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 asIunderstood 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!”
“Tellyou!” I repeated. “After what has happened, surely it is your duty to enlightenme.”
“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 tohim, 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.
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 blameyou. 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 ofmylodgers. 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 Iammad—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 itnow!—I followed her to the station at Broadstairs. She went back by train to Ramsgate.Iwent back by train to Ramsgate. She walked to her lodgings.Iwalked 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 isnotWoodville. Her name (and consequently her son’s name) is Macallan—Mrs. Macallan, widow of the late General Macallan. Yes! your husband isnotyour 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 rousedmytemper 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 foryou; it is not enough forme. 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.
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 ask 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 towardyou.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 Iammarried. 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 arenotlawfully 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. Macallanhadbeen 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 tome—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!
“YES,” said Benjamin. “Itisa 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 doyousay?”
“I have told you already that my mind is in a bad way about Eustace,” I answered. “Isay 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 inthat?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? Areyoufree 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-master 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 fromhimstole 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 abouthim,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 arenotyours 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 youmusthave. 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!”