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 what I donotbelieve 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 ofhisinnocence.”
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 secretly 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. “Areyourideasmyideas? Is it possible thatyoususpect 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.”
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 the 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 wasnot—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 does she look when she is terribly fatigued? As beautiful as ever?’ Answer: ‘I don’t know; I have not seen her; she slipped upstairs, without speaking to anybody.’ Third inquiry by Dexter (logical inquiry, on this occasion): ‘If she spoke to nobody, how do you know she is fatigued?’ Eustace hands Dexter a morsel of paper, and answers: ‘Don t be a fool! I found this on the hall table. Remember what I have told you about keeping quiet; good-night!’ Eustace retires. Dexter looks at the paper, and reads these lines in pencil: ‘Just returned. Please forgive me for going to bed without saying good-night. I have overexerted myself; I am dreadfully fatigued. (Signed) Helena.’ Dexter is by nature suspicious. Dexter suspects Mrs. Beauly. Never mind his reasons; there is no time to enter into his reasons now. He puts the case to himself thus: ‘A weary woman would never have given herself the trouble to write this. She would have found it much less fatiguing to knock at the drawing-room door as she passed, and to make her apologies by word of mouth. I see something here out of the ordinary way; I shall make a night of it in my chair. Very good. Dexter proceeds to make a night of it. He opens his door; wheels himself softly into the corridor; locks the doors of the two empty bedrooms, and returns (with the keys in his pocket) to his own room. ‘Now,’ says D. to himself, ‘if I hear a door softly opened in this part of the house, I shall know for certain it is Mrs. Beauly’s door!’ Upon that he closes his own door, leaving the tiniest little chink to look through; puts out his light; and waits and watches at his tiny little chink, like a cat at a mouse-hole. The corridor is the only place he wants to see; and a lamp burns there all night. Twelve o’clock strikes; he hears the doors below bolted and locked, and nothing happens. Half-past twelve—and nothing still. The house is as silent as the grave. One o’clock; two o’clock—same silence. Half-past two—and something happens at last. Dexter hears a sound close by, in the corridor. It is the sound of a handle turning very softly in a door—in the only door that can be opened, the door of Mrs. Beauly’s room. Dexter drops noiselessly from his chair onto his hands; lies flat on the floor at his chink, and listens. He hears the handle closed again; he sees a dark object flit by him; he pops his head out of his door, down on the floor where nobody would think of looking for him. And what does he see? Mrs. Beauly! There she goes, with the long brown cloak over her shoulders, which she wears when she is driving, floating behind her. In a moment more she disappears, past the fourth bedroom, and turns at a right angle, into a second corridor, called the South Corridor. What rooms are in the South Corridor? There are three rooms. First room, the little study, mentioned in the nurse’s evidence. Second room, Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s bedchamber. Third room, her husband’s bedchamber. What does Mrs. Beauly (supposed to be worn out by fatigue) want in that part of the house at half-past two in the morning? Dexter decides on running the risk of being seen—and sets off on a voyage of discovery. Do you know how he gets from place to place without his chair? Have you seen the poor deformed creature hop on his hands? Shall he show you how he does it, before he goes on with his story?”
I hastened to stop the proposed exhibition.
“I saw you hop last night,” I said. “Go on!—pray go on with your story!
“Do you like my dramatic style of narrative?” he asked. “Am I interesting?”
“Indescribably interesting, Mr. Dexter. I am eager to hear more.”
He smiled in high approval of his own abilities.
“I am equally good at the autobiographical style,” he said. “Shall we try that next, by way of variety?”
“Anything you like,” I cried, losing all patience with him, “if you will only go on!”
“Part Two; Autobiographical Style,” he announced, with a wave of his hand. “I hopped along the Guests’ Corridor, and turned into the South Corridor. I stopped at the little study. Door open; nobody there. I crossed the study to the second door, communicating with Mrs. Macallan’s bedchamber. Locked! I looked through the keyhole Was there something hanging over it, on the other side? I can’t say—I only know there was nothing to be seen but blank darkness. I listened. Nothing to be heard. Same blank darkness, same absolute silence, inside the locked second door of Mrs. Eustace’s room, opening on the corridor. I went on to her husband’s bedchamber. I had the worst possible opinion of Mrs. Beauly—I should not have been in the least surprised if I had caught her in Eustace’s room. I looked through the keyhole. In this case, the key was out of it—or was turned the right way for me—I don’t know which. Eustace’s bed was opposite the door. No discovery. I could see him, all by himself, innocently asleep. I reflected a little. The back staircase was at the end of the corridor, beyond me. I slid down the stairs, and looked about me on the lower floor, by the light of the night-lamp. Doors all fast locked and keys outside, so that I could try them myself. House door barred and bolted. Door leading into the servants’ offices barred and bolted. I got back to my own room, and thought it out quietly. Where could she be? Certainlyinthe house, somewhere. Where? I had made sure of the other rooms; the field of search was exhausted. She could only be in Mrs. Macallan’s room—theoneroom which had baffled my investigations; theonlyroom which had not lent itself to examination. Add to this that the key of the door in the study, communicating with Mrs. Macallan’s room, was stated in the nurse’s evidence to be missing; and don’t forget that the dearest object of Mrs. Beauly’s life (on the showing of her own letter, read at the Trial) was to be Eustace Macallan’s happy wife. Put these things together in your own mind, and you will know what my thoughts were, as I sat waiting for events in my chair, without my telling you. Toward four o’clock, strong as I am, fatigue got the better of me. I fell asleep. Not for long. I awoke with a start and looked at my watch. Twenty-five minutes past four. Had she got back to her room while I was asleep? I hopped to her door and listened. Not a sound. I softly opened the door. The room was empty. I went back again to my own room to wait and watch. It was hard work to keep my eyes open. I drew up the window to let the cool air refresh me; I fought hard with exhausted nature, and exhausted nature won. I fell asleep again. This time it was eight in the morning when I awoke. I have goodish ears, as you may have noticed. I heard women’s voices talking under my open window. I peeped out. Mrs. Beauly and her maid in close confabulation! Mrs. Beauly and her maid looking guiltily about them to make sure that they were neither seen nor heard! ‘Take care, ma’am,’ I heard the maid say; ‘that horrid deformed monster is as sly as a fox. Mind he doesn’t discover you.’ Mrs. Beauly answered, ‘You go first, and look out in front; I will follow you, and make sure there is nobody behind us.’ With that they disappeared around the corner of the house. In five minutes more I heard the door of Mrs. Beauly’s room softly opened and closed again. Three hours later the nurse met her in the corridor, innocently on her way to make inquiries at Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s door. What do you think of these circumstances? What do you think of Mrs. Beauly and her maid having something to say to each other, which they didn’t dare say in the house—for fear of my being behind some door listening to them? What do you think of these discoveries of mine being made on the very morning when Mrs. Eustace was taken ill—on the very day when she died by a poisoner’s hand? Do you see your way to the guilty person? And has mad Miserrimus Dexter been of some assistance to you, so far?”
I was too violently excited to answer him. The way to the vindication of my husband’s innocence was opened to me at last!
“Where is she?” I cried. “And where is that servant who is in her confidence?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Where can I inquire? Can you tell me that?”
He considered a little. “There is one man who must know where she is—or who could find it out for you,” he said.
“Who is he? What is his name?”
“He is a friend of Eustace’s. Major Fitz-David.”
“I know him! I am going to dine with him next week. He has asked you to dine too.”
Miserrimus Dexter laughed contemptuously.
“Major Fitz-David may do very well for the ladies,” he said. “The ladies can treat him as a species of elderly human lap-dog. I don’t dine with lap-dogs; I have said, No. You go. He or some of his ladies may be of use to you. Who are the guests? Did he tell you?”
“There was a French lady whose name I forget,” I said, “and Lady Clarinda—”
“That will do! She is a friend of Mrs. Beauly’s. She is sure to know where Mrs. Beauly is. Come to me the moment you have got your information. Find out if the maid is with her: she is the easiest to deal with of the two. Only make the maid open her lips, and we have got Mrs. Beauly. We crush her,” he cried, bringing his hand down like lightning on the last languid fly of the season, crawling over the arm of his chair—“we crush her as I crush this fly. Stop! A question—a most important question in dealing with the maid. Have you got any money?”
“Plenty of money.”
He snapped his fingers joyously.
“The maid is ours!” he cried. “It’s a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence with the maid. Wait! Another question. About your name? If you approach Mrs. Beauly in your own character as Eustace’s wife, you approach her as the woman who has taken her place—you make a mortal enemy of her at starting. Beware of that!”
My jealousy of Mrs. Beauly, smoldering in me all through the interview, burst into flames at those words. I could resist it no longer—I was obliged to ask him if my husband had ever loved her.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “Did Eustace really—?”
He burst out laughing maliciously, he penetrated my jealousy, and guessed my question almost before it had passed my lips.
“Yes,” he said, “Eustace did really love her—and no mistake about it. She had every reason to believe (before the Trial) that the wife’s death would put her in the wife’s place. But the Trial made another man of Eustace. Mrs. Beauly had been a witness of the public degradation of him. That was enough to prevent his marrying Mrs. Beauly. He broke off with her at once and forever—for the same reason precisely which has led him to separate himself from you. Existence with a woman who knew that he had been tried for his life as a murderer was an existence that he was not hero enough to face. You wanted the truth. There it is! You have need to be cautious of Mrs. Beauly—you have no need to be jealous of her. Take the safe course. Arrange with the Major, when you meet Lady Clarinda at his dinner, that you meet her under an assumed name.”
“I can go to the dinner,” I said, “under the name in which Eustace married me. I can go as ‘Mrs. Woodville.’”
“The very thing!” he exclaimed. “What would I not give to be present when Lady Clarinda introduces you to Mrs. Beauly! Think of the situation. A woman with a hideous secret hidden in her inmost soul: and another woman who knows of it—another woman who is bent, by fair means or foul, on dragging that secret into the light of day. What a struggle! What a plot for a novel! I am in a fever when I think of it. I am beside myself when I look into the future, and see Mrs. Borgia-Beauly brought to her knees at last. Don’t be alarmed!” he cried, with the wild light flashing once more in his eyes. “My brains are beginning to boil again in my head. I must take refuge in physical exercise. I must blow off the steam, or I shall explode in my pink jacket on the spot!”
The old madness seized on him again. I made for the door, to secure my retreat in case of necessity—and then ventured to look around at him.
He was off on his furious wheels—half man, half chair—flying like a whirlwind to the other end of the room. Even this exercise was not violent enough for him in his present mood. In an instant he was down on the floor, poised on his hands, and looking in the distance like a monstrous frog. Hopping down the room, he overthrew, one after another, all the smaller and lighter chairs as he passed them; arrived at the end, he turned, surveyed the prostrate chairs, encouraged himself with a scream of triumph, and leaped rapidly over chair after chair on his hands—his limbless body now thrown back from the shoulders, and now thrown forward to keep the balance—in a manner at once wonderful and horrible to behold. “Dexter’s Leap-frog!” he cried, cheerfully, perching himself with his birdlike lightness on the last of the prostrate chairs when he had reached the further end of the room. “I’m pretty active, Mrs. Valeria, considering I’m a cripple. Let us drink to the hanging of Mrs. Beauly in another bottle of Burgundy!”
I seized desperately on the first excuse that occurred to me for getting away from him.
“You forget,” I said—“I must go at once to the Major. If I don’t warn him in time, he may speak of me to Lady Clarinda by the wrong name.”
Ideas of hurry and movement were just the ideas to take his fancy in his present state. He blew furiously on the whistle that summoned Ariel from the kitchen regions, and danced up and down on his hands in the full frenzy of his delight.
“Ariel shall get you a cab!” he cried. “Drive at a gallop to the Major’s. Set the trap for her without losing a moment. Oh, what a day of days this has been! Oh, what a relief to get rid of my dreadful secret, and share it with You! I am suffocating with happiness—I am like the Spirit of the Earth in Shelley’s poem.” He broke out with the magnificent lines in “Prometheus Unbound,” in which the Earth feels the Spirit of Love, and bursts into speech. “‘The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness! the boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness! the vaporous exultation not to be confined! Ha! ha! the animation of delight, which wraps me like an atmosphere of light, and bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.’ That’s how I feel, Valeria!—that’s how I feel!”
I crossed the threshold while he was still speaking. The last I saw of him he was pouring out that glorious flood of words—his deformed body, poised on the overthrown chair, his face lifted in rapture to some fantastic heaven of his own making. I slipped out softly into the antechamber. Even as I crossed the room, he changed once more. I heard his ringing cry; I heard the soft thump-thump of his hands on the floor. He was going down the room again, in “Dexter’s Leap-frog,” flying over the prostrate chairs.
In the hall, Ariel was on the watch for me.
As I approached her, I happened to be putting on my gloves. She stopped me; and, taking my right arm, lifted my hand toward her face. Was she going to kiss it? or to bite it? Neither. She smelt it like a dog—and dropped it again with a hoarse chuckling laugh.
“You don’t smell of his perfumes,” she said. “Youhaven’ttouched his beard.NowI believe you. Want a cab?”
“Thank you. I’ll walk till I meet a cab.”
She was bent on being polite to me—now I hadnottouched his beard.
“I say!” she burst out, in her deepest notes.
“Yes?”
“I’m glad I didn’t upset you in the canal. There now!”
She gave me a friendly smack on the shoulder which nearly knocked me down—relapsed, the instant after, into her leaden stolidity of look and manner—-and led the way out by the front door. I heard her hoarse chuckling laugh as she locked the gate behind me. My star was at last in the ascendant! In one and the same day I had found my way into the confidence of Ariel and Ariel’s master.
THE days that elapsed before Major Fitz-David’s dinner-party were precious days to me.
My long interview with Miserrimus Dexter had disturbed me far more seriously than I suspected at the time. It was not until some hours after I had left him that I really began to feel how my nerves had been tried by all that I had seen and heard during my visit at his house. I started at the slightest noises; I dreamed of dreadful things; I was ready to cry without reason at one moment, and to fly into a passion without reason at another. Absolute rest was what I wanted, and (thanks to my good Benjamin) was what I got. The dear old man controlled his anxieties on my account, and spared me the questions which his fatherly interest in my welfare made him eager to ask. It was tacitly understood between us that all conversation on the subject of my visit to Miserrimus Dexter (of which, it is needless to say, he strongly disapproved) should be deferred until repose had restored my energies of body and mind. I saw no visitors. Mrs. Macallan came to the cottage, and Major Fitz-David came to the cottage—one of them to hear what had passed between Miserrimus Dexter and myself, the other to amuse me with the latest gossip about the guests at the forthcoming dinner. Benjamin took it on himself to make my apologies, and to spare me the exertion of receiving my visitors. We hired a little open carriage, and took long drives in the pretty country lanes still left flourishing within a few miles of the northern suburb of London. At home we sat and talked quietly of old times, or played at backgammon and dominoes—and so, for a few happy days, led the peaceful unadventurous life which was good for me. When the day of the dinner arrived, I felt restored to my customary health. I was ready again, and eager again, for the introduction to Lady Clarinda and the discovery of Mrs. Beauly.
Benjamin looked a little sadly at my flushed face as we drove to Major Fitz-David’s house.
“Ah, my dear,” he said, in his simple way, “I see you are well again! You have had enough of our quiet life already.”
My recollection of events and persons, in general, at the dinner-party, is singularly indistinct.
I remember that we were very merry, and as easy and familiar with one another as if we had been old friends. I remember that Madame Mirliflore was unapproachably superior to the other women present, in the perfect beauty of her dress, and in the ample justice which she did to the luxurious dinner set before us. I remember the Major’s young prima donna, more round-eyed, more overdressed, more shrill and strident as the coming “Queen of Song,” than ever. I remember the Major himself, always kissing our hands, always luring us to indulge in dainty dishes and drinks, always making love, always detecting resemblances between us, always “under the charm,” and never once out of his character as elderly Don Juan from the beginning of the evening to the end. I remember dear old Benjamin, completely bewildered, shrinking into corners, blushing when he was personally drawn into the conversation, frightened at Madame Mirliflore, bashful with Lady Clarinda, submissive to the Major, suffering under the music, and from the bottom of his honest old heart wishing himself home again. And there, as to the members of that cheerful little gathering, my memory finds its limits—with one exception. The appearance of Lady Clarinda is as present to me as if I had met her yesterday; and of the memorable conversation which we two held together privately, toward the close of the evening, it is no exaggeration to say that I can still call to mind almost every word.
I see her dress, I hear her voice again, while I write.
She was attired, I remember, with that extreme assumption of simplicity which always defeats its own end by irresistibly suggesting art. She wore plain white muslin, over white silk, without trimming or ornament of any kind. Her rich brown hair, dressed in defiance of the prevailing fashion, was thrown back from her forehead, and gathered into a simple knot behind—without adornment of any sort. A little white ribbon encircled her neck, fastened by the only article of jewelry that she wore—a tiny diamond brooch. She was unquestionably handsome; but her beauty was of the somewhat hard and angular type which is so often seen in English women of her race: the nose and chin too prominent and too firmly shaped; the well-opened gray eyes full of spirit and dignity, but wanting in tenderness and mobility of expression. Her manner had all the charm which fine breeding can confer—exquisitely polite, easily cordial; showing that perfect yet unobtrusive confidence in herself which (in England) seems to be the natural outgrowth of pre-eminent social rank. If you had accepted her for what she was, on the surface, you would have said, Here is the model of a noble woman who is perfectly free from pride. And if you had taken a liberty with her, on the strength of that conviction, she would have made you remember it to the end of your life.
We got on together admirably. I was introduced as “Mrs. Woodville,” by previous arrangement with the Major—effected through Benjamin. Before the dinner was over we had promised to exchange visits. Nothing but the opportunity was wanting to lead Lady Clarinda into talking, as I wanted her to talk, of Mrs. Beauly.
Late in the evening the opportunity came.
I had taken refuge from the terrible bravura singing of the Major’s strident prima donna in the back drawing-room. As I had hoped and anticipated, after a while Lady Clarinda (missing me from the group around the piano) came in search of me. She seated herself by my side, out of sight and out of hearing of our friends in the front room; and, to my infinite relief and delight, touched on the subject of Miserrimus Dexter of her own accord. Something I had said of him, when his name had been accidentally mentioned at dinner, remained in her memory, and led us, by perfectly natural gradations, into speaking of Mrs. Beauly. “At last,” I thought to myself, “the Major’s little dinner will bring me my reward!”
And what a reward it was, when it came! My heart sinks in me again—as it sank on that never-to-be-forgotten evening—while I sit at my desk thinking of it.
“So Dexter really spoke to you of Mrs. Beauly!” exclaimed Lady Clarinda. “You have no idea how you surprise me.”
“May I ask why?”
“He hates her! The last time I saw him he wouldn’t allow me to mention her name. It is one of his innumerable oddities. If any such feeling as sympathy is a possible feeling in such a nature as his, he ought to like Helena Beauly. She is the most completely unconventional person I know. When she does break out, poor dear, she says things and does things which are almost reckless enough to be worthy of Dexter himself. I wonder whether you would like her?”
“You have kindly asked me to visit you, Lady Clarinda. Perhaps I may meet her at your house?”
“I hope you will not wait until that is likely to happen,” she said. “Helena’s last whim is to fancy that she has got—the gout, of all the maladies in the world! She is away at some wonderful baths in Hungary or Bohemia (I don’t remember which)—and where she will go, or what she will do next, it is perfectly impossible to say.—Dear Mrs. Woodville! is the heat of the fire too much for you? You are looking quite pale.”
Ifeltthat I was looking pale. The discovery of Mrs. Beauly’s absence from England was a shock for which I was quite unprepared. For a moment it unnerved me.
“Shall we go into the other room?” asked Lady Clarinda.
To go into the other room would be to drop the conversation. I was determined not to let that catastrophe happen. It was just possible that Mrs. Beauly’s maid might have quitted her service, or might have been left behind in England. My information would not be complete until I knew what had become of the maid. I pushed my chair back a little from the fire-place, and took a hand-screen from a table near me; it might be made useful in hiding my face, if any more disappointments were in store for me.
“Thank you, Lady Clarinda; I was only a little too near the fire. I shall do admirably here. You surprise me about Mrs. Beauly. From what Mr. Dexter said to me, I had imagined—”
“Oh, you must not believe anything Dexter tells you!” interposed Lady Clarinda. “He delights in mystifying people; and he purposely misled you, I have no doubt. If all that I hear is true,heought to know more of Helena Beauly’s strange freaks and fancies than most people. He all but discovered her in one of her adventures (down in Scotland), which reminds me of the story in Auber’s charming opera—what is it called? I shall forget my own name next! I mean the opera in which the two nuns slip out of the convent, and go to the ball. Listen! How very odd! That vulgar girl is singing the castanet song in the second act at this moment. Major! what opera is the young lady singing from?”
The Major was scandalized at this interruption. He bustled into the back room—whispered, “Hush! hush! my dear lady; the ‘Domino Noir’”—and bustled back again to the piano.
“Of course!” said Lady Clarinda. “How stupid of me! The ‘Domino Noir.’ And how strange that you should forget it too!”
I had remembered it perfectly; but I could not trust myself to speak. If, as I believed, the “adventure” mentioned by Lady Clarinda was connected, in some way, with Mrs. Beauly’s mysterious proceedings on the morning of the twenty-first of October, I was on the brink of the very discovery which it was the one interest of my life to make! I held the screen so as to hide my face; and I said, in the steadiest voice that I could command at the moment,
“Pray go on!—pray tell me what the adventure was!”
Lady Clarinda was quite flattered by my eager desire to hear the coming narrative.
“I hope my story will be worthy of the interest which you are so good as to feel in it,” she said. “If you only knew Helena—it issolike her! I have it, you must know, from her maid. She has taken a woman who speaks foreign languages with her to Hungary and she has left the maid with me. A perfect treasure! I should be only too glad if I could keep her in my service: she has but one defect, a name I hate—Phoebe. Well! Phoebe and her mistress were staying at a place near Edinburgh, called (I think) Gleninch. The house belonged to that Mr. Macallan who was afterward tried—you remember it, of course?—for poisoning his wife. A dreadful case; but don’t be alarmed—my story has nothing to do with it; my story has to do with Helena Beauly. One evening (while she was staying at Gleninch) she was engaged to dine with some English friends visiting Edinburgh. The same night—also in Edinburgh—there was a masked ball, given by somebody whose name I forget. The ball (almost an unparalleled event in Scotland!) was reported to be not at all a reputable affair. All sorts of amusing people were to be there. Ladies of doubtful virtue, you know, and gentlemen on the outlying limits of society, and so on. Helena’s friends had contrived to get cards, and were going, in spite of the objections—in the strictest incognito, of course, trusting to their masks. And Helena herself was bent on going with them, if she could only manage it without being discovered at Gleninch. Mr. Macallan was one of the strait-laced people who disapproved of the ball. No lady, he said, could show herself at such an entertainment without compromising her reputation. What stuff! Well, Helena, in one of her wildest moments, hit on a way of going to the ball without discovery which was really as ingenious as a plot in a French play. She went to the dinner in the carriage from Gleninch, having sent Phoebe to Edinburgh before her. It was not a grand dinner—a little friendly gathering: no evening dress. When the time came for going back to Gleninch, what do you think Helena did? She sent her maid back in the carriage, instead of herself! Phoebe was dressed in her mistress’s cloak and bonnet and veil. She was instructed to run upstairs the moment she got to the house, leaving on the hall table a little note of apology (written by Helena, of course!), pleading fatigue as an excuse for not saying good-night to her host. The mistress and the maid were about the same height; and the servants naturally never discovered the trick. Phoebe got up to her mistress’s room safely enough. There, her instructions were to wait until the house was quiet for the night, and then to steal up to her own room. While she was waiting, the girl fell asleep. She only awoke at two in the morning, or later. It didn’t much matter, as she thought. She stole out on tiptoe, and closed the door behind her. Before she was at the end of the corridor, she fancied she heard something. She waited until she was safe on the upper story, and then she looked over the banisters. There was Dexter—so like him!—hopping about on his hands (did you ever see it? the most grotesquely horrible exhibition you can imagine!)—there was Dexter, hopping about, and looking through keyholes, evidently in search of the person who had left her room at two in the morning; and no doubt taking Phoebe for her mistress, seeing that she had forgotten to take her mistress’s cloak off her shoulders. The next morning, early, Helena came back in a hired carriage from Edinburgh, with a hat and mantle borrowed from her English friends. She left the carriage in the road, and got into the house by way of the garden—without being discovered, this time, by Dexter or by anybody. Clever and daring, wasn’t it? And, as I said just now, quite a new version of the ‘Domino Noir.’ You will wonder, as I did, how it was that Dexter didn’t make mischief in the morning? He would have done it no doubt. But even he was silenced (as Phoebe told me) by the dreadful event that happened in the house on the same day. My dear Mrs. Woodville! the heat of this room is certainly too much for you, take my smelling-bottle. Let me open the window.”
I was just able to answer, “Pray say nothing! Let me slip out into the open air!”
I made my way unobserved to the landing, and sat down on the stairs to compose myself where nobody could see me. In a moment more I felt a hand laid gently on my shoulder, and discovered good Benjamin looking at me in dismay. Lady Clarinda had considerately spoken to him, and had assisted him in quietly making his retreat from the room, while his host’s attention was still absorbed by the music.
“My dear child!” he whispered, “what is the matter?”
“Take me home, and I will tell you,” was all that I could say.