ARIEL was downstairs in the shadowy hall, half asleep, half awake, waiting to see the visitors clear of the house. Without speaking to us, without looking at us, she led the way down the dark garden walk, and locked the gate behind us. “Good-night, Ariel,” I called out to her over the paling. Nothing answered me but the tramp of her heavy footsteps returning to the house, and the dull thump, a moment afterward, of the closing door.
The footman had thoughtfully lighted the carriage lamps. Carrying one of them to serve as a lantern, he lighted us over the wilds of the brick desert, and landed us safely on the path by the high-road.
“Well!” said my mother-in-law, when we were comfortably seated in the carriage again. “You have seen Miserrimus Dexter, and I hope you are satisfied. I will do him the justice to declare that I never, in all my experience, saw him more completely crazy than he was to-night. What doyousay?”
“I don’t presume to dispute your opinion,” I answered. “But, speaking for myself, I’m not quite sure that he is mad.”
“Not mad!” cried Mrs. Macallan, “after those frantic performances in his chair? Not mad, after the exhibition he made of his unfortunate cousin? Not mad, after the song that he sang in your honor, and the falling asleep by way of conclusion? Oh, Valeria! Valeria! Well said the wisdom of our ancestors—there are none so blind as those who won’t see.”
“Pardon me, dear Mrs. Macallan, I saw everything that you mention, and I never felt more surprised or more confounded in my life. But now I have recovered from my amazement, and can think it over quietly, I must still venture to doubt whether this strange man is really mad in the true meaning of the word. It seems to me that he only expresses—I admit in a very reckless and boisterous way—thoughts and feelings which most of us are ashamed of as weaknesses, and which we keep to ourselves accordingly. I confess I have often fancied myself transformed into some other person, and have felt a certain pleasure in seeing myself in my new character. One of our first amusements as children (if we have any imagination at all) is to get out of our own characters, and to try the characters of other personages as a change—to fairies, to be queens, to be anything, in short, but what we really are. Mr. Dexter lets out the secret just as the children do, and if that is madness, he is certainly mad. But I noticed that when his imagination cooled down he became Miserrimus Dexter again—he no more believed himself than we believed him to be Napoleon or Shakespeare. Besides, some allowance is surely to be made for the solitary, sedentary life that he leads. I am not learned enough to trace the influence of that life in making him what he is; but I think I can see the result in an over-excited imagination, and I fancy I can trace his exhibiting his power over the poor cousin and his singing of that wonderful song to no more formidable cause than inordinate self-conceit. I hope the confession will not lower me seriously in your good opinion; but I must say I have enjoyed my visit, and, worse still, Miserrimus Dexter really interests me.”
“Does this learned discourse on Dexter mean that you are going to see him again?” asked Mrs. Macallan.
“I don’t know how I may feel about it tomorrow morning,” I said; “but my impulse at this moment is decidedly to see him again. I had a little talk with him while you were away at the other end of the room, and I believe he really can be of use to me—”
“Of use to you in what?” interposed my mother-in-law.
“In the one object which I have in view—the object, dear Mrs. Macallan, which I regret to say you do not approve.”
“And you are going to take him into your confidence? to open your whole mind to such a man as the man we have just left?”
“Yes, if I think of it to-morrow as I think of it to-night. I dare say it is a risk; but I must run risks. I know I am not prudent; but prudence won’t help a woman in my position, with my end to gain.”
Mrs. Macallan made no further remonstrance in words. She opened a capacious pocket in front of the carriage, and took from it a box of matches and a railway reading-lamp.
“You provoke me,” said the old lady, “into showing you what your husband thinks of this new whim of yours. I have got his letter with me—his last letter from Spain. You shall judge for yourself, you poor deluded young creature, whether my son is worthy of the sacrifice—the useless and hopeless sacrifice—which you are bent on making of yourself for his sake. Strike a light!”
I willingly obeyed her. Ever since she had informed me of Eustace’s departure to Spain I had been eager for more news of him, for something to sustain my spirits, after so much that had disappointed and depressed me. Thus far I did not even know whether my husband thought of me sometimes in his self-imposed exile. As to this regretting already the rash act which had separated us, it was still too soon to begin hoping for that.
The lamp having been lighted, and fixed in its place between the two front windows of the carriage, Mrs. Macallan produced her son’s letter. There is no folly like the folly of love. It cost me a hard struggle to restrain myself from kissing the paper on which the dear hand had rested.
“There!” said my mother-in-law. “Begin on the second page, the page devoted to you. Read straight down to the last line at the bottom, and, in God’s name, come back to your senses, child, before it is too late!”
I followed my instructions, and read these words:
“Can I trust myself to write of Valeria? Imustwrite of her. Tell me how she is, how she looks, what she is doing. I am always thinking of her. Not a day passes but I mourn the loss of her. Oh, if she had only been contented to let matters rest as they were! Oh, if she had never discovered the miserable truth!
“She spoke of reading the Trial when I saw her last. Has she persisted in doing so? I believe—I say this seriously, mother—I believe the shame and the horror of it would have been the death of me if I had met her face to face when she first knew of the ignominy that I have suffered, of the infamous suspicion of which I have been publicly made the subject. Think of those pure eyes looking at a man who has been accused (and never wholly absolved) of the foulest and the vilest of all murders, and then think of what that man must feel if he have any heart and any sense of shame left in him. I sicken as I write of it.
“Does she still meditate that hopeless project—the offspring, poor angel, of her artless, unthinking generosity? Does she still fancy that it is inherpower to assert my innocence before the world? Oh, mother (if she do), use your utmost influence to make her give up the idea! Spare her the humiliation, the disappointment, the insult, perhaps, to which she may innocently expose herself. For her sake, for my sake, leave no means untried to attain this righteous, this merciful end.
“I send her no message—I dare not do it. Say nothing, when you see her, which can recall me to her memory. On the contrary, help her to forget me as soon as possible. The kindest thing I can do—the one atonement I can make to her—is to drop out of her life.”
With those wretched words it ended. I handed his letter back to his mother in silence. She said but little on her side.
“Ifthisdoesn’t discourage you,” she remarked, slowly folding up the letter, “nothing will. Let us leave it there, and say no more.”
I made no answer—I was crying behind my veil. My domestic prospect looked so dreary! my unfortunate husband was so hopelessly misguided, so pitiably wrong! The one chance for both of us, and the one consolation for poor Me, was to hold to my desperate resolution more firmly than ever. If I had wanted anything to confirm me in this view, and to arm me against the remonstrances of every one of my friends, Eustace’s letter would have proved more than sufficient to answer the purpose. At least he had not forgotten me; he thought of me, and he mourned the loss of me every day of his life. That was encouragement enough—for the present. “If Ariel calls for me in the pony-chaise to-morrow,” I thought to myself, “with Ariel I go.”
Mrs. Macallan set me down at Benjamin’s door.
I mentioned to her at parting—I stood sufficiently in awe of her to put it off till the last moment—that Miserrimus Dexter had arranged to send his cousin and his pony-chaise to her residence on the next day; and I inquired thereupon whether my mother-in-law would permit me to call at her house to wait for the appearance of the cousin, or whether she would prefer sending the chaise on to Benjamin’s cottage. I fully expected an explosion of anger to follow this bold avowal of my plans for the next day. The old lady agreeably surprised me. She proved that she had really taken a liking to me: she kept her temper.
“If you persist in going back to Dexter, you certainly shall not go to him from my door,” she said. “But I hope you willnotpersist. I hope you will awake a wiser woman to-morrow morning.”
The morning came. A little before noon the arrival of the pony-chaise was announced at the door, and a letter was brought in to me from Mrs. Macallan.
“I have no right to control your movements,” my mother-in-law wrote. “I send the chaise to Mr. Benjamin’s house; and I sincerely trust that you will not take your place in it. I wish I could persuade you, Valeria, how truly I am your friend. I have been thinking about you anxiously in the wakeful hours of the night.Howanxiously, you will understand when I tell you that I now reproach myself for not having done more than I did to prevent your unhappy marriage. And yet, what more I could have done I don’t really know. My son admitted to me that he was courting you under an assumed name, but he never told me what the name was. Or who you were, or where your friends lived. Perhaps I ought to have taken measures to find this out. Perhaps, if I had succeeded, I ought to have interfered and enlightened you, even at the sad sacrifice of making an enemy of my own son. I honestly thought I did my duty in expressing my disapproval, and in refusing to be present at the marriage. Was I too easily satisfied? It is too late to ask. Why do I trouble you with an old woman’s vain misgivings and regrets? My child, if you come to any harm, I shall feel (indirectly) responsible for it. It is this uneasy state of mind which sets me writing, with nothing to say that can interest you. Don’t go to Dexter! The fear has been pursuing me all night that your going to Dexter will end badly. Write him an excuse. Valeria! I firmly believe you will repent it if you return to that house.”
Was ever a woman more plainly warned, more carefully advised, than I? And yet warning and advice were both thrown away on me.
Let me say for myself that I was really touched by the kindness of my mother-in-law’s letter, though I was not shaken by it in the smallest degree. As long as I lived, moved, and thought, my one purpose now was to make Miserrimus Dexter confide to me his ideas on the subject of Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s death. To those ideas I looked as my guiding stars along the dark way on which I was going. I wrote back to Mrs. Macallan, as I really felt gratefully and penitently. And then I went out to the chaise.
I FOUND all the idle boys in the neighborhood collected around the pony-chaise, expressing, in the occult language of slang, their high enjoyment and appreciation at the appearance of “Ariel” in her man’s jacket and hat. The pony was fidgety—hefelt the influence of the popular uproar. His driver sat, whip in hand, magnificently impenetrable to the gibes and jests that were flying around her. I said “Good-morning” on getting into the chaise. Ariel only said “Gee up!” and started the pony.
I made up my mind to perform the journey to the distant northern suburb in silence. It was evidently useless for me to attempt to speak, and experience informed me that I need not expect to hear a word fall from the lips of my companion. Experience, however, is not always infallible. After driving for half an hour in stolid silence, Ariel astounded me by suddenly bursting into speech.
“Do you know what we are coming to?” she asked, keeping her eyes straight between the pony’s ears.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t know the road. What are we coming to?”
“We are coming to a canal.”
“Well?”
“Well, I have half a mind to upset you in the canal.”
This formidable announcement appeared to require some explanation. I took the liberty of asking for it.
“Why should you upset me?” I inquired.
“Because I hate you,” was the cool and candid reply.
“What have I done to offend you?” I asked next.
“What do you want with the Master?” Ariel asked, in her turn.
“Do you mean Mr. Dexter?”
“Yes.”
“I want to have some talk with Mr. Dexter.”
“You don’t! You want to take my place. You want to brush his hair and oil his beard, instead of me. You wretch!”
I now began to understand. The idea which Miserrimus Dexter had jestingly put into her head, in exhibiting her to us on the previous night, had been ripening slowly in that dull brain, and had found its way outward into words, about fifteen hours afterward, under the irritating influence of my presence!
“I don’t want to touch his hair or his beard,” I said. “I leave that entirely to you.”
She looked around at me, her fat face flushing, her dull eyes dilating, with the unaccustomed effort to express herself in speech, and to understand what was said to her in return.
“Say that again,” she burst out. “And say it slower this time.”
I said it again, and I said it slower.
“Swear it!” she cried, getting more and more excited.
I preserved my gravity (the canal was just visible in the distance), and swore it.
“Are you satisfied now?” I asked.
There was no answer. Her last resources of speech were exhausted. The strange creature looked back again straight between the pony’s ears, emitted hoarsely a grunt of relief, and never more looked at me, never more spoke to me, for the rest of the journey. We drove past the banks of the canal, and I escaped immersion. We rattled, in our jingling little vehicle, through the streets and across the waste patches of ground, which I dimly remembered in the darkness, and which looked more squalid and more hideous than ever in the broad daylight. The chaise turned down a lane, too narrow for the passage of any larger vehicle, and stopped at a wall and a gate that were new objects to me. Opening the gate with her key, and leading the pony, Ariel introduced me to the back garden and yard of Miserrimus Dexter’s rotten and rambling old house. The pony walked off independently to his stable, with the chaise behind him. My silent companion led me through a bleak and barren kitchen, and along a stone passage. Opening a door at the end, she admitted me to the back of the hall, into which Mrs. Macallan and I had penetrated by the front entrance to the house. Here Ariel lifted a whistle which hung around her neck, and blew the shrill trilling notes with the sound of which I was already familiar as the means of communication between Miserrimus Dexter and his slave. The whistling over, the slave’s unwilling lips struggled into speech for the last time.
“Wait till you hear the Master’s whistle,” she said; “then go upstairs.”
So! I was to be whistled for like a dog! And, worse still, there was no help for it but to submit like a dog. Had Ariel any excuses to make? Nothing of the sort.
She turned her shapeless back on me and vanished into the kitchen region of the house.
After waiting for a minute or two, and hearing no signal from the floor above, I advanced into the broader and brighter part of the hall, to look by daylight at the pictures which I had only imperfectly discovered in the darkness of the night. A painted inscription in many colors, just under the cornice of the ceiling, informed me that the works on the walls were the production of the all-accomplished Dexter himself. Not satisfied with being poet and composer, he was painter as well. On one wall the subjects were described as “Illustrations of the Passions;” on the other, as “Episodes in the Life of the Wandering Jew.” Chance speculators like myself were gravely warned, by means of the inscription, to view the pictures as efforts of pure imagination. “Persons who look for mere Nature in works of Art” (the inscription announced) “are persons to whom Mr. Dexter does not address himself with the brush. He relies entirely on his imagination. Nature puts him out.”
Taking due care to dismiss all ideas of Nature from my mind, to begin with, I looked at the pictures which represented the Passions first.
Little as I knew critically of Art, I could see that Miserrimus Dexter knew still less of the rules of drawing, color, and composition. His pictures were, in the strictest meaning of that expressive word, Daubs. The diseased and riotous delight of the painter in representing Horrors was (with certain exceptions to be hereafter mentioned) the one remarkable quality that I could discover in the series of his works.
The first of the Passion pictures illustrated Revenge. A corpse, in fancy costume, lay on the bank of a foaming river, under the shade of a giant tree. An infuriated man, also in fancy costume, stood astride over the dead body, with his sword lifted to the lowering sky, and watched, with a horrid expression of delight, the blood of the man whom he had just killed dripping slowly in a procession of big red drops down the broad blade of his weapon. The next picture illustrated Cruelty, in many compartments. In one I saw a disemboweled horse savagely spurred on by his rider at a bull-fight. In another, an aged philosopher was dissecting a living cat, and gloating over his work. In a third, two pagans politely congratulated each other on the torture of two saints: one saint was roasting on a grid-iron; the other, hung up to a tree by his heels, had been just skinned, and was not quite dead yet. Feeling no great desire, after these specimens, to look at any more of the illustrated Passions, I turned to the opposite wall to be instructed in the career of the Wandering Jew. Here a second inscription informed me that the painter considered the Flying Dutchman to be no other than the Wandering Jew, pursuing his interminable Journey by sea. The marine adventures of this mysterious personage were the adventures chosen for representation by Dexter’s brush. The first picture showed me a harbor on a rocky coast. A vessel was at anchor, with the helmsman singing on the deck. The sea in the offing was black and rolling; thunder-clouds lay low on the horizon, split by broad flashes of lightning. In the glare of the lightning, heaving and pitching, appeared the misty form of the Phantom Ship approaching the shore. In this work, badly as it was painted, there were really signs of a powerful imagination, and even of a poetical feeling for the supernatural. The next picture showed the Phantom Ship, moored (to the horror and astonishment of the helmsman) behind the earthly vessel in the harbor. The Jew had stepped on shore. His boat was on the beach. His crew—little men with stony, white faces, dressed in funeral black—sat in silent rows on the seats of the boat, with their oars in their lean, long hands. The Jew, also in black, stood with his eyes and hands raised imploringly to the thunderous heaven. The wild creatures of land and sea—the tiger, the rhinoceros, the crocodile, the sea-serpent, the shark, and the devil-fish—surrounded the accursed Wanderer in a mystic circle, daunted and fascinated at the sight of him. The lightning was gone. The sky and sea had darkened to a great black blank. A faint and lurid light lighted the scene, falling downward from a torch, brandished by an avenging Spirit that hovered over the Jew on outspread vulture wings. Wild as the picture might be in its conception, there was a suggestive power in it which I confess strongly impressed me. The mysterious silence in the house, and my strange position at the moment, no doubt had their effect on my mind. While I was still looking at the ghastly composition before me, the shrill trilling sound of the whistle upstairs burst on the stillness. For the moment my nerves were so completely upset that I started with a cry of alarm. I felt a momentary impulse to open the door and run out. The idea of trusting myself alone with the man who had painted those frightful pictures actually terrified me; I was obliged to sit down on one of the hall chairs. Some minutes passed before my mind recovered its balance, and I began to feel like my own ordinary self again. The whistle sounded impatiently for the second time. I rose and ascended the broad flight of stairs which led to the first story. To draw back at the point which I had now reached would have utterly degraded me in my own estimation. Still, my heart did certainly beat faster than usual as I approached the door of the circular anteroom; and I honestly acknowledge that I saw my own imprudence, just then, in a singularly vivid light.
There was a glass over the mantel-piece in the anteroom. I lingered for a moment (nervous as I was) to see how I looked in the glass.
The hanging tapestry over the inner door had been left partially drawn aside. Softly as I moved, the dog’s ears of Miserrimus Dexter caught the sound of my dress on the floor. The fine tenor voice, which I had last heard singing, called to me softly.
“Is that Mrs. Valeria? Please don’t wait there. Come in!”
I entered the inner room.
The wheeled chair advanced to meet me, so slowly and so softly that I hardly knew it again. Miserrimus Dexter languidly held out his hand. His head inclined pensively to one side; his large blue eyes looked at me piteously. Not a vestige seemed to be left of the raging, shouting creature of my first visit, who was Napoleon at one moment, and Shakespeare at another. Mr. Dexter of the morning was a mild, thoughtful, melancholy man, who only recalled Mr. Dexter of the night by the inveterate oddity of his dress. His jacket, on this occasion, was of pink quilted silk. The coverlet which hid his deformity matched the jacket in pale sea-green satin; and, to complete these strange vagaries of costume, his wrists were actually adorned with massive bracelets of gold, formed on the severely simple models which have descended to us from ancient times.
“How good of you to cheer and charm me by coming here!” he said, in his most mournful and most musical tones. “I have dressed, expressly to receive you, in the prettiest clothes I have. Don’t be surprised. Except in this ignoble and material nineteenth century, men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful colors as well as women. A hundred years ago a gentleman in pink silk was a gentleman properly dressed. Fifteen hundred years ago the patricians of the classic times wore bracelets exactly like mine. I despise the brutish contempt for beauty and the mean dread of expense which degrade a gentleman’s costume to black cloth, and limit a gentleman’s ornaments to a finger-ring, in the age I live in. I like to be bright and beautiful, especially when brightness and beauty come to see me. You don’t know how precious your society is to me. This is one of my melancholy days. Tears rise unbidden to my eyes. I sigh and sorrow over myself; I languish for pity. Just think of what I am! A poor solitary creature, cursed with a frightful deformity. How pitiable! how dreadful! My affectionate heart—wasted. My extraordinary talents—useless or misapplied. Sad! sad! sad! Please pity me.”
His eyes were positively filled with tears—tears of compassion for himself! He looked at me and spoke to me with the wailing, querulous entreaty of a sick child wanting to be nursed. I was utterly at a loss what to do. It was perfectly ridiculous—but I was never more embarrassed in my life.
“Please pity me!” he repeated. “Don’t be cruel. I only ask a little thing. Pretty Mrs. Valeria, say you pity me!”
I said I pitied him—and I felt that I blushed as I did it.
“Thank you,” said Miserrimus Dexter, humbly. “It does me good. Go a little further. Pat my hand.”
I tried to restrain myself; but the sense of the absurdity of this last petition (quite gravely addressed to me, remember!) was too strong to be controlled. I burst out laughing.
Miserrimus Dexter looked at me with a blank astonishment which only increased my merriment. Had I offended him? Apparently not. Recovering from his astonishment, he laid his head luxuriously on the back of his chair, with the expression of a man who was listening critically to a performance of some sort. When I had quite exhausted myself, he raised his head and clapped his shapely white hands, and honored me with an “encore.”
“Do it again,” he said, still in the same childish way. “Merry Mrs. Valeria,youhave a musical laugh—Ihave a musical ear. Do it again.”
I was serious enough by this time. “I am ashamed of myself, Mr. Dexter,” I said. “Pray forgive me.”
He made no answer to this; I doubt if he heard me. His variable temper appeared to be in course of undergoing some new change. He sat looking at my dress (as I supposed) with a steady and anxious attention, gravely forming his own conclusions, steadfastly pursuing his own train of thought.
“Mrs. Valeria,” he burst out suddenly, “you are not comfortable in that chair.”
“Pardon me,” I replied; “I am quite comfortable.”
“Pardonme,” he rejoined. “There is a chair of Indian basket-work at that end of the room which is much better suited to you. Will you accept my apologies if I am rude enough to allow you to fetch it for yourself? I have a reason.”
He had a reason! What new piece of eccentricity was he about to exhibit? I rose and fetched the chair. It was light enough to be quite easily carried. As I returned to him, I noticed that his eyes were strangely employed in what seemed to be the closest scrutiny of my dress. And, stranger still, the result of this appeared to be partly to interest and partly to distress him.
I placed the chair near him, and was about to take my seat in it, when he sent me back again, on another errand, to the end of the room.
“Oblige me indescribably,” he said. “There is a hand-screen hanging on the wall, which matches the chair. We are rather near the fire here. You may find the screen useful. Once more forgive me for letting you fetch it for yourself. Once more let me assure you that I have a reason.”
Here was his “reason,” reiterated, emphatically reiterated, for the second time! Curiosity made me as completely the obedient servant of his caprices as Ariel herself. I fetched the hand-screen. Returning with it, I met his eyes still fixed with the same incomprehensible attention on my perfectly plain and unpretending dress, and still expressing the same curious mixture of interest and regret.
“Thank you a thousand times,” he said. “You have (quite innocently) wrung my heart. But you have not the less done me an inestimable kindness. Will you promise not to be offended with me if I confess the truth?”
He was approaching his explanation I never gave a promise more readily in my life.
“I have rudely allowed you to fetch your chair and your screen for yourself,” he went on. “My motive will seem a very strange one, I am afraid. Did you observe that I noticed you very attentively—too attentively, perhaps?”
“Yes,” I said. “I thought you were noticing my dress.”
He shook his head, and sighed bitterly.
“Not your dress,” he said; “and not your face. Your dress is dark. Your face is still strange to me. Dear Mrs. Valeria, I wanted to see you walk.”
To see me walk! What did he mean? Where was that erratic mind of his wandering to now?
“You have a rare accomplishment for an Englishwoman,” he resumed—“you walk well.Shewalked well. I couldn’t resist the temptation of seeing her again, in seeing you. It washermovement,hersweet, simple, unsought grace (not yours), when you walked to the end of the room and returned to me. You raised her from the dead when you fetched the chair and the screen. Pardon me for making use of you: the idea was innocent, the motive was sacred. You have distressed—and delighted me. My heart bleeds—and thanks you.”
He paused for a moment; he let his head droop on his breast, then suddenly raised it again.
“Surely we were talking about her last night?” he said. “What did I say? what did you say? My memory is confused; I half remember, half forget. Please remind me. You’re not offended with me—are you?”
I might have been offended with another man. Not with him. I was far too anxious to find my way into his confidence—now that he had touched of his own accord on the subject of Eustace’s first wife—to be offended with Miserrimus Dexter.
“We were speaking,” I answered, “of Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s death, and we were saying to one another—”
He interrupted me, leaning forward eagerly in his chair.
“Yes! yes!” he exclaimed. “And I was wondering what interestyoucould have in penetrating the mystery of her death. Tell me! Confide in me! I am dying to know!”
“Not even you have a stronger interest in that subject than the interest that I feel,” I said. “The happiness of my whole life to come depends on my clearing up the mystery.”
“Good God—why?” he cried. “Stop! I am exciting myself. I mustn’t do that. I must have all my wits about me; I mustn’t wander. The thing is too serious. Wait a minute!”
An elegant little basket was hooked on to one of the arms of his chair. He opened it, and drew out a strip of embroidery partially finished, with the necessary materials for working a complete. We looked at each other across the embroidery. He noticed my surprise.
“Women,” he said, “wisely compose their minds, and help themselves to think quietly, by doing needle-work. Why are men such fools as to deny themselves the same admirable resource—the simple and soothing occupation which keeps the nerves steady and leaves the mind calm and free? As a man, I follow the woman’s wise example. Mrs. Valeria, permit me to compose myself.”
Gravely arranging his embroidery, this extraordinary being began to work with the patient and nimble dexterity of an accomplished needle-woman.
“Now,” said Miserrimus Dexter, “if you are ready, I am. You talk—I work. Please begin.”
I obeyed him, and began.
WITH such a man as Miserrimus Dexter, and with such a purpose as I had in view, no half-confidences were possible. I must either risk the most unreserved acknowledgment of the interests that I really had at stake, or I must make the best excuse that occurred to me for abandoning my contemplated experiment at the last moment. In my present critical situation, no such refuge as a middle course lay before me—even if I had been inclined to take it. As things were, I ran risks, and plunged headlong into my own affairs at starting.
“Thus far, you know little or nothing about me, Mr. Dexter,” I said. “You are, as I believe, quite unaware that my husband and I are not living together at the present time.”
“Is it necessary to mention your husband?” he asked, coldly, without looking up from his embroidery, and without pausing in his work.
“It is absolutely necessary,” I answered. “I can explain myself to you in no other way.”
He bent his head, and sighed resignedly.
“You and your husband are not living together at the present time,” he resumed. “Does that mean that Eustace has left you?”
“He has left me, and has gone abroad.”
“Without any necessity for it?”
“Without the least necessity.”
“Has he appointed no time for his return to you?”
“If he persevere in his present resolution, Mr. Dexter, Eustace will never return to me.”
For the first time he raised his head from his embroidery—with a sudden appearance of interest.
“Is the quarrel so serious as that?” he asked. “Are you free of each other, pretty Mrs. Valeria, by common consent of both parties?”
The tone in which he put the question was not at all to my liking. The look he fixed on me was a look which unpleasantly suggested that I had trusted myself alone with him, and that he might end in taking advantage of it. I reminded him quietly, by my manner more than by my words, of the respect which he owed to me.
“You are entirely mistaken,” I said. “There is no anger—there is not even a misunderstanding between us. Our parting has cost bitter sorrow, Mr. Dexter, to him and to me.”
He submitted to be set right with ironical resignation. “I am all attention,” he said, threading his needle. “Pray go on; I won’t interrupt you again.” Acting on this invitation, I told him the truth about my husband and myself quite unreservedly, taking care, however, at the same time, to put Eustace’s motives in the best light that they would bear. Miserrimus Dexter dropped his embroidery on his lap, and laughed softly to himself, with an impish enjoyment of my poor little narrative, which set every nerve in me on edge as I looked at him.
“I see nothing to laugh at,” I said, sharply.
His beautiful blue eyes rested on me with a look of innocent surprise.
“Nothing to laugh at,” he repeated, “in such an exhibition of human folly as you have just described?” His expression suddenly changed his face darkened and hardened very strangely. “Stop!” he cried, before I could answer him. “There can be only one reason for you’re taking it as seriously as you do. Mrs. Valeria! you are fond of your husband.”
“Fond of him isn’t strong enough to express it,” I retorted. “I love him with my whole heart.”
Miserrimus Dexter stroked his magnificent beard, and contemplatively repeated my words. “You love him with your whole heart? Do you know why?”
“Because I can’t help it,” I answered, doggedly.
He smiled satirically, and went on with his embroidery. “Curious!” he said to himself; “Eustace’s first wife loved him too. There are some men whom the women all like, and there are other men whom the women never care for. Without the least reason for it in either case. The one man is just as good as the other; just as handsome, as agreeable, as honorable, and as high in rank as the other. And yet for Number One they will go through fire and water, and for Number Two they won’t so much as turn their heads to look at him. Why? They don’t know themselves—as Mrs. Valeria has just said! Is there a physical reason for it? Is there some potent magnetic emanation from Number One which Number Two doesn’t possess? I must investigate this when I have the time, and when I find myself in the humor.” Having so far settled the question to his own entire satisfaction, he looked up at me again. “I am still in the dark about you and your motives,” he said. “I am still as far as ever from understanding what your interest is in investigating that hideous tragedy at Gleninch. Clever Mrs. Valeria, please take me by the hand, and lead me into the light. You’re not offended with me are you? Make it up; and I will give you this pretty piece of embroidery when I have done it. I am only a poor, solitary, deformed wretch, with a quaint turn of mind; I mean no harm. Forgive me! indulge me! enlighten me!”
He resumed his childish ways; he recovered his innocent smile, with the odd little puckers and wrinkles accompanying it at the corners of his eyes. I began to doubt whether I might not have been unreasonably hard on him. I penitently resolved to be more considerate toward his infirmities of mind and body during the remainder of my visit.
“Let me go back for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at Gleninch,” I said. “You agree with me in believing Eustace to be absolutely innocent of the crime for which he was tried. Your evidence at the Trial tells me that.”
He paused over his work, and looked at me with a grave and stern attention which presented his face in quite a new light.
“That isouropinion,” I resumed. “But it was not the opinion of the Jury. Their verdict, you remember, was Not Proven. In plain English, the Jury who tried my husband declined to express their opinion, positively and publicly, that he was innocent. Am I right?”
Instead of answering, he suddenly put his embroidery back in the basket, and moved the machinery of his chair, so as to bring it close by mine.
“Who told you this?” he asked.
“I found it for myself in a book.”
Thus far his face had expressed steady attention—and no more. Now, for the first time, I thought I saw something darkly passing over him which betrayed itself to my mind as rising distrust.
“Ladies are not generally in the habit of troubling their heads about dry questions of law,” he said. “Mrs. Eustace Macallan the Second, you must have some very powerful motive for turning your studies that way.”
“I have a very powerful motive, Mr. Dexter My husband is resigned to the Scotch Verdict His mother is resigned to it. His friends (so far as I know) are resigned to it—”
“Well?”
“Well! I don’t agree with my husband, or his mother, or his friends. I refuse to submit to the Scotch Verdict.”
The instant I said those words, the madness in him which I had hitherto denied, seemed to break out. He suddenly stretched himself over his chair: he pounced on me, with a hand on each of my shoulders; his wild eyes questioned me fiercely, frantically, within a few inches of my face.
“What do you mean?” he shouted, at the utmost pitch of his ringing and resonant voice.
A deadly fear of him shook me. I did my best to hide the outward betrayal of it. By look and word, I showed him, as firmly as I could, that I resented the liberty he had taken with me.
“Remove your hands, sir,” I said, “and retire to your proper place.”
He obeyed me mechanically. He apologized to me mechanically. His whole mind was evidently still filled with the words that I had spoken to him, and still bent on discovering what those words meant.
“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I humbly beg your pardon. The subject excites me, frightens me, maddens me. You don’t know what a difficulty I have in controlling myself. Never mind. Don’t take me seriously. Don’t be frightened at me. I am so ashamed of myself—I feel so small and so miserable at having offended you. Make me suffer for it. Take a stick and beat me. Tie me down in my chair. Call up Ariel, who is as strong as a horse, and tell her to hold me. Dear Mrs. Valeria! Injured Mrs. Valeria! I’ll endure anything in the way of punishment, if you will only tell me what you mean by not submitting to the Scotch Verdict.” He backed his chair penitently as he made that entreaty. “Am I far enough away yet?” he asked, with a rueful look. “Do I still frighten you? I’ll drop out of sight, if you prefer it, in the bottom of the chair.”
He lifted the sea-green coverlet. In another moment he would have disappeared like a puppet in a show if I had not stopped him.
“Say nothing more, and do nothing more; I accept your apologies,” I said. “When I tell you that I refuse to submit to the opinion of the Scotch Jury, I mean exactly what my words express. That verdict has left a stain on my husband’s character. He feels the stain bitterly. How bitterly no one knows so well as I do. His sense of his degradation is the sense that has parted him from me. It is not enough forhimthat I am persuaded of his innocence. Nothing will bring him back to me—nothing will persuade Eustace that I think him worthy to be the guide and companion of my life—but the proof of his innocence, set before the Jury which doubts it, and the public which doubts it, to this day. He and his friends and his lawyers all despair of ever finding that proof now. But I am his wife; and none of you love him as I love him. I alone refuse to despair; I alone refuse to listen to reason. If God spare me, Mr. Dexter, I dedicate my life to the vindication of my husband’s innocence. You are his old friend—I am here to ask you to help me.”
It appeared to be now my turn to frightenhim.The color left his face. He passed his hand restlessly over his forehead, as if he were trying to brush some delusion out of his brain.
“Is this one of my dreams?” he asked, faintly. “Are you a Vision of the night?”
“I am only a friendless woman,” I said, “who has lost all that she loved and prized, and who is trying to win it back again.”
He began to move his chair nearer to me once more. I lifted my hand. He stopped the chair directly. There was a moment of silence. We sat watching one another. I saw his hands tremble as he laid them on the coverlet; I saw his face grow paler and paler, and his under lip drop. What dead and buried remembrances had I brought to life in him, in all their olden horror?
He was the first to speak again.
“So this is your interest,” he said, “in clearing up the mystery of Mrs. Eustace Macallan’s death?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe that I can help you?”
“I do.”
He slowly lifted one of his hands, and pointed at me with his long forefinger.
“You suspect somebody,” he said.
The tone in which he spoke was low and threatening; it warned me to be careful. At the same time, if I now shut him out of my confidence, I should lose the reward that might yet be to come, for all that I had suffered and risked at that perilous interview.
“You suspect somebody,” he repeated.
“Perhaps!” was all that I said in return.
“Is the person within your reach?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know where the person is?”
“No.”
He laid his head languidly on the back of his chair, with a trembling long-drawn sigh. Was he disappointed? Or was he relieved? Or was he simply exhausted in mind and body alike? Who could fathom him? Who could say?
“Will you give me five minutes?” he asked, feebly and wearily, without raising his head. “You know already how any reference to events at Gleninch excites and shakes me. I shall be fit for it again, if you will kindly give me a few minutes to myself. There are books in the next room. Please excuse me.”
I at once retired to the circular antechamber. He followed me in his chair, and closed the door between us.