The Law and the Lady

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[Prepared by John Hamm and James Rusk (jrusk@cyberramp.net).
Italics are indicated by underscores.]

The Law and the Lady

by Wilkie Collins

NOTE:

ADDRESSED TO THE READER.

IN offering this book to you, I have no Preface to write. I have
only to request that you will bear in mind certain established
truths, which occasionally escape your memory when you are
reading a work of fiction. Be pleased, then, to remember (First):
That the actions of human beings are not invariably governed by
the laws of pure reason. (Secondly): That we are by no means
always in the habit of bestowing our love on the objects which
are the most deserving of it, in the opinions of our friends.
(Thirdly and Lastly): That Characters which may not have
appeared, and Events which may not have taken place, within the
limits of our own individual experience, may nevertheless be
perfectly natural Characters and perfectly probable Events, for
all that. Having said these few words, I have said all that seems
to be necessary at the present time, in presenting my new Story
to your notice.

W. C.

LONDON, February 1, 1875.

THE LAW AND THE LADY.

PART I.

PARADISE LOST.

CHAPTER I.

THE BRIDE'S MISTAKE.

"FOR after this manner in the old time the holy women also who
trusted in God adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their
own husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord;
whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid
with any amazement."

Concluding the Marriage Service of the Church of England in those
well-known words, my uncle Starkweather shut up his book, and
looked at me across the altar rails with a hearty expression of
interest on his broad, red face. At the same time my aunt, Mrs.
Starkweather, standing by my side, tapped me smartly on the
shoulder, and said,

"Valeria, you are married!"

Where were my thoughts? What had become of my attention? I was
too bewildered to know. I started and looked at my new husband.
He seemed to be almost as much bewildered as I was. The same
thought had, as I believe, occurred to us both at the same
moment. Was it really possible--in spite of his mother's
opposition to our marriage--that we were Man and Wife? My aunt
Starkweather settled the question by a second tap on my shoulder.

"Take his arm!" she whispered, in the tone of a woman who had
lost all patience with me.

I took his arm.

"Follow your uncle."

Holding fast by my husband's arm, I followed my uncle and the
curate who had assisted him at the marriage.

The two clergymen led us into the vestry. The church was in one
of the dreary quarters of London, situated between the City and
the West End; the day was dull; the atmosphere was heavy and
damp. We were a melancholy little wedding party, worthy of the
dreary neighborhood and the dull day. No relatives or friends of
my husband's were present; his family, as I have already hinted,
disapproved of his marriage. Except my uncle and my aunt, no
other relations appeared on my side. I had lost both my parents,
and I had but few friends. My dear father's faithful old clerk,
Benjamin, attended the wedding to "give me away," as the phrase
is. He had known me from a child, and, in my forlorn position, he
was as good as a father to me.

The last ceremony left to be performed was, as usual, the signing
of the marriage register. In the confusion of the moment (and in
the absence of any information to guide me) I committed a
mistake--ominous, in my aunt Starkweather's opinion, of evil to
come. I signed my married instead of my maiden name.

"What!" cried my uncle, in his loudest and cheeriest tones, "you
have forgotten your own name already? Well, well! let us hope you
will never repent parting with it so readily. Try again,
Valeria--try again."

With trembling fingers I struck the pen through my first effort,
and wrote my maiden name, very badly indeed, as follows:

Valeria Brinton

When it came to my husband's turn I noticed, with surprise, that
his hand trembled too, and that he produced a very poor specimen
of his customary signature:

Eustace Woodville

My aunt, on being requested to sign, complied under protest. "A
bad beginning!" she said, pointing to my first unfortunate
signature with the feather end of her pen. "I hope, my dear, you
may not live to regret it."

Even then, in the days of my ignorance and my innocence, that
curious outbreak of my aunt's superstition produced a certain
uneasy sensation in my mind. It was a consolation to me to feel
the reassuring pressure of my husband's hand. It was an
indescribable relief to hear my uncle's hearty voice wishing me a
happy life at parting. The good man had left his north-country
Vicarage (my home since the death of my parents) expressly to
read the service at my marriage; and he and my aunt had arranged
to return by the mid-day train. He folded me in his great strong
arms, and he gave me a kiss which must certainly have been heard
by the idlers waiting for the bride and bridegroom outside the
church door.

"I wish you health and happiness, my love, with all my heart. You
are old enough to choose for yourself, and--no offense, Mr.
Woodville, you and I are new friends--and I pray God, Valeria, it
may turn out that you have chosen well. Our house will be dreary
enough without you; but I don't complain, my dear. On the
contrary, if this change in your life makes you happier, I
rejoice. Come, come! don't cry, or you will set your aunt
off--and it's no joke at her time of life. Besides, crying will
spoil your beauty. Dry your eyes and look in the glass there, and
you will see that I am right. Good-by, child--and God bless you!"

He tucked my aunt under his arm, and hurried out. My heart sank a
little, dearly as I loved my husband, when I had seen the last of
the true friend and protector of my maiden days.

The parting with old Benjamin came next. "I wish you well, my
dear; don't forget me," was all he said. But the old days at home
came back on me at those few words. Benjamin always dined with us
on Sundays in my father's time, and always brought some little
present with him for his master's child. I was very near to
"spoiling my beauty" (as my uncle had put it) when I offered the
old man my cheek to kiss, and heard him sigh to himself, as if he
too were not quite hopeful about my future life.

My husband's voice roused me, and turned my mind to happier
thoughts.

"Shall we go, Valeria?" he asked.

I stopped him on our way out to take advantage of my uncle's
advice; in other words, to see how I looked in the glass over the
vestry fireplace.

What does the glass show me?

The glass shows a tall and slender young woman of
three-and-twenty years of age. She is not at all the sort of
person who attracts attention in the street, seeing that she
fails to exhibit the popular yellow hair and the popular painted
cheeks. Her hair is black; dressed, in these later days (as it
was dressed years since to please her father), in broad ripples
drawn back from the forehead, and gathered into a simple knot
behind (like the hair of the Venus de Medicis), so as to show the
neck beneath. Her complexion is pale: except in moments of
violent agitation there is no color to be seen in her face. Her
eyes are of so dark a blue that they are generally mistaken for
black. Her eyebrows are well enough in form, but they are too
dark and too strongly marked. Her nose just inclines toward the
aquiline bend, and is considered a little too large by persons
difficult to please in the matter of noses. The mouth, her best
feature, is very delicately shaped, and is capable of presenting
great varieties of expression. As to the face in general, it is
too narrow and too long at the lower part, too broad and too low
in the higher regions of the eyes and the head. The whole
picture, as reflected in the glass, represents a woman of some
elegance, rather too pale, and rather too sedate and serious in
her moments of silence and repose--in short, a person who fails
to strike the ordinary observer at first sight, but who gains in
general estimation on a second, and sometimes on a third view. As
for her dress, it studiously conceals, instead of proclaiming,
that she has been married that morning. She wears a gray cashmere
tunic trimmed with gray silk, and having a skirt of the same
material and color beneath it. On her head is a bonnet to match,
relieved by a quilling of white muslin with one deep red rose, as
a morsel of positive color, to complete the effect of the whole
dress.

Have I succeeded or failed in describing the picture of myself
which I see in the glass? It is not for me to say. I have done my
best to keep clear of the two vanities--the vanity of
depreciating and the vanity of praising my own personal
appearance. For the rest, well written or badly written, thank
Heaven it is done!

And whom do I see in the glass standing by my side?

I see a man who is not quite so tall as I am, and who has the
misfortune of looking older than his years. His forehead is
prematurely bald. His big chestnut-colored beard and his long
overhanging mustache are prematurely streaked with gray. He has
the color in the face which my face wants, and the firmness in
his figure which my figure wants. He looks at me with the
tenderest and gentlest eyes (of a light brown) that I ever saw in
the countenance of a man. His smile is rare and sweet; his
manner, perfectly quiet and retiring, has yet a latent
persuasiveness in it which is (to women) irresistibly winning. He
just halts a little in his walk, from the effect of an injury
received in past years, when he was a soldier serving in India,
and he carries a thick bamboo cane, with a curious crutch handle
(an old favorite), to help himself along whenever he gets on his
feet, in doors or out. With this one little drawback (if it is a
drawback), there is nothing infirm or old or awkward about him;
his slight limp when he walks has (perhaps to my partial eyes) a
certain quaint grace of its own, which is pleasanter to see than
the unrestrained activity of other men. And last and best of all,
I love him! I love him! I love him! And there is an end of my
portrait of my husband on our wedding-day.

The glass has told me all I want to know. We leave the vestry at
last.

The sky, cloudy since the morning, has darkened while we have
been in the church, and the rain is beginning to fall heavily.
The idlers outside stare at us grimly under their umbrellas as we
pass through their ranks and hasten into our carriage. No
cheering; no sunshine; no flowers strewn in our path; no grand
breakfast; no genial speeches; no bridesmaids; no fathers or
mother's blessing. A dreary wedding--there is no denying it--and
(if Aunt Starkweather is right) a bad beginning as well!

A _coup_ has been reserved for us at the railway station. The
attentive porter, on the look-out for his fee pulls down the
blinds over the side windows of the carriage, and shuts out all
prying eyes in that way. After what seems to be an interminable
delay the train starts. My husband winds his arm round me. "At
last!" he whispers, with love in his eyes that no words can
utter, and presses me to him gently. My arm steals round his
neck; my eyes answer his eyes. Our lips meet in the first long,
lingering kiss of our married life.

Oh, what recollections of that journey rise in me as I write! Let
me dry my eyes, and shut up my paper for the day.

CHAPTER II.

THE BRIDE'S THOUGHTS.

WE had been traveling for a little more than an hour when a
change passed insensibly over us both.

Still sitting close together, with my hand in his, with my head
on his shoulder, little by little we fell insensibly into
silence. Had we already exhausted the narrow yet eloquent
vocabulary of love? Or had we determined by unexpressed consent,
after enjoying the luxury of passion that speaks, to try the
deeper and finer rapture of passion that thinks? I can hardly
determine; I only know that a time came when, under some strange
influence, our lips were closed toward each other. We traveled
along, each of us absorbed in our own reverie. Was he thinking
exclusively of me--as I was thinking exclusively of him? Before
the journey's end I had my doubts; at a little later time I knew
for certain that his thoughts, wandering far away from his young
wife, were all turned inward on his own unhappy self.

For me the secret pleasure of filling my mind with him, while I
felt him by my side, was a luxury in itself.

I pictured in my thoughts our first meeting in the neighborhood
of my uncle's house.

Our famous north-country trout stream wound its flashing and
foaming way through a ravine in the rocky moorland. It was a
windy, shadowy evening. A heavily clouded sunset lay low and red
in the west. A solitary angler stood casting his fly at a turn in
the stream where the backwater lay still and deep under an
overhanging bank. A girl (myself) standing on the bank, invisible
to the fisherman beneath, waited eagerly to see the trout rise.

The moment came; the fish took the fly.

Sometimes on the little level strip of sand at the foot of the
bank, sometimes (when the stream turned again) in the shallower
water rushing over its rocky bed, the angler followed the
captured trout, now letting the line run out and now winding it
in again, in the difficult and delicate process of "playing" the
fish. Along the bank I followed to watch the contest of skill and
cunning between the man and the trout. I had lived long enough
with my uncle Starkweather to catch some of his enthusiasm for
field sports, and to learn something, especially, of the angler's
art. Still following the stranger, with my eyes intently fixed on
every movement of his rod and line, and with not so much as a
chance fragment of my attention to spare for the rough path along
which I was walking, I stepped by chance on the loose overhanging
earth at the edge of the bank, and fell into the stream in an
instant.

The distance was trifling, the water was shallow, the bed of the
river was (fortunately for me) of sand. Beyond the fright and the
wetting I had nothing to complain of. In a few moments I was out
of the water and up again, very much ashamed of myself, on the
firm ground. Short as the interval was, it proved long enough to
favor the escape of the fish. The angler had heard my first
instinctive cry of alarm, had turned, and had thrown aside his
rod to help me. We confronted each other for the first time, I on
the bank and he in the shallow water below. Our eyes encountered,
and I verily believe our hearts encountered at the same moment.
This I know for certain, we forgot our breeding as lady and
gentleman: we looked at each other in barbarous silence.

I was the first to recover myself. What did I say to him?

I said something about my not being hurt, and then something
more, urging him to run back and try if he might not yet recover
the fish.

He went back unwillingly. He returned to me--of course without
the fish. Knowing how bitterly disappointed my uncle would have
been in his place, I apologized very earnestly. In my eagerness
to make atonement, I even offered to show him a spot where he
might try again, lower down the stream.

He would not hear of it; he entreated me to go home and change my
wet dress. I cared nothing for the wetting, but I obeyed him
without knowing why.

He walked with me. My way back to the Vicarage was his way back
to the inn. He had come to our parts, he told me, for the quiet
and retirement as much as for the fishing. He had noticed me once
or twice from the window of his room at the inn. He asked if I
were not the vicar's daughter.

I set him right. I told him that the vicar had married my
mother's sister, and that the two had been father and mother to
me since the death of my parents. He asked if he might venture to
call on Doctor Starkweather the next day, mentioning the name of
a friend of his, with whom he believed the vicar to be
acquainted. I invited him to visit us, as if it had been my
house; I was spell-bound under his eyes and under his voice. I
had fancied, honestly fancied, myself to have been in love often
and often before this time. Never in any other man's company had
I felt as I now felt in the presence of _this_ man. Night seemed
to fall suddenly over the evening landscape when he left me. I
leaned against the Vic arage gate. I could not breathe, I could
not think; my heart fluttered as if it would fly out of my
bosom--and all this for a stranger! I burned with shame; but oh,
in spite of it all, I was so happy!

And now, when little more than a few weeks had passed since that
first meeting, I had him by my side; he was mine for life! I
lifted my head from his bosom to look at him. I was like a child
with a new toy--I wanted to make sure that he was really my own.

He never noticed the action; he never moved in his corner of the
carriage. Was he deep in his own thoughts? and were they thoughts
of Me?

I laid down my head again softly, so as not to disturb him. My
thoughts wandered backward once more, and showed me another
picture in the golden gallery of the past.

The garden at the Vicarage formed the new scene. The time was
night. We had met together in secret. We were walking slowly to
and fro, out of sight of the house, now in the shadowy paths of
the shrubbery, now in the lovely moonlight on the open lawn.

We had long since owned our love and devoted our lives to each
other. Already our interests were one; already we shared the
pleasures and the pains of life. I had gone out to meet him that
night with a heavy heart, to seek comfort in his presence and to
find encouragement in his voice. He noticed that I sighed when he
first took me in his arms, and he gently turned my head toward
the moonlight to read my trouble in my face. How often he had
read my happiness there in the earlier days of our love!

"You bring bad news, my angel," he said, lifting my hair tenderly
from my forehead as he spoke. "I see the lines here which tell me
of anxiety and distress. I almost wish I loved you less dearly,
Valeria."

"Why?"

"I might give you back your freedom. I have only to leave this
place, and your uncle would be satisfied, and you would be
relieved from all the cares that are pressing on you now."

"Don't speak of it, Eustace! If you want me to forget my cares,
say you love me more dearly than ever."

He said it in a kiss. We had a moment of exquisite forgetfulness
of the hard ways of life--a moment of delicious absorption in
each other. I came back to realities fortified and composed,
rewarded for all that I had gone through, ready to go through it
all over again for another kiss. Only give a woman love, and
there is nothing she will not venture, suffer, and do.

"No, they have done with objecting. They have remembered at last
that I am of age, and that I can choose for myself. They have
been pleading with me, Eustace, to give you up. My aunt, whom I
thought rather a hard woman, has been crying--for the first time
in my experience of her. My uncle, always kind and good to me,
has been kinder and better than ever. He has told me that if I
persist in becoming your wife, I shall not be deserted on my
wedding-day. Wherever we may marry, he will be there to read the
service, and my aunt will go to the church with me. But he
entreats me to consider seriously what I am doing--to consent to
a separation from you for a time--to consult other people on my
position toward you, if I am not satisfied with his opinion. Oh,
my darling, they are as anxious to part us as if you were the
worst instead of the best of men!"

"Has anything happened since yesterday to increase their distrust
of me?" he asked.

"Yes,"

"What is it?"

"You remember referring my uncle to a friend of yours and of
his?"

"Yes. To Major Fitz-David."

"My uncle has written to Major Fitz-David "

"Why?"

He pronounced that one word in a tone so utterly unlike his
natural tone that his voice sounded quite strange to me.

"You won't be angry, Eustace, if I tell you?" I said. "My uncle,
as I understood him, had several motives for writing to the
major. One of them was to inquire if he knew your mother's
address."

Eustace suddenly stood still.

I paused at the same moment, feeling that I could venture no
further without the risk of offending him.

To speak the truth, his conduct, when he first mentioned our
engagement to my uncle, had been (so far as appearances went) a
little flighty and strange. The vicar had naturally questioned
him about his family. He had answered that his father was dead;
and he had consented, though not very readily, to announce his
contemplated marriage to his mother. Informing us that she too
lived in the country, he had gone to see her, without more
particularly mentioning her address. In two days he had returned
to the Vicarage with a very startling message. His mother
intended no disrespect to me or my relatives, but she disapproved
so absolutely of her son's marriage that she (and the members of
her family, who all agreed with her) would refuse to be present
at the ceremony, if Mr. Woodville persisted in keeping his
engagement with Dr. Starkweather's niece. Being asked to explain
this extraordinary communication, Eustace had told us that his
mother and his sisters were bent on his marrying another lady,
and that they were bitterly mortified and disappointed by his
choosing a stranger to the family. This explanation was enough
for me; it implied, so far as I was concerned, a compliment to my
superior influence over Eustace, which a woman always receives
with pleasure. But it failed to satisfy my uncle and my aunt. The
vicar expressed to Mr. Woodville a wish to write to his mother,
or to see her, on the subject of her strange message. Eustace
obstinately declined to mention his mother's address, on the
ground that the vicar's interference would be utterly useless. My
uncle at once drew the conclusion that the mystery about the
address indicated something wrong. He refused to favor Mr.
Woodville's renewed proposal for my hand, and he wrote the same
day to make inquiries of Mr. Woodville's reference and of his own
friend Major Fitz-David.

Under such circumstances as these, to speak of my uncle's motives
was to venture on very delicate ground. Eustace relieved me from
further embarrassment by asking a question to which I could
easily reply.

"Has your uncle received any answer from Major Fitz-David?" he
inquired.

"Yes.

"Were you allowed to read it?" His voice sank as he said those
words; his face betrayed a sudden anxiety which it pained me to
see.

"I have got the answer with me to show you," I said.

He almost snatched the letter out of my hand; he turned his back
on me to read it by the light of the moon. The letter was short
enough to be soon read. I could have repeated it at the time. I
can repeat it now.

"DEAR VICAR--Mr. Eustace Woodville is quite correct in stating
to you that he is a gentleman by birth and position, and that he
inherits (under his deceased father's will) an independent
fortune of two thousand a year.

"Always yours,

"LAWRENCE FITZ-DAVID."

"Can anybody wish for a plainer answer than that?" Eustace
asked, handing the letter back to me.

"If _I_ had written for information about you," I answered, "it
would have been plain enough for me."

"Is it not plain enough for your uncle?"

"No."

"What does he say?"

"Why need you care to know, my darling?"

"I want to know, Valeria. There must be no secret between us in
this matter. Did your uncle say anything when he showed you the
major's letter?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"My uncle told me that his letter of inquiry filled three pages,
and he bade me observe that the major's answer contained one
sentence only. He said, 'I volunteered to go to Major Fitz-David
and talk the matter over. You see he takes no notice of my
proposal. I asked him for the address of Mr. Woodville's mother.
He passes over my request, as he has passed over my proposal--he
studiously confines himself to the shortest possible statement of
bare facts. Use your common-sense, Valeria. Isn't this rudeness
rather remarkable on the part of a man who is a gentleman by
birth and breeding, and who is also a friend of mine?'"

Eustace stopped me there.

"Did you answer your uncle's question?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "I only said that I did not understand the
major's conduct."

"And what did your uncle say next? If you love me, Valeria, tell
me the truth."

"He used very stron g language, Eustace. He is an old man; you
must not be offended with him."

"I am not offended. What did he say?"

"He said, 'Mark my words! There is something under the surface in
connection with Mr. Woodville, or with his family, to which Major
Fitz-David is not at liberty to allude. Properly interpreted,
Valeria, that letter is a warning. Show it to Mr. Woodville, and
tell him (if you like) what I have just told you--'"

Eustace stopped me again.

"You are sure your uncle said those words?" he asked, scanning my
face attentively in the moonlight.

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