully impressed me when she first took
up the brush. Miserrimus Dexter appeared to be perfectly
satisfied with these results.
"I thought my little experiment might interest you," he said.
"You see how it is? The dormant intelligence of my curious cousin
is like the dormant sound in a musical instrument. I play upon
it--and it answers to my touch. She likes being played upon. But
her great delight is to hear me tell a story. I puzzle her to the
verge of distraction; and the more I confuse her the better she
likes the story. It is the greatest fun; you really must see it
some day." He indulged himself in a last look at the mirror.
"Ha!" he said, complacently; "now I shall do. Vanish, Ariel!"
She tramped out of the room in her heavy boots, with the mute
obedience of a trained animal. I said "Good-night" as she passed
me. She neither returned the salutation nor looked at me: the
words simply produced no effect on her dull senses. The one voice
that could reach her was silent. She had relapsed once more into
the vacant inanimate creature who had opened the gate to us,
until it pleased Miserrimus Dexter to speak to her again.
"Valeria!" said my mother-in-law. "Our modest host is waiting to
see what you think of him."
While my attention was fixed on his cousin he had wheeled his
chair around so as to face me. with the light of the lamp falling
full on him. In mentioning his appearance as a witness at the
Trial, I find I have borrowed (without meaning to do so) from my
experience of him at this later time. I saw plainly now the
bright intelligent face and the large clear blue eyes, the
lustrous waving hair of a light chestnut color, the long delicate
white hands, and the magnificent throat and chest which I have
elsewhere described. The deformity which degraded and destroyed
the manly beauty of his head and breast was hidden from view by
an Oriental robe of many colors, thrown over the chair like a
coverlet. He was clothed in a jacket of black velvet, fastened
loosely across his chest with large malachite buttons; and he
wore lace ruffles at the ends of his sleeves, in the fashion of
the last century. It may well have been due to want of perception
on my part--but I could see nothing mad in him, nothing in any
way repelling, as he now looked at me. The one defect that I
could discover in his face was at the outer corners of his eyes,
just under the temple. Here when he laughed, and in a lesser
degree when he smiled, the skin contracted into quaint little
wrinkles and folds, which looked strangely out of harmony with
the almost youthful appearance of the rest of his face. As to his
other features, the mouth, so far as his beard and mustache
permitted me to see it, was small and delicately formed; the
nose--perfectly shaped on the straight Grecian model--was perhaps
a little too thin, judged by comparison with the full cheeks and
the high massive forehead. Looking at him as a whole (and
speaking of him, of course, from a woman's, not a physiognomist's
point of view), I can only describe him as being an unusually
handsome man. A painter would have reveled in him as a model for
St. John. And a young girl, ignorant of what the Oriental robe
hid from view, would have said to herself, the instant she looked
at him, "Here is the hero of my dreams!"
His blue eyes--large as the eyes of a woman, clear as the eyes of
a child--rested on me the moment I turned toward him, with a
strangely varying play of expression, which at once interested
and perplexed me.
Now there was doubt--uneasy, painful doubt--in the look; and now
again it changed brightly to approval, so open and unrestrained
that a vain woman might have fancied she had made a conquest of
him at first sight. Suddenly a new emotion seemed to take
possession of him. His eyes sank, his head drooped; he lifted his
hands with a gesture of regret. He muttered and murmured to
himself; pursuing some secret and melancholy train of thought,
which seemed to lead him further and further away from present
objects of interest, and to plunge him deeper and deeper in
troubled recollections of the past. Here and there I caught some
of the words. Little by little I found myself trying to fathom
what was darkly passing in this strange man's mind.
"A far more charming face," I heard him say. "But no--not a more
beautiful figure. What figure was ever more beautiful than hers?
Something--but not all--of her enchanting grace. Where is the
resemblance which has brought her back to me? In the pose of the
figure, perhaps. In the movement of the figure, perhaps. Poor
martyred angel! What a life! And what a death! what a death!"
Was he comparing me with the victim of the poison--with my
husband's first wife? His words seemed to justify the conclusion.
If I were right, the dead woman had evidently been a favorite
with him. There was no misinterpreting the broken tones of his
voice when he spoke of her: he had admired her, living; he
mourned her, dead. Supposing that I could prevail upon myself to
admit this extraordinary person into my confidence, what would be
the result? Should I be the gainer or the loser by the
resemblance which he fancied he had discovered? Would the sight
of me console him or pain him? I waited eagerly to hear more on
the subject of the first wife. Not a word more escaped his lips.
A new change came over him. He lifted his head with a start, and
looked about him as a weary man might look if he was suddenly
disturbed in a deep sleep.
"What have I done?" he said. "Have I been letting my mind drift
again?" He shuddered and sighed. "Oh, that house of Gleninch!" he
murmured, sadly, to himself. "Shall I never get away from it in
my thoughts? Oh, that house of Gleninch!"
To my infinite disappointment, Mrs. Macallan checked the further
revelation of what was passing in his mind.
Something in the tone and manner of his allusion to her son's
country-house seemed to have offended her. She interposed sharply
and decisively.
"Gently, my friend, gently!" she said. "I don't think you quite
know what you are talking about."
His great blue eyes flashed at her fiercely. With one turn of his
hand he brought his chair close at her side. The next instant he
caught her by the arm, and forced her to bend to him, until he
could whisper in her ear. He was violently agitated. His whisper
was loud enough to make itself heard where I was sitting at the
time.
"I don't know what I am talking about?" he repeated, with his
eyes fixed attentively, not on my mother-in-law, but on me. "You
shortsighted old woman! where are your spectacles? Look at her!
Do you see no resemblance--the figure, not the face!--do you see
no resemblance there to Eustace's first wife?"
"Pure fancy!" rejoined Mrs. Macallan. "I see nothing of the
sort."
He shook her impatiently.
"Not so loud!" he whispered. "She will hear you."
"I have heard you both," I said. "You need have no fear, Mr.
Dexter, of speaking before me. I know that my husband had a first
wife, and I know how miserably she died. I have read the Trial."
"You have read the life and death of a martyr!" cried Miserrimus
Dexter. He suddenly wheeled his chair my way; he bent over me;
his eyes filled with tears. "Nobody appreciated her at her true
value," he said, "but me. Nobody but me! nobody but me!"
Mrs. Macallan walked away impatiently to the end of the room.
"When you are ready, Valeria, I am," she said. "We cannot keep
the servants and the horses waiting much longer in this bleak
place."
I was too deeply interested in leading Miserrimus Dexter to
pursue the subject on which he had touched to be willing to leave
him at that moment. I pretended not to have heard Mrs. Macallan.
I laid my hand, as if by accident, on the wheel-chair to keep him
near me.
"You showed me how highly you esteemed that poor lady in your
evidence at the Trial," I said. "I believe, Mr. Dexter, you have
ideas of your own about the mystery of her death?"
He had been looking at my hand, resting on the arm of his chair,
until I ventured on my question. At that he suddenly raised his
eyes, and fixed them with a frowning and furtive suspicion on my
face.
"How do you know I have ideas of my own?" he asked, sternly.
"I know it from reading the Trial," I answered. "The lawyer who
cross-examined you spoke almost in the very words which I have
just used. I had no intention of offending you, Mr. Dexter."
His face cleared as rapidly as it had clouded. He smiled, and
laid his hand on mine. His touch struck me cold. I felt every
nerve in me shivering under it; I drew my hand away quickly.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "if I have misunderstood you. I
_have_ ideas of my own about that unhappy lady. "He paused and
looked at me in silence very earnestly. "Have _you_ any ideas?"
he asked. "Ideas about her life? or about her death?"
I was deeply interested; I was burning to hear more. It might
encourage him to speak if I were candid with him. I answered,
"Yes."
"Ideas which you have mentioned to any one?" he went on.
"To no living creature," I replied--"as yet."
"This very strange!" he said, still earnestly reading my face.
"What interest can _you_ have in a dead woman whom you never
knew? Why did you ask me that question just now? Have you any
motive in coming here to see me?"
I boldly acknowledged the truth. I said, "I have a motive."
"Is it connected with Eustace Macallan's first wife?"
"It is."
"With anything that happened in her lifetime?"
"No."
"With her death?"
"Yes."
He suddenly clasped his hands with a wild gesture of despair, and
then pressed them both on his head, as if he were struck by some
sudden pain.
"I can't hear it to-night!" he said. "I would give worlds to hear
it, but I daren't. I should lose all hold over myself in the
state I am in now. I am not equal to raking up the horror and the
mystery of the past; I have not courage enough to open the grave
of the martyred dead. Did you hear me when you came here? I have
an immense imagination. It runs riot at times. It makes an actor
of me. I play the parts of all the heroes that ever lived. I feel
their characters. I merge myself in their individualities. For
the time I _am_ the man I fancy myself to be. I can't help it. I
am obliged to do it. If I restrained my imagination when the fit
is on me, I should go mad. I let myself loose. It lasts for
hours. It leaves me with my energies worn out, with my
sensibilities frightfully acute. Rouse any melancholy or terrible
associations in me at such times, and I am capable of hysterics,
I am capable of screaming. You heard me scream. You shall _not_
see me in hysterics. No, Mrs. Valeria--no, you innocent
reflection of the dead and gone--I would not frighten you for the
world. Will you come here to-morrow in the daytime? I have got a
chaise and a pony. Ariel, my delicate Ariel, can drive. She shall
call at Mamma Macallan's and fetch you. We will talk to-morrow,
when I am fit for it. I am dying to hear you. I will be fit for
you in the morning. I will be civil, intelligent, communicative,
in the morning. No more of it now. Away with the subject--the too
exciting, the too interesting subject! I must compose myself or
my brains will explode in my head. Music is the true narcotic for
excitable brains. My harp! my harp!"
He rushed away in his chair to the far end of the room, passing
Mrs. Macallan as she returned to me, bent on hastening our
departure.
"Come!" said the old lady, irritably. "You have seen him, and he
has made a good show of himself. More of him might be tiresome.
Come away."
The chair returned to us more slowly. Miserrimus Dexter was
working it with one hand only. In the other he held a harp of a
pattern which I had hitherto only seen in pictures. The strings
were few in number, and the instrument was so small that I could
have held it easily on my lap. It was the ancient harp of the
pictured Muses and the legendary Welsh bards.
"Good-night, Dexter," said Mrs. Macallan.
He held up one hand imperatively.
"Wait!" he said. "Let her hear me sing." He turned to me. "I
decline to be indebted to other people for my poetry and my
music," he went on. "I compose my own poetry and my own music. I
improvise. Give me a moment to think. I will improvise for You."
He closed his eyes and rested his head on the frame of the harp.
His fingers gently touched the strings while he was thinking. In
a few minutes he lifted his head, looked at me, and struck the
first notes--the prelude to the song. It was wild, barbaric,
monotonous music, utterly unlike any modern composition.
Sometimes it suggested a slow and undulating Oriental dance.
Sometimes it modulated into tones which reminded me of the
severer harmonies of the old Gregorian chants. The words, when
they followed the prelude, were as wild, as recklessly free from
all restraint of critical rules, as the music. They were
assuredly inspired by the occasion; I was the theme of the
strange song. And thus--in one of the finest tenor voices I ever
heard--my poet sang of me:
"Why does she come? She reminds me of the lost; She reminds me
of the dead: In her form like the other, In her walk like the
other: Why does she come?
"Does Destiny bring her? Shall we range together The mazes of the
past? Shall we search together The secrets of the past? Shall we
interchange thoughts, surmises, suspicions? Does Destiny bring
her?
"The Future will show. Let the night pass; Let the day come. I
shall see into Her mind: She will look into Mine. The Future will
show."
His voice sank, his fingers touched the strings more and more
feebly as he approached the last lines. The overwrought brain
needed and took its reanimating repose. At the final words his
eyes slowly closed. His head lay back on the chair. He slept with
his arms around his harp, as a child sleeps hugging its last new
toy.
We stole out of the room on tiptoe, and left Miserrimus
Dexter--poet, composer, and madman--in his peaceful sleep.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MORE OF MY OBSTINACY.
ARIEL was downstairs in the shadowy hall, half asleep, half
awake, waiting to see the visitors clear of the house. Without
speaking to us, without looking at us, she led the way down the
dark garden walk, and locked the gate behind us. "Good-night,
Ariel," I called out to her over the paling. Nothing answered me
but the tramp of her heavy footsteps returning to the house, and
the dull thump, a moment afterward, of the closing door.
The footman had thoughtfully lighted the carriage lamps. Carrying
one of them to serve as a lantern, he lighted us over the wilds
of the brick desert, and landed us safely on the path by the
high-road.
"Well!" said my mother-in-law, when we were comfortably seated in
the carriage again. "You have seen Miserrimus Dexter, and I hope
you are satisfied. I will do him the justice to declare that I
never, in all my experience, saw him more completely crazy than
he was to-night. What do _you_ say?"
"I don't presume to dispute your opinion," I answered. "But,
speaking for myself, I'm not quite sure that he is mad."
"Not mad!" cried Mrs. Macallan, "after those frantic performances
in his chair? Not mad, after the exhibition he made of his
unfortunate cousin? Not mad, after the song that he sang in your
honor, and the falling asleep by way of conclusion? Oh, Valeria!
Valeria! Well said the wisdom of our ancestors--there are none so
blind as those who won't see."
"Pardon me, dear Mrs. Macallan, I saw everything that you
mention, and I never felt more surprised or more confounded in my
life. But now I have recovered from my amazement, and can think
it over quietly, I must still venture to doubt whether this
strange man is really mad in the true meaning of the word. It
seems to me that he only expresses--I admit in a very reckless
and boisterous way--thoughts and feelings which most of us are
ashamed of as weaknesses, and which we keep to ourselves
accordingly. I confess I have often fancied myself transformed
into some other person, and have felt a certain pleasure in
seeing myself in my new character. One of our first amusements as
children (if we have any imagination at all) is to get out of our
own characters, and to try the characters of other personages as
a change--to fairies, to be queens, to be anything, in short, but
what we really are. Mr. Dexter lets out the secret just as the
children do, and if that is madness, he is certainly mad. But I
noticed that when his imagination cooled down he became
Miserrimus Dexter again--he no more believed himself than we
believed him to be Napoleon or Shakespeare. Besides, some
allowance is surely to be made for the solitary, sedentary life
that he leads. I am not learned enough to trace the influence of
that life in making him what he is; but I think I can see the
result in an over-excited imagination, and I fancy I can trace
his exhibiting his power over the poor cousin and his singing of
that wonderful song to no more formidable cause than inordinate
self-conceit. I hope the confession will not lower me seriously
in your good opinion; but I must say I have enjoyed my visit,
and, worse still, Miserrimus Dexter really interests me."
"Does this learned discourse on Dexter mean that you are going to
see him again?" asked Mrs. Macallan.
"I don't know how I may feel about it tomorrow morning," I said;
"but my impulse at this moment is decidedly to see him again. I
had a little talk with him while you were away at the other end
of the room, and I believe he really can be of use to me--"
"Of use to you in what?" interposed my mother-in-law.
"In the one object which I have in view--the object, dear Mrs.
Macallan, which I regret to say you do not approve."
"And you are going to take him into your confidence? to open your
whole mind to such a man as the man we have just left?"
"Yes, if I think of it to-morrow as I think of it to-night. I
dare say it is a risk; but I must run risks. I know I am not
prudent; but prudence won't help a woman in my position, with my
end to gain."
Mrs. Macallan made no further remonstrance in words. She opened a
capacious pocket in front of the carriage, and took from it a box
of matches and a railway reading-lamp.
"You provoke me," said the old lady, "into showing you what your
husband thinks of this new whim of yours. I have got his letter
with me--his last letter from Spain. You shall judge for
yourself, you poor deluded young creature, whether my son is
worthy of the sacrifice--the useless and hopeless
sacrifice--which you are bent on making of yourself for his sake.
Strike a light!"
I willingly obeyed her. Ever since she had informed me of
Eustace's departure to Spain I had been eager for more news of
him, for something to sustain my spirits, after so much that had
disappointed and depressed me. Thus far I did not even know
whether my husband thought of me sometimes in his self-imposed
exile. As to this regretting already the rash act which had
separated us, it was still too soon to begin hoping for that.
The lamp having been lighted, and fixed in its place between the
two front windows of the carriage, Mrs. Macallan produced her
son's letter. There is no folly like the folly of love. It cost
me a hard struggle to restrain myself from kissing the paper on
which the dear hand had rested.
"There!" said my mother-in-law. "Begin on the second page, the
page devoted to you. Read straight down to the last line at the
bottom, and, in God's name, come back to your senses, child,
before it is too late!"
I followed my instructions, and read these words:
"Can I trust myself to write of Valeria? I _must_ write of her.
Tell me how she is, how she looks, what she is doing. I am always
thinking of her. Not a day passes but I mourn the loss of her.
Oh, if she had only been contented to let matters rest as they
were! Oh, if she had never discovered the miserable truth!
"She spoke of reading the Trial when I saw her last. Has she
persisted in doing so? I believe--I say this seriously, mother--I
believe the shame and the horror of it would have been the death
of me if I had met her face to face when she first knew of the
ignominy that I have suffered, of the infamous suspicion of which
I have been publicly made the subject. Think of those pure eyes
looking at a man who has been accus ed (and never wholly
absolved) of the foulest and the vilest of all murders, and then
think of what that man must feel if he have any heart and any
sense of shame left in him. I sicken as I write of it.
"Does she still meditate that hopeless project--the offspring,
poor angel, of her artless, unthinking generosity? Does she still
fancy that it is in _her_ power to assert my innocence before the
world? Oh, mother (if she do), use your utmost influence to make
her give up the idea! Spare her the humiliation, the
disappointment, the insult, perhaps, to which she may innocently
expose herself. For her sake, for my sake, leave no means untried
to attain this righteous, this merciful end.
"I send her no message--I dare not do it. Say nothing, when you
see her, which can recall me to her memory. On the contrary, help
her to forget me as soon as possible. The kindest thing I can
do--the one atonement I can make to her--is to drop out of her
life."
With those wretched words it ended. I handed his letter back to
his mother in silence. She said but little on her side.
"If _this_ doesn't discourage you," she remarked, slowly folding
up the letter, "nothing will. Let us leave it there, and say no
more."
I made no answer--I was crying behind my veil. My domestic
prospect looked so dreary! my unfortunate husband was so
hopelessly misguided, so pitiably wrong! The one chance for both
of us, and the one consolation for poor Me, was to hold to my
desperate resolution more firmly than ever. If I had wanted
anything to confirm me in this view, and to arm me against the
remonstrances of every one of my friends, Eustace's letter would
have proved more than sufficient to answer the purpose. At least
he had not forgotten me; he thought of me, and he mourned the
loss of me every day of his life. That was encouragement
enough--for the present. "If Ariel calls for me in the
pony-chaise to-morrow," I thought to myself, "with Ariel I go."
Mrs. Macallan set me down at Benjamin's door.
I mentioned to her at parting--I stood sufficiently in awe of her
to put it off till the last moment--that Miserrimus Dexter had
arranged to send his cousin and his pony-chaise to her residence
on the next day; and I inquired thereupon whether my
mother-in-law would permit me to call at her house to wait for
the appearance of the cousin, or whether she would prefer sending
the chaise on to Benjamin's cottage. I fully expected an
explosion of anger to follow this bold avowal of my plans for the
next day. The old lady agreeably surprised me. She proved that
she had really taken a liking to me: she kept her temper.
"If you persist in going back to Dexter, you certainly shall not
go to him from my door," she said. "But I hope you will _not_
persist. I hope you will awake a wiser woman to-morrow morning."
The morning came. A little before noon the arrival of the
pony-chaise was announced at the door, and a letter was brought
in to me from Mrs. Macallan.
"I have no right to control your movements," my mother-in-law
wrote. "I send the chaise to Mr. Benjamin's house; and I
sincerely trust that you will not take your place in it. I wish I
could persuade you, Valeria, how truly I am your friend. I have
been thinking about you anxiously in the wakeful hours of the
night. _How_ anxiously, you will understand when I tell you that
I now reproach myself for not having done more than I did to
prevent your unhappy marriage. And yet, what more I could have
done I don't really know. My son admitted to me that he was
courting you under an assumed name, but he never told me what the
name was. Or who you were, or where your friends lived. Perhaps I
ought to have taken measures to find this out. Perhaps, if I had
succeeded, I ought to have interfered and enlightened you, even
at the sad sacrifice of making an enemy of my own son. I honestly
thought I did my duty in expressing my disapproval, and in
refusing to be present at the marriage. Was I too easily
satisfied? It is too late to ask. Why do I trouble you with an
old woman's vain misgivings and regrets? My child, if you come to
any harm, I shall feel (indirectly) responsible for it. It is
this uneasy state of mind which sets me writing, with nothing to
say that can interest you. Don't go to Dexter! The fear has been
pursuing me all night that your going to Dexter will end badly.
Write him an excuse. Valeria! I firmly believe you will repent it
if you return to that house."
Was ever a woman more plainly warned, more carefully advised,
than I? And yet warning and advice were both thrown away on me.
Let me say for myself that I was really touched by the kindness
of my mother-in-law's letter, though I was not shaken by it in
the smallest degree. As long as I lived, moved, and thought, my
one purpose now was to make Miserrimus Dexter confide to me his
ideas on the subject of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death. To those
ideas I looked as my guiding stars along the dark way on which I
was going. I wrote back to Mrs. Macallan, as I really felt
gratefully and penitently. And then I went out to the chaise.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MR. DEXTER AT HOME.
I FOUND all the idle boys in the neighborhood collected around
the pony-chaise, expressing, in the occult language of slang,
their high enjoyment and appreciation at the appearance of
"Ariel" in her man's jacket and hat. The pony was fidgety--_he_
felt the influence of the popular uproar. His driver sat, whip in
hand, magnificently impenetrable to the gibes and jests that were
flying around her. I said "Good-morning" on getting into the
chaise. Ariel only said "Gee up!" and started the pony.
I made up my mind to perform the journey to the distant northern
suburb in silence. It was evidently useless for me to attempt to
speak, and experience informed me that I need not expect to hear
a word fall from the lips of my companion. Experience, however,
is not always infallible. After driving for half an hour in
stolid silence, Ariel astounded me by suddenly bursting into
speech.
"Do you know what we are coming to?" she asked, keeping her eyes
straight between the pony's ears.
"No," I answered. "I don't know the road. What are we coming to?"
"We are coming to a canal."
"Well?"
"Well, I have half a mind to upset you in the canal."
This formidable announcement appeared to require some
explanation. I took the liberty of asking for it.
"Why should you upset me?" I inquired.
"Because I hate you," was the cool and candid reply.
"What have I done to offend you?" I asked next.
"What do you want with the Master?" Ariel asked, in her turn.
"Do you mean Mr. Dexter?"
"Yes."
"I want to have some talk with Mr. Dexter."
"You don't! You want to take my place. You want to brush his hair
and oil his beard, instead of me. You wretch!"
I now began to understand. The idea which Miserrimus Dexter had
jestingly put into her head, in exhibiting her to us on the
previous night, had been ripening slowly in that dull brain, and
had found its way outward into words, about fifteen hours
afterward, under the irritating influence of my presence!
"I don't want to touch his hair or his beard," I said. "I leave
that entirely to you."
She looked around at me, her fat face flushing, her dull eyes
dilating, with the unaccustomed effort to express herself in
speech, and to understand what was said to her in return.
"Say that again," she burst out. "And say it slower this time."
I said it again, and I said it slower.
"Swear it!" she cried, getting more and more excited.
I preserved my gravity (the canal was just visible in the
distance), and swore it.
"Are you satisfied now?" I asked.
There was no answer. Her last resources of speech were exhausted.
The strange creature looked back again straight between the
pony's ears, emitted hoarsely a grunt of relief, and never more
looked at me, never more spoke to me, for the rest of the
journey. We drove past the banks of the canal, and I escaped
immersion. We rattled, in our jingling little vehicle, through
the streets and across the waste patches of ground, which I dimly
remembered in the darkness, and which looked more squalid and
more hideous than ever in the broad daylight. The chaise tur ned
down a lane, too narrow for the passage of any larger vehicle,
and stopped at a wall and a gate that were new objects to me.
Opening the gate with her key, and leading the pony, Ariel
introduced me to the back garden and yard of Miserrimus Dexter's
rotten and rambling old house. The pony walked off independently
to his stable, with the chaise behind him. My silent companion
led me through a bleak and barren kitchen, and along a stone
passage. Opening a door at the end, she admitted me to the back
of the hall, into which Mrs. Macallan and I had penetrated by the
front entrance to the house. Here Ariel lifted a whistle which
hung around her neck, and blew the shrill trilling notes with the
sound of which I was already familiar as the means of
communication between Miserrimus Dexter and his slave. The
whistling over, the slave's unwilling lips struggled into speech
for the last time.
"Wait till you hear the Master's whistle," she said; "then go
upstairs."
So! I was to be whistled for like a dog! And, worse still, there
was no help for it but to submit like a dog. Had Ariel any
excuses to make? Nothing of the sort.
She turned her shapeless back on me and vanished into the kitchen
region of the house.
After waiting for a minute or two, and hearing no signal from the
floor above, I advanced into the broader and brighter part of the
hall, to look by daylight at the pictures which I had only
imperfectly discovered in the darkness of the night. A painted
inscription in many colors, just under the cornice of the
ceiling, informed me that the works on the walls were the
production of the all-accomplished Dexter himself. Not satisfied
with being poet and composer, he was painter as well. On one wall
the subjects were described as "Illustrations of the Passions;"
on the other, as "Episodes in the Life of the Wandering Jew."
Chance speculators like myself were gravely warned, by means of
the inscription, to view the pictures as efforts of pure
imagination. "Persons who look for mere Nature in works of Art"
(the inscription announced) "are persons to whom Mr. Dexter does
not address himself with the brush. He relies entirely on his
imagination. Nature puts him out."
Taking due care to dismiss all ideas of Nature from my mind, to
begin with, I looked at the pictures which represented the
Passions first.
Little as I knew critically of Art, I could see that Miserrimus
Dexter knew still less of the rules of drawing, color, and
composition. His pictures were, in the strictest meaning of that
expressive word, Daubs. The diseased and riotous delight of the
painter in representing Horrors was (with certain exceptions to
be hereafter mentioned) the one remarkable quality that I could
discover in the series of his works.
The first of the Passion pictures illustrated Revenge. A corpse,
in fancy costume, lay on the bank of a foaming river, under the
shade of a giant tree. An infuriated man, also in fancy costume,
stood astride over the dead body, with his sword lifted to the
lowering sky, and watched, with a horrid expression of delight,
the blood of the man whom he had just killed dripping slowly in a
procession of big red drops down the broad blade of his weapon.
The next picture illustrated Cruelty, in many compartments. In
one I saw a disemboweled horse savagely spurred on by his rider
at a bull-fight. In another, an aged philosopher was dissecting a
living cat, and gloating over his work. In a third, two pagans
politely congratulated each other on the torture of two saints:
one saint was roasting on a grid-iron; the other, hung up to a
tree by his heels, had been just skinned, and was not quite dead
yet. Feeling no great desire, after these specimens, to look at
any more of the illustrated Passions, I turned to the opposite
wall to be instructed in the career of the Wandering Jew. Here a
second inscription informed me that the painter considered the
Flying Dutchman to be no other than the Wandering Jew, pursuing
his interminable Journey by sea. The marine adventures of this
mysterious personage were the adventures chosen for
representation by Dexter's brush. The first picture showed me a
harbor on a rocky coast. A vessel was at anchor, with the
helmsman singing on the deck. The sea in the offing was black and
rolling; thunder-clouds lay low on the horizon, split by broad
flashes of lightning. In the glare of the lightning, heaving and
pitching, appeared the misty form of the Phantom Ship approaching
the shore. In this work, badly as it was painted, there were
really signs of a powerful imagination, and even of a poetical
feeling for the supernatural. The next picture showed the Phantom
Ship, moored (to the horror and astonishment of the helmsman)
behind the earthly vessel in the harbor. The Jew had stepped on
shore. His boat was on the beach. His crew--little men with
stony, white faces, dressed in funeral black--sat in silent rows
on the seats of the boat, with their oars in their lean, long
hands. The Jew, also a black, stood with his eyes and hands
raised imploringly to the thunderous heaven. The wild creatures
of land and sea--the tiger, the rhinoceros, the crocodile, the
sea-serpent, the shark, and the devil-fish--surrounded the
accursed Wanderer in a mystic circle, daunted and fascinated at
the sight of him. The lightning was gone. The sky and sea had
darkened to a great black blank. A faint and lurid light lighted
the scene, falling downward from a torch, brandished by an
avenging Spirit that hovered over the Jew on outspread vulture
wings. Wild as the picture might be in its conception, there was
a suggestive power in it which I confess strongly impressed me.
The mysterious silence in the house, and my strange position at
the moment, no doubt had their effect on my mind. While I was
still looking at the ghastly composition before me, the shrill
trilling sound of the whistle upstairs burst on the stillness.
For the moment my nerves were so completely upset that I started
with a cry of alarm. I felt a momentary impulse to open the door
and run out. The idea of trusting myself alone with the man who
had painted those frightful pictures actually terrified me; I was
obliged to sit down on one of the hall chairs. Some minutes
passed before my mind recovered its balance, and I began to feel
like my own ordinary self again. The whistle sounded impatiently
for the second time. I rose and ascended the broad flight of
stairs which led to the first story. To draw back at the point
which I had now reached would have utterly degraded me in my own
estimation. Still, my heart did certainly beat faster than usual
as I approached the door of the circular anteroom; and I honestly
acknowledge that I saw my own imprudence, just then, in a
singularly vivid light.
There was a glass over the mantel-piece in the anteroom. I
lingered for a moment (nervous as I was) to see how I looked in
the glass.
The hanging tapestry over the inner door had been left partially
drawn aside. Softly as I moved, the dog's ears of Miserrimus
Dexter caught the sound of my dress on the floor. The fine tenor
voice, which I had last heard singing, called to me softly.
"Is that Mrs. Valeria? Please don't wait there. Come in!"
I entered the inner room.
The wheeled chair advanced to meet me, so slowly and so softly
that I hardly knew it again. Miserrimus Dexter languidly held out
his hand. His head inclined pensively to one side; his large blue
eyes looked at me piteously. Not a vestige seemed to be left of
the raging, shouting creature of my first visit, who was Napoleon
at one moment, and Shakespeare at another. Mr. Dexter of the
morning was a mild, thoughtful, melancholy man, who only recalled
Mr. Dexter of the night by the inveterate oddity of his dress.
His jacket, on this occasion, was of pink quilted silk. The
coverlet which hid his deformity matched the jacket in pale
sea-green satin; and, to complete these strange vagaries of
costume, his wrists were actually adorned with massive bracelets
of gold, formed on the severely simple models which have
descended to us from ancient times.
"How good of you to cheer and charm me by coming here!" he said,
in his most mournful and most mu sical tones. "I have dressed,
expressly to receive you, in the prettiest clothes I have. Don't
be surprised. Except in this ignoble and material nineteenth
century, men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful
colors as well as women. A hundred years ago a gentleman in pink
silk was a gentleman properly dressed. Fifteen hundred years ago
the patricians of the classic times wore bracelets exactly like
mine. I despise the brutish contempt for beauty and the mean
dread of expense which degrade a gentleman's costume to black
cloth, and limit a gentleman's ornaments to a finger-ring, in the
age I live in. I like to be bright and I beautiful, especially
when brightness and beauty come to see me. You don't know how
precious your society is to me. This is one of my melancholy
days. Tears rise unbidden to my eyes. I sigh and sorrow over
myself; I languish for pity. Just think of what I am! A poor
solitary creature, cursed with a frightful deformity. How
pitiable! how dreadful! My affectionate heart--wasted. My
extraordinary talents--useless or misapplied. Sad! sad! sad!
Please pity me."
His eyes were positively filled with tears--tears of compassion
for himself! He looked at me and spoke to me with the wailing,
querulous entreaty of a sick child wanting to be nursed. I was
utterly at a loss what to do. It was perfectly ridiculous--but I
was never more embarrassed in my life.
"Please pity me!" he repeated. "Don't be cruel. I only ask a
little thing. Pretty Mrs. Valeria, say you pity me!"
I said I pitied him--and I felt that I blushed as I did it.
"Thank you," said Miserrimus Dexter, humbly. "It does me good. Go
a little further. Pat my hand."
I tried to restrain myself; but the sense of the absurdity of
this last petition (quite gravely addressed to me, remember!) was
too strong to be controlled. I burst out laughing.
Miserrimus Dexter looked at me with a blank astonishment which
only increased my merriment. Had I offended him? Apparently not.
Recovering from his astonishment, he laid his head luxuriously on
the back of his chair, with the expression of a man who was
listening critically to a performance of some sort. When I had
quite exhausted myself, he raised his head and clapped his
shapely white hands, and honored me with an "encore."
"Do it again," he said, still in the same childish way. "Merry
Mrs. Valeria, _you_ have a musical laugh--_I_ have a musical ear.
Do it again."
I was serious enough by this time. "I am ashamed of myself, Mr.
Dexter," I said. "Pray forgive me."
He made no answer to this; I doubt if he heard me. His variable
temper appeared to be in course of undergoing some new change. He
sat looking at my dress (as I supposed) with a steady and anxious
attention, gravely forming his own conclusions, steadfastly
pursuing his own train of thought.
"Mrs. Valeria," he burst out suddenly, "you are not comfortable
in that chair."
"Pardon me," I replied; "I am quite comfortable."
"Pardon _me,_" he rejoined. "There is a chair of Indian
basket-work at that end of the room which is much better suited
to you. Will you accept my apologies if I am rude enough to allow
you to fetch it for yourself? I have a reason."
He had a reason! What new piece of eccentricity was he about to
exhibit? I rose and fetched the chair. It was light enough to be
quite easily carried. As I returned to him, I noticed that his
eyes were strangely employed in what seemed to be the closest
scrutiny of my dress. And, stranger still, the result of this
appeared to be partly to interest and partly to distress him.
I placed the chair near him, and was about to take my seat in it,
when he sent me back again, on another errand, to the end of the
room.
"Oblige me indescribably," he said. "There is a hand-screen
hanging on the wall, which matches the chair. We are rather near
the fire here. You may find the screen useful. Once more forgive
me for letting you fetch it for yourself. Once more let me assure
you that I have a reason."
Here was his "reason," reiterated, emphatically reiterated, for
the second time! Curiosity made me as completely the obedient
servant of his caprices as Ariel herself. I fetched the
hand-screen. Returning with it, I met his eyes still fixed with
the same incomprehensible attention on my perfectly plain and
unpretending dress, and still expressing the same curious mixture
of interest and regret.
"Thank you a thousand times," he said. "You have (quite
innocently) wrung my heart. But you have not the less done me an
inestimable kindness. Will you promise not to be offended with me
if I confess the truth?"
He was approaching his explanation I never gave a promise more
readily in my life.
"I have rudely allowed you to fetch your chair and your screen
for yourself," he went on. "My motive will seem a very strange
one, I am afraid. Did you observe that I noticed you very
attentively--too attentively, perhaps?"
"Yes," I said. "I thought you were noticing my dress."
He shook his head, and sighed bitterly.
"Not your dress," he said; "and not your face. Your dress is
dark. Your face is still strange to me. Dear Mrs. Valeria, I
wanted to see you walk."
To see me walk! What did he mean? Where was that erratic mind of
his wandering to now?
"You have a rare accomplishment for an Englishwoman," he
resumed--"you walk well. _She_ walked well. I couldn't resist the
temptation of seeing her again, in seeing you. It was _her_
movement, _her_ sweet, simple, unsought grace (not yours), when
you walked to the end of the room and returned to me. You raised
her from the dead when you fetched the chair and the screen.
Pardon me for making use of you: the idea was innocent, the
motive was sacred. You have distressed--and delighted me. My
heart bleeds--and thanks you."
He paused for a moment; he let his head droop on his breast, then
suddenly raised it again.
"Surely we were talking about her last night?" he said. "What did
I say? what did you say? My memory is confused; I half remember,
half forget. Please remind me. You're not offended with me--are
you?"
I might have been offended with another man. Not with him. I was
far too anxious to find my way into his confidence--now that he
had touched of his own accord on the subject of Eustace's first
wife--to be offended with Miserrimus Dexter.
"We were speaking," I answered, "of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's
death, and we were saying to one another--"
He interrupted me, leaning forward eagerly in his chair.
"Yes! yes!" he exclaimed. "And I was wondering what interest
_you_ could have in penetrating the mystery of her death. Tell
me! Confide in me! I am dying to know!"
"Not even you have a stronger interest in that subject than the
interest that I feel," I said. "The happiness of my whole life to
come depends on my clearing up the mystery."
"Good God--why?" he cried. "Stop! I am exciting myself. I mustn't
do that. I must have all my wits about me; I mustn't wander. The
thing is too serious. Wait a minute!"
An elegant little basket was hooked on to one of the arms of his
chair. He opened it, and drew out a strip of embroidery partially
finished, with the necessary materials for working, a complete.
We looked at each other across the embroidery. He noticed my
surprise.
"Women," he said, "wisely compose their minds, and help
themselves to think quietly, by doing needle-work. Why are men
such fools as to deny themselves the same admirable resource--the
simple and soothing occupation which keeps the nerves steady and
leaves the mind calm and free? As a man, I follow the woman's
wise example. Mrs. Valeria, permit me to compose myself."
Gravely arranging his embroidery, this extraordinary being began
to work with the patient and nimble dexterity of an accomplished
needle-woman.
"Now," said Miserrimus Dexter, "if you are ready, I am. You
talk--I work. Please begin."
I obeyed him, and began.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE DARK.
WITH such a man as Miserrimus Dexter, and with such a purpose as
I had in view, no half-confidences were possible. I must either
risk the most unreserved acknowledgment of the interests that I
really had at stake, or I must make the best excuse that occurred
to me for abandoning my
contemplated experiment at the last moment. In my present
critical situation, no such refuge as a middle course lay before
me--even if I had been inclined to take it. As things were, I ran
risks, and plunged headlong into my own affairs at starting.
"Thus far, you know little or nothing about me, Mr. Dexter," I
said. "You are, as I believe, quite unaware that my husband and I
are not living together at the present time."
"Is it necessary to mention your husband?" he asked, coldly,
without looking up from his embroidery, and without pausing in
his work.
"It is absolutely necessary," I answered. "I can explain myself
to you in no other way."
He bent his head, and sighed resignedly.
"You and your husband are not living together at the present
time," he resumed. "Does that mean that Eustace has left you?"
"He has left me, and has gone abroad."
"Without any necessity for it?"
"Without the least necessity."
"Has he appointed no time for his return to you?"
"If he persevere in his present resolution, Mr. Dexter, Eustace
will never return to me."
For the first time he raised his head from his embroidery--with a
sudden appearance of interest.
"Is the quarrel so serious as that?" he asked. "Are you free of
each other, pretty Mrs. Valeria, by common consent of both
parties?"
The tone in which he put the question was not at all to my
liking. The look he fixed on me was a look which unpleasantly
suggested that I had trusted myself alone with him, and that he
might end in taking advantage of it. I reminded him quietly, by
my manner more than by my words, of the respect which he owed to
me.
"You are entirely mistaken," I said. "There is no anger--there is
not even a misunderstanding between us. Our parting has cost
bitter sorrow, Mr. Dexter, to him and to me."
He submitted to be set right with ironical resignation. "I am all
attention," he said, threading his needle. "Pray go on; I won't
interrupt you again." Acting on this invitation, I told him the
truth about my husband and myself quite unreservedly, taking
care, however, at the same time, to put Eustace's motives in the
best light that they would bear. Miserrimus Dexter dropped his
embroidery on his lap, and laughed softly to himself, with an
impish enjoyment of my poor little narrative, which set every
nerve in me on edge as I looked at him.
"I see nothing to laugh at," I said, sharply.
His beautiful blue eyes rested on me with a look of innocent
surprise.
"Nothing to laugh at," he repeated, "in such an exhibition of
human folly as you have just described?" His expression suddenly
changed his face darkened and hardened very strangely. "Stop!" he
cried, before I could answer him. "There can be only one reason
for you're taking it as seriously as you do. Mrs. Valeria! you
are fond of your husband."
"Fond of him isn't strong enough to express it," I retorted. "I
love him with my whole heart."
Miserrimus Dexter stroked his magnificent beard, and
contemplatively repeated my words. "You love him with your whole
heart? Do you know why?"
"Because I can't help it," I answered, doggedly.
He smiled satirically, and went on with his embroidery.
"Curious!" he said to himself; "Eustace's first wife loved him
too. There are some men whom the women all like, and there are
other men whom the women never care for. Without the least reason
for it in either case. The one man is just as good as the other;
just as handsome, as agreeable, as honorable, and as high in rank
as the other. And yet for Number One they will go through fire
and water, and for Number Two they won't so much as turn their
heads to look at him. Why? They don't know themselves--as Mrs.
Valeria has just said! Is there a physical reason for it? Is
there some potent magnetic emanation from Number One which Number
Two doesn't possess? I must investigate this when I have the
time, and when I find myself in the humor." Having so far settled
the question to his own entire satisfaction, he looked up at me
again. "I am still in the dark about you and your motives," he
said. "I am still as far as ever from understanding what your
interest is in investigating that hideous tragedy at Gleninch.
Clever Mrs. Valeria, please take me by the hand, and lead me into
the light. You're not offended with me are you? Make it up; and I
will give you this pretty piece of embroidery when I have done
it. I am only a poor, solitary, deformed wretch, with a quaint
turn of mind; I mean no harm. Forgive me! indulge me! enlighten
me!"
He resumed his childish ways; he recover, his innocent smile,
with the odd little puckers and wrinkles accompanying it at the
corners of his eyes. I began to doubt whether I might not have
been unreasonably hard on him. I penitently resolved to be more
considerate toward his infirmities of mind and body during the
remainder of my visit.
"Let me go back for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at
Gleninch," I said. "You agree with me in believing Eustace to be
absolutely innocent of the crime for which he was tried. Your
evidence at the Trial tells me that."
He paused over his work, and looked at me with a grave and stern
attention which presented his face in quite a new light.
"That is _our_ opinion," I resumed. "But it was not the opinion
of the Jury. Their verdict, you remember, was Not Proven. In
plain English, the Jury who tried my husband declined to express
their opinion, positively and publicly, that he was innocent. Am
I right?"
Instead of answering, he suddenly put his embroidery back in the
basket, and moved the machinery of his chair, so as to bring it
close by mine.
"Who told you this?" he asked.
"I found it for myself in a book."
Thus far his face had expressed steady attention--and no more.
Now, for the first time, I thought I saw something darkly passing
over him which betrayed itself to my mind as rising distrust.
"Ladies are not generally in the habit of troubling their heads
about dry questions of law," he said. "Mrs. Eustace Macallan the
Second, you must have some very powerful motive for turning your
studies that way."
"I have a very powerful motive, Mr. Dexter My husband is resigned
to the Scotch Verdict His mother is resigned to it. His friends
(so far as I know) are resigned to it--"
"Well?"
"Well! I don't agree with my husband, or his mother, or his
friends. I refuse to submit to the Scotch Verdict."
The instant I said those words, the madness in him which I had
hitherto denied, seemed to break out. He suddenly stretched
himself over his chair: he pounced on me, with a hand on each of
my shoulders; his wild eyes questioned me fiercely, frantically,
within a few inches of my face.
"What do you mean?" he shouted, at the utmost pitch of his
ringing and resonant voice.
A deadly fear of him shook me. I did my best to hide the outward
betrayal of it. By look and word, I showed him, as firmly as I
could, that I resented the liberty he had taken with me.
"Remove your hands, sir," I said, "and retire to your proper
place."
He obeyed me mechanically. He apologized to me mechanically. His
whole mind was evidently still filled with the words that I had
spoken to him, and still bent on discovering what those words
meant.
"I beg your pardon," he said; "I humbly beg your pardon. The
subject excites me, frightens me, maddens me. You don't know what
a difficulty I have in controlling myself. Never mind. Don't take
me seriously. Don't be frightened at me. I am so ashamed of
myself--I feel so small and so miserable at having offended you.
Make me suffer for it. Take a stick and beat me. Tie me down in
my chair. Call up Ariel, who is as strong as a horse, and tell
her to hold me. Dear Mrs. Valeria! Injured Mrs. Valeria! I'll
endure anything in the way of punishment, if you will only tell
me what you mean by not submitting to the Scotch Verdict." He
backed his chair penitently as he made that entreaty. "Am I far
enough away yet?" he asked, with a rueful look. "Do I still
frighten you? I'll drop out of sight, if you prefer it, in the
bottom of the chair."
He lifted the sea-green coverlet. In another moment he would have
disappeared like a puppet in a show if I had not stopped him.
"Say nothing more, and do
nothing more; I accept your apologies," I said. "When I tell you
that I refuse to submit to the opinion of the Scotch Jury, I mean
exactly what my words express. That verdict has left a stain on
my husband's character. He feels the stain bitterly. How bitterly
no one knows so well as I do. His sense of his degradation is the
sense that has parted him from me. It is not enough for _him_
that I am persuaded of his innocence. Nothing will bring him back
to me--nothing will persuade Eustace that I think him worthy to
be the guide and companion of my life--but the proof of his
innocence, set before the Jury which doubts it, and the public
which doubts it, to this day. He and his friends and his lawyers
all despair of ever finding that proof now. But I am his wife;
and none of you love him as I love him. I alone refuse to
despair; I alone refuse to listen to reason. If God spare me, Mr.
Dexter, I dedicate my life to the vindication of my husband's
innocence. You are his old friend--I am here to ask you to help
me."
It appeared to be now my turn to frighten _him._ The color left
his face. He passed his hand restlessly over his forehead, as if
he were trying to brush some delusion out of his brain.
"Is this one of my dreams?" he asked, faintly. "Are you a Vision
of the night?"
"I am only a friendless woman," I said, "who has lost all that
she loved and prized, and who is trying to win it back again."
He began to move his chair nearer to me once more. I lifted my
hand. He stopped the chair directly. There was a moment of
silence. We sat watching one another. I saw his hands tremble as
he laid them on the coverlet; I saw his face grow paler and
paler, and his under lip drop. What dead and buried remembrances
had I brought to life in him, in all their olden horror?
He was the first to speak again.
"So this is your interest," he said, "in clearing up the mystery
of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death?"
"Yes."
"And you believe that I can help you?"
"I do."
He slowly lifted one of his hands, and pointed at me with his
long forefinger.
"You suspect somebody," he said.
The tone in which he spoke was low and threatening; it warned me
to be careful. At the same time, if I now shut him out of my
confidence, I should lose the reward that might yet be to come,
for all that I had suffered and risked at that perilous
interview.
"You suspect somebody," he repeated.
"Perhaps!" was all that I said in return.
"Is the person within your reach?"
"Not yet."
"Do you know where the person is?"
"No."
He laid his head languidly on the back of his chair, with a
trembling long-drawn sigh. Was he disappointed? Or was he
relieved? Or was he simply exhausted in mind and body alike? Who
could fathom him? Who could say?
"Will you give me five minutes?" he asked, feebly and wearily,
without raising his head. "You know already how any reference to
events at Gleninch excites and shakes me. I shall be fit for it
again, if you will kindly give me a few minutes to myself. There
are books in the next room. Please excuse me."
I at once retired to the circular antechamber. He followed me in
his chair, and closed the door between us.
CHAPTER XXIX.
IN THE LIGHT.
A LITTLE interval of solitude was a relief to me, as well as to
Miserrimus Dexter.
Startling doubts beset me as I walked restlessly backward and
forward, now in the anteroom, and now in the corridor outside. It
was plain that I had (quite innocently) disturbed the repose of
some formidable secrets in Miserrimus Dexter's mind. I confused
and wearied my poor brains in trying to guess what the secrets
might be. All my ingenuity--as after-events showed me--was wasted
on speculations not one of which even approached the truth. I was
on surer ground when I arrived at the conclusion that Dexter had
really kept every mortal creature out of his confidence. He could
never have betrayed such serious signs of disturbance as I had
noticed in him, if he had publicly acknowledged at the Trial, or
if he had privately communicated to any chosen friend, all that
he knew of the tragic and terrible drama acted in the bedchamber
at Gleninch. What powerful influence had induced him to close his
lips? Had he been silent in mercy to others? or in dread of
consequences to himself? Impossible to tell! Could I hope that he
would confide to Me what he had kept secret from Justice and
Friendship alike? When he knew what I really wanted of him, would
he arm me, out of his own stores of knowledge, with the weapon
that would win me victory in the struggle to come? The chances
were against it--there was no denying that. Still the end was
worth trying for. The caprice of the moment might yet stand my
friend, with such a wayward being as Miserrimus Dexter. My plans
and projects were sufficiently strange, sufficiently wide of the
ordinary limits of a woman's thoughts and actions, to attract his
sympathies. "Who knows," I thought to myself, "if I may not take
his confidence by surprise, by simply telling him the truth?"
The interval expired; the door was thrown open; the voice of my
host summoned me again to the inner room.
"Welcome back!" said Miserrimus Dexter.
"Dear Mrs. Valeria, I am quite myself again. How are you?"
He looked and spoke with the easy cordiality of an old friend.
During the period of my absence, short as it was, another change
had passed over this most multiform of living beings. His eyes
sparkled with good-humor; his cheeks were flushing under a new
excitement of some sort. Even his dress had undergone alteration
since I had seen it last. He now wore an extemporized cap of
white paper; his ruffles were tucked up; a clean apron was thrown
over the sea-green coverlet. He hacked his chair before me,
bowing and smiling, and waved me to a seat with the grace of a
dancing master, chastened by the dignity of a lord in waiting.
"I am going to cook," he announced, with the most engaging
simplicity. "We both stand in need of refreshment before we
return to the serious business of our interview. You see me in my
cook's dress; forgive it. There is a form in these things. I am a
great stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Please
sanction that proceeding by taking some wine too."
He filled a goblet of ancient Venetian glass with a purple-red
liquor, beautiful to see.
"Burgundy!" he said--"the king of wine: And this is the king of
Burgundies--Clos Vougeot. I drink to your health and happiness!"
He filled a second goblet for himself, and honored the toast by
draining it to the bottom. I now understood the sparkle in his
eyes and the flush in his cheeks. It was my interest not to
offend him. I drank a little of his wine, and I quite agreed with
him. I thought it delicious.
"What shall we eat?" he asked. "It must be something worthy of
our Clos Vougeot. Ariel is good at roasting and boiling joints,
poor wretch! but I don't insult your taste by offering you
Ariel's cookery. Plain joints!" he exclaimed, with an expression
of refined disgust. "Bah! A man who eats a plain joint is only
one remove from a cannibal or a butcher. Will you leave it to me
to discover something more worthy of us? Let us go to the
kitchen."
He wheeled his chair around, and invited me to accompany him with
a courteous wave of his hand.
I followed the chair to some closed curtains at one end of the
room, which I had not hitherto noticed. Drawing aside the
curtains, he revealed to view an alcove, in which stood a neat
little gas-stove for cooking. Drawers and cupboards, plates,
dishes, and saucepans, were ranged around the alcove--all on a
miniature scale, all scrupulously bright and clean. "Welcome to
the kitchen!" said Miserrimus Dexter. He drew out of a recess in
the wall a marble slab, which served as a table, and reflected
profoundly, with his hand to his head. "I have it!" he cried, and
opening one of the cupboards next, took from it a black bottle of
a form that was new to me. Sounding this bottle with a spike, he
pierced and produced to view some little irregularly formed black
objects, which might have been familiar enough to a woman
accustomed to the luxurious tables of the rich, but which were a
new revelation to a person like myself, who
had led a simple country life in the house of a clergyman with
small means. When I saw my host carefully lay out these occult
substances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and then
plunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them,
my curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say,
"What are those things, Mr. Dexter, and are we really going to
eat them?"
He started at the rash question, and looked at me with hands
outspread in irrepressible astonishment.
"Where is our boasted progress?" he cried. What is education but
a name? Here is a cultivated person who doesn't know Truffles
when she sees them!"
"I have heard of truffles," I answered, humbly, "but I never saw
them before. We had no such foreign luxuries as those, Mr.
Dexter, at home in the North."
Miserrimus Dexter lifted one of the truffles tenderly on his
spike, and held it up to me in a favorable light.
"Make the most of one of the few first sensations in this life
which has no ingredient of disappointment lurking under the
surface," he said. "Look at it; meditate over it. You shall eat
it, Mrs. Valeria, stewed in Burgundy!"
He lighted the gas for cooking with the air of a man who was
about to offer me an inestimable proof of his good-will.
"Forgive me if I observe the most absolute silence," he said,
"dating from the moment when I take this in my hand." He produced
a bright little stew-pan from his collection of culinary utensils
as he spoke. "Properly pursued, the Art of Cookery allows of no
divided attention," he continued, gravely. "In that observation
you will find the reason why no woman ever has reached, or ever
will reach, the highest distinction as a cook. As a rule, women
are incapable of absolutely concentrating their attention on any
one occupation for any given time. Their minds will run on
something else--say; typically, for the sake of illustration,
their sweetheart or their new bonnet. The one obstacle, Mrs.
Valeria, to your rising equal to the men in the various
industrial processes of life is not raised, as the women vainly
suppose, by the defective institutions of the age they live in.
No! the obstacle is in themselves. No institutions that can be
devised to encourage them will ever be strong enough to contend
successfully with the sweetheart and the new bonnet. A little
while ago, for instance, I was instrumental in getting women
employed in our local post-office here. The other day I took the
trouble--a serious business to me--of getting downstairs, and
wheeling myself away to the office to see how they were getting
on. I took a letter with me to register. It had an unusually long
address. The registering woman began copying the address on the
receipt form, in a business-like manner cheering and delightful
to see. Half way through, a little child-sister of one of the
other women employed trotted into the office, and popped under
the counter to go and speak to her relative. The registering
woman's mind instantly gave way. Her pencil stopped; her eyes
wandered off to the child with a charming expression of interest.
'Well, Lucy,' she said, 'how d'ye do?' Then she remembered
business again, and returned to her receipt. When I took it
across the counter, an important line in the address of my letter
was left out in the copy. Thanks to Lucy. Now a man in the same
position would not have seen Lucy--he would have been too closely
occupied with what he was about at the moment. There is the whole
difference between the mental constitution of the sexes, which no
legislation will ever alter as long as the world lasts! What does
it matter? Women are infinitely superior to men in the moral
qualities which are the true adornments of humanity. Be
content--oh, my mistaken sisters, be content with that!"
He twisted his chair around toward the stove. It was useless to
dispute the question with him, even if I had felt inclined to do
so. He absorbed himself in his stew-pan.
I looked about me in the room.
The same insatiable relish for horrors exhibited downstairs by
the pictures in the hall was displayed again here. The
photographs hanging on the wall represented the various forms of
madness taken from the life. The plaster casts ranged on the
shelf opposite were casts (after death) of the heads of famous
murderers. A frightful little skeleton of a woman hung in a
cupboard, behind a glazed door, with this cynical inscription
placed above the skull: "Behold the scaffolding on which beauty
is built!" In a corresponding cupboard, with the door wide open,
there hung in loose folds a shirt (as I took it to be) of chamois
leather. Touching it (and finding it to be far softer than any
chamois leather that my fingers had ever felt before), I
disarranged the folds, and disclosed a ticket pinned among them,
describing the thing in these horrid lines: "Skin of a French
Marquis, tanned in the Revolution of Ninety-three. Who says the
nobility are not good for something? They make good leather."
After this last specimen of my host's taste in curiosities, I
pursued my investigation no further. I returned to my chair, and
waited for the truffles.
After a brief interval, the voice of the
poet-painter-composer-and-cook summoned me back to the alcove.
The gas was out. The stew-pan and its accompaniments had
vanished. On the marble slab were two plates, two napkins, two
rolls of bread, and a dish, with another napkin in it, on which
reposed two quaint little black balls. Miserrimus Dexter,
regarding me with a smile of benevolent interest, put one of the
balls on my plate, and took the other himself. "Compose yourself,
Mrs. Valeria," he said. "This is an epoch in your life. Your
first Truffle! Don't touch it with the knife. Use the fork alone.
And--pardon me; this is most important--eat slowly."
I followed my instructions, and assumed an enthusiasm which I
honestly confess I did not feel. I privately thought the new
vegetable a great deal too rich, and in other respects quite
unworthy of the fuss that had been made about it. Miserrimus
Dexter lingered and languished over his truffles, and sipped his
wonderful Burgundy, and sang his own praises as a cook until I
was really almost mad with impatience to return to the real
object of my visit. In the reckless state of mind which this
feeling produced, I abruptly reminded my host that he was wasting
our time, by the most dangerous question that I could possibly
put to him.
"Mr. Dexter," I said, "have you seen anything lately of Mrs.
Beauly?"
The easy sense of enjoyment expressed in his face left it at
those rash words, and went out like a suddenly extinguished
light. That furtive distrust of me which I had already noticed
instantly made itself felt again in his manner and in his voice.
"Do you know Mrs. Beauly?" he asked.
"I only know her," I answered, "by what I have read of her in the
Trial."
He was not satisfied with that reply.
"You must have an interest of some sort in Mrs. Beauly," he said,
"or you would not have asked me about her. Is it the interest of
a friend, or the interest of an enemy?"
Rash as I might be, I was not quite reckless enough yet to meet
that plain question by an equally plain reply. I saw enough in
his face to warn me to be careful with him before it was too
late.
"I can only answer you in one way," I rejoined. "I must return to
a subject which is very painful to you--the subject of the
Trial."
"Go on," he said, with one of his grim outbursts of humor. "Here
I am at your mercy--a martyr at the stake. Poke the fire! poke
the fire!"
"I am only an ignorant woman," I resumed, "and I dare say I am
quite wrong; but there is one part of my husband's trial which
doesn't at all satisfy me. The defense set up for him seems to me
to have been a complete mistake."
"A complete mistake?" he repeated. "Strange language, Mrs.
Valeria, to say the least of it!" He tried to speak lightly; he
took up his goblet of wine; but I could see that I had produced
an effect on him. His hand trembled as it carried the wine to his
lips.
"I don't doubt that Eustace's first wife really asked him to buy
the arsenic," I continued. "I don't doubt that she used it
secretly to improve her complexion. But w hat I do _not_ believe
is that she died of an overdose of the poison, taken by mistake."
He put back the goblet of wine on the table near him so
unsteadily that he spilled the greater part of it. For a moment
his eyes met mine, then looked down again.
"How do you believe she died?" he inquired, in tones so low that
I could barely hear them.
"By the hand of a poisoner," I answered.
He made a movement as if he were about to start up in the chair,
and sank back again, seized, apparently, with a sudden faintness.
"Not my husband!" I hastened to add. "You know that I am
satisfied of _his_ innocence."
I saw him shudder. I saw his hands fasten their hold convulsively
on the arms of his chair.
"Who poisoned her?" he asked, still lying helplessly back in the
chair.
At the critical moment my courage failed me. I was afraid to tell
him in what direction my suspicions pointed.
"Can't you guess?" I said.
There was a pause. I supposed him to be seceretly following his
own train of thought. It was not for long. On a sudden he started
up in his chair. The prostration which had possessed him appeared
to vanish in an instant. His eyes recovered their wild light; his
hands were steady again; his color was brighter than ever. Had he
been pondering over the secret of my interest in Mrs. Beauly? and
had he guessed? He had!
"Answer on your word of honor!" he cried. "Don't attempt to
deceive me! Is it a woman?"
"It is."
"What is the first letter of her name? Is it one of the first
three letters of the alphabet?"
"Yes."
"B?"
"Yes."
"Beauly?"
"Beauly."
He threw his hands up above his head, and burst into a frantic
fit of laughter.
"I have lived long enough!" he broke out, wildly. "At last I have
discovered one other person in the world who sees it as plainly
as I do. Cruel Mrs. Valeria! why did you torture me? Why didn't
you own it before?"
"What!" I exclaimed, catching the infection of his excitement.
"Are _your_ ideas _my_ ideas? Is it possible that _you_ suspect
Mrs. Beauly too?"
He made this remarkable reply:
"Suspect?" he repeated, contemptuously. "There isn't the shadow
of a doubt about it. Mrs. Beauly poisoned her."
CHAPTER XXX.
THE INDICTMENT OF MRS. BEAULY.
I STARTED to my feet, and looked at Miserrimus Dexter. I was too
much agitated to be able to speak to him.
My utmost expectations had not prepared me for the tone of
absolute conviction in which he had spoken. At the best, I had
anticipated that he might, by the barest chance, agree with me in
suspecting Mrs. Beauly. And now his own lips had said it, without
hesitation or reserve! "There isn't the shadow of a doubt: Mrs.
Beauly poisoned her."
"Sit down," he said, quietly. "There's nothing to be afraid of.
Nobody can hear us in this room."
I sat down again, and recovered myself a little.
"Have you never told any one else what you have just told me?"
was the first question that I put to him.
"Never. No one else suspected her."
"Not even the lawyers?"
"Not even the lawyers. There is no legal evidence against Mrs.
Beauly. There is nothing but moral certainty."
"Surely you might have found the evidence if you had tried?"
He laughed at the idea.
"Look at me!" he said. "How is a man to hunt up evidence who is
tied to this chair? Besides, there were other difficulties in my
way. I am not generally in the habit of needlessly betraying
myself--I am a cautious man, though you may not have noticed it.
But my immeasurable hatred of Mrs. Beauly was not to be
concealed. If eyes can tell secrets, she must have discovered, in
my eyes, that I hungered and thirsted to see her in the hangman's
hands. From first to last, I tell you, Mrs. Borgia-Beauly was on
her guard against me. Can I describe her cunning? All my
resources of language are not equal to the task. Take the degrees
of comparison to give you a faint idea of it: I am positively
cunning; the devil is comparatively cunning; Mrs. Beauly is
superlatively cunning. No! no! If she is ever discovered, at this
distance of time, it will not be done by a man--it will be done
by a woman: a woman whom she doesn't suspect; a woman who can
watch her with the patience of a tigress in a state of
starvation--"
"Say a woman like Me!" I broke out. "I am ready to try."
His eyes glittered; his teeth showed themselves viciously under
his mustache; he drummed fiercely with both hands on the arms of
his chair.
"Do you really mean it?" he asked.
"Put me in your position," I answered . "Enlighten me with your
moral certainty (as you call it)--and you shall see!"
"I'll do it!" he said. "Tell me one thing first. How did an
outside stranger, like you, come to suspect her?"
I set before him, to the best of my ability, the various elements
of suspicion which I had collected from the evidence at the
Trial; and I laid especial stress on the fact (sworn to by the
nurse) that Mrs. Beauly was missing exactly at he time when
Christina Ormsay had left Mrs. Eustace Macallan alone in her
room.
"You have hit it!" cried Miserrimus Dexter. "You are a wonderful
woman! What was she doing on the morning of the day when Mrs.
Eustace Macallan died poisoned? And where was she during the dark
hours of the night? I can tell you where she was _not_--she was
not in her own room."
"Not in her own room?" I repeated. "Are you really sure of that?"
"I am sure of everything that I say, when I am speaking of Mrs.
Beauly. Mind that: and now listen! This is a drama; and I excel
in dramatic narrative. You shall judge for yourself. Date, the
twentieth of October. Scene the Corridor, called the Guests'
Corridor, at Gleninch. On one side, a row of windows looking out
into the garden. On the other, a row of four bedrooms, with
dressing-rooms attached. First bedroom (beginning from the
staircase), occupied by Mrs. Beauly. Second bedroom, empty. Third
bedroom, occupied by Miserrimus Dexter. Fourth bedroom, empty. So
much for the Scene! The time comes next--the time is eleven at
night. Dexter discovered in his bedroom, reading. Enter to him
Eustace Macallan. Eustace speaks: 'My dear fellow, be
particularly careful not to make any noise; don't bowl your chair
up and down the corridor to-night.' Dexter inquires, 'Why?'
Eustace answers: 'Mrs. Beauly has been dining with some friends
in Edinburgh, and has come back terribly fatigued: she has gone
up to her room to rest.' Dexter makes another inquiry (satirical
inquiry, this time): 'How do