The Law and the Lady

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"Mr. Macallan behaved admirably. He was still helpless. But he
made an excuse for leaving us which it was impossible to dispute.
In two days after my husband had spoken to him he was removed
from the house.

"The remedy was well intended; but it came too late, and it
utterly failed. The mischief was done. My niece pined away
visibly; neither medical help nor change of air and scene did
anything for her. In course of time--after Mr. Macallan had
recovered from the effects of his accident--I found that she was
carrying on a clandestine correspondence with him by means of her
maid. His letters, I am bound to say, were most considerately and
carefully written. Nevertheless, I felt it my duty to stop the
correspondence.

"My interference--what else could I do but interfere?--brought
matters to a crisis. One day my niece was missing at
breakfast-time. The next day we discovered that the poor
infatuated creature had gone to Mr. Macallan's chambers in
London, and had been found hidden in his bedroom by some bachelor
friends who came to visit him.

"For this disaster Mr. Macallan was in no respect to blame.
Hearing footsteps outside, he had only time to take measures for
saving her character by concealing her i n the nearest room--and
the nearest room happened to be his bedchamber. The matter was
talked about, of course, and motives were misinterpreted in the
vilest manner. My husband had another private conversation with
Mr. Macallan. He again behaved admirably. He publicly declared
that my niece had visited him as his betrothed wife. In a
fortnight from that time he silenced scandal in the one way that
was possible--he married her.

"I was alone in opposing the marriage. I thought it at the time
what it has proved to be since--a fatal mistake.

"It would have been sad enough if Mr. Macallan had only married
her without a particle of love on his side. But to make the
prospect more hopeless still, he was at that very time the victim
of a misplaced attachment to a lady who was engaged to another
man. I am well aware that he compassionately denied this, just as
he compassionately affected to be in love with my niece when he
married her. But his hopeless admiration of the lady whom I have
mentioned was a matter of fact notorious among his friends. It
may not be amiss to add that _her_ marriage preceded _his_
marriage. He had irretrievably lost the woman he really loved--he
was without a hope or an aspiration in life--when he took pity on
my niece.

"In conclusion, I can only repeat that no evil which could have
happened (if she had remained a single woman) would have been
comparable, in my opinion, to the evil of such a marriage as
this. Never, I sincerely believe, were two more ill-assorted
persons united in the bonds of matrimony than the prisoner at the
bar and his deceased wife."

The evidence of this witness produced a strong sensation among
the audience, and had a marked effect on the minds of the jury.
Cross-examination forced Lady Brydehaven to modify some of her
opinions, and to acknowledge that the hopeless attachment of the
prisoner to another woman was a matter of rumor only. But the
facts in her narrative remained unshaken, and, for that one
reason, they invested the crime charged against the prisoner with
an appearance of possibility, which it had entirely failed to
assume during the earlier part of the Trial.

Two other ladies (intimate friends of Mrs. Eustace Macallan) were
called next. They differed from Lady Brydehaven in their opinions
on the propriety of the marriage but on all the material points
they supported her testimony, and confirmed the serious
impression which the first witness had produced on every person
in Court.

The next evidence which the prosecution proposed to put in was
the silent evidence of the letters and the Diary found at
Gleninch.

In answer to a question from the Bench, the Lord Advocate stated
that the letters were written by friends of the prisoner and his
deceased wife, and that passages in them bore directly on the
terms on which the two associated in their married life. The
Diary was still more valuable as evidence. It contained the
prisoner's daily record of domestic events, and of the thoughts
and feelings which they aroused in him at the time.

A most painful scene followed this explanation.

Writing, as I do, long after the events took place, I still
cannot prevail upon myself to describe in detail what my unhappy
husband said and did at this distressing period of the Trial.
Deeply affected while Lady Brydehaven was giving her evidence, he
had with difficulty restrained himself from interrupting her. He
now lost all control over his feelings. In piercing tones, which
rang through the Court, he protested against the contemplated
violation of his own most sacred secrets and his wife's most
sacred secrets. "Hang me, innocent as I am!" he cried, "but spare
me _that!_" The effect of this terrible outbreak on the audience
is reported to have been indescribable. Some of the women present
were in hysterics. The Judges interfered from the Bench, but with
no good result. Quiet was at length restored by the Dean of
Faculty, who succeeded in soothing the prisoner, and who then
addressed the Judges, pleading for indulgence to his unhappy
client in most touching and eloquent language. The speech, a
masterpiece of impromptu oratory, concluded with a temperate yet
strongly urged protest against the reading of the papers
discovered at Gleninch.

The three Judges retired to consider the legal question submitted
to them. The sitting was suspended for more than half an hour.

As usual in such cases, the excitement in the Court communicated
itself to the crowd outside in the street. The general opinion
here--led, as it was supposed, by one of the clerks or other
inferior persons connected with the legal proceedings--was
decidedly adverse to the prisoner's chance of escaping a sentence
of death. "If the letters and the Diary are read," said the
brutal spokesman of the mob, "the letters and the Diary will hang
him."

On the return of the Judges into Court, it was announced that
they had decided, by a majority of two to one, on permitting the
documents in dispute to be produced in evidence. Each of the
Judges, in turn, gave his reasons for the decision at which he
had arrived. This done, the Trial proceeded. The reading of the
extracts from the letters and the extracts from the Diary began.

The first letters produced were the letters found in the Indian
cabinet in Mrs. Eustace Macallan's room. They were addressed to
the deceased lady by intimate (female) friends of hers, with whom
she was accustomed to correspond. Three separate extracts from
letters written by three different correspondents were selected
to be read in Court.

FIRST CORRESPONDENT: "I despair, my dearest Sara, of being able
to tell you how your last letter has distressed me. Pray forgive
me if I own to thinking that your very sensitive nature
exaggerates or misinterprets, quite unconsciously, of course, the
neglect that you experience at the hands of your husband. I
cannot say anything about _his_ peculiarities of character,
because I am not well enough acquainted with him to know what
they are. But, my dear, I am much older than you, and I have had
a much longer experience than yours of what somebody calls 'the
lights and shadows of married life.' Speaking from that
experience, I must tell you what I have observed. Young married
women, like you, who are devotedly attached to their husbands,
are apt to make one very serious mistake. As a rule, they all
expect too much from their husbands. Men, my poor Sara, are not
like _us._ Their love, even when it is quite sincere, is not like
our love. It does not last as it does with us. It is not the one
hope and one thought of their lives, as it is with us. We have no
alternative, even when we most truly respect and love them, but
to make allowance for this difference between the man's nature
and the woman's. I do not for one moment excuse your husband's
coldness. He is wrong, for example, in never looking at you when
he speaks to you, and in never noticing the efforts that you make
to please him. He is worse than wrong--he is really cruel, if you
like--in never returning your kiss when you kiss him. But, my
dear, are you quite sure that he is always _designedly_ cold and
cruel? May not his conduct be sometimes the result of troubles
and anxieties which weigh on his mind, and which are troubles and
anxieties that you cannot share? If you try to look at his
behavior in this light, you will understand many things which
puzzle and pain you now. Be patient with him, my child. Make no
complaints, and never approach him with your caresses at times
when his mind is preoccupied or his temper ruffled. This may be
hard advice to follow, loving him as ardently as you do. But,
rely on it, the secret of happiness for us women is to be found
(alas! only too often) in such exercise of restraint and
resignation as your old friend now recommends. Think, my dear,
over what I have written, and let me hear from you again."

SECOND CORRESPONDENT: "How can you be so foolish, Sara, as to
waste your love on such a cold-blooded brute as your husband
seems to be? To be sure, I am not married yet, or perhaps I
should not be so surprised at you. But I shall be married one of
these days, and if my husband ever treat me as Mr. Macallan tre
ats you, I shall insist on a separation. I declare, I think I
would rather be actually beaten, like the women among the lower
orders, than be treated with the polite neglect and contempt
which you describe. I burn with indignation when I think of it.
It must be quite insufferable. Don't bear it any longer, my poor
dear. Leave him, and come and stay with me. My brother is a
lawyer, as you know. I read to him portions of your letter, and
he is of opinion that you might get what he calls a judicial
separation. Come and consult him."

THIRD CORRESPONDENT: "YOU know, my dear Mrs. Macallan, what _my_
experience of men has been. Your letter does not surprise me in
the least. Your husband's conduct to you points to one
conclusion. He is in love with some other woman. There is
Somebody in the dark, who gets from him everything that he denies
to you. I have been through it all--and I know! Don't give way.
Make it the business of your life to find out who the creature
is. Perhaps there may be more than one of them. It doesn't
matter. One or many, if you can only discover them, you may make
his existence as miserable to him as he makes your existence to
you. If you want my experience to help you, say the word, and it
is freely at your service. I can come and stay with you at
Gleninch any time after the fourth of next month."

With those abominable lines the readings from the letters of the
women came to an end. The first and longest of the Extracts
produced the most vivid impression in Court. Evidently the writer
was in this case a worthy and sensible person. It was generally
felt, however, that all three of the letters, no matter how
widely they might differ in tone, justified the same conclusion.
The wife's position at Gleninch (if the wife's account of it were
to be trusted) was the position of a neglected and an unhappy
woman.

The correspondence of the prisoner, which had been found, with
his Diary, in the locked bed-table drawer, was produced next. The
letters in this case were with one exception all written by men.
Though the tone of them was moderation itself as compared with
the second and third of the women's letters, the conclusion still
pointed the same way. The life of the husband at Gleninch
appeared to be just as intolerable as the life of the wife.

For example, one of the prisoner's male friends wrote inviting
him to make a yacht voyage around the world. Another suggested an
absence of six months on the Continent. A third recommended
field-sports and fishing. The one object aimed at by all the
writers was plainly to counsel a separation, more or less
plausible and more or less complete, between the married pair.

The last letter read was addressed to the prisoner in a woman's
handwriting, and was signed by a woman's Christian name only.

"Ah, my poor Eustace, what a cruel destiny is ours!" the letter
began. "When I think of your life, sacrificed to that wretched
woman, my heart bleeds for you. If _we_ had been man and wife--if
it had been _my_ unutterable happiness to love and cherish the
best, the dearest of men--what a paradise of our own we might
have lived in! what delicious hours we might have known! But
regret is vain; we are separated in this life--separated by ties
which we both mourn, and yet which we must both respect. My
Eustace, there is a world beyond this. There our souls will fly
to meet each other, and mingle in one long heavenly embrace--in a
rapture forbidden to us on earth. The misery described in your
letter--oh, why, why did you marry her?--has wrung this
confession of feeling from me. Let it comfort you, but let no
other eyes see it. Burn my rashly written lines, and look (as I
look) to the better life which you may yet share with your own

HELENA."

The reading of this outrageous letter provoked a question from
the Bench. One of the Judges asked if the writer had attached any
date or address to her letter.

In answer to this the Lord Advocate stated that neither the one
nor the other appeared. The envelope showed that the letter had
been posted in London. "We propose," the learned counsel
continued, "to read certain passages from the prisoner's Diary,
in which the name signed at the end of the letter occurs more
than once; and we may possibly find other means of identifying
the writer, to the satisfaction of your lordships, before the
Trial is over."

The promised passages from my husband's private Diary were now
read. The first extract related to a period of nearly a year
before the date of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death. It was
expressed in these terms:

"News, by this morning's post, which has quite overwhelmed me.
Helena's husband died suddenly two days since of heart-disease.
She is free--my beloved Helena is free! And I?

"I am fettered to a woman with whom I have not a single feeling
in common. Helena is lost to me, by my own act. Ah! I can
understand now, as I never understood before, how irresistible
temptation can be, and how easily sometimes crime may follow it.
I had better shut up these leaves for the night. It maddens me to
no purpose to think of my position or to write of it."

The next passage, dated a few days later, dwelt on the same
subject.

"Of all the follies that a man can commit, the greatest is acting
on impulse. I acted on impulse when I married the unfortunate
creature who is now my wife.

"Helena was then lost to me, as I too hastily supposed. She had
married the man to whom she rashly engaged herself before she met
with me. He was younger than I, and, to all appearance, heartier
and stronger than I. So far as I could see, my fate was sealed
for life. Helena had written her farewell letter, taking leave of
me in this world for good. My prospects were closed; my hopes had
ended. I had not an aspiration left; I had no necessity to
stimulate me to take refuge in work. A chivalrous action, an
exertion of noble self-denial, seemed to be all that was left to
me, all that I was fit for.

"The circumstances of the moment adapted themselves, with a fatal
facility, to this idea. The ill-fated woman who had become
attached to me (Heaven knows--without so much as the shadow of
encouragement on my part!) had, just at that time, rashly placed
her reputation at the mercy of the world. It rested with me to
silence the scandalous tongues that reviled her. With Helena lost
to me, happiness was not to be expected. All women were equally
indifferent to me. A generous action would be the salvation of
this woman. Why not perform it? I married her on that
impulse--married her just as I might have jumped into the water
and saved her if she had been drowning; just as I might have
knocked a man down if I had seen him ill-treating her in the
street!

"And now the woman for whom I have made this sacrifice stands
between me and my Helena--my Helena, free to pour out all the
treasures of her love on the man who adores the earth that she
touches with her foot!

"Fool! madman! Why don't I dash out my brains against the wall
that I see opposite to me while I write these lines?

"My gun is there in the corner. I have only to tie a string to
the trigger and to put the muzzle to my mouth--No! My mother is
alive; my mother's love is sacred. I have no right to take the
life which she gave me. I must suffer and submit. Oh, Helena!
Helena!"

The third extract--one among many similar passages--had been
written about two months before the death of the prisoner's wife.

"More reproaches addressed to me! There never was such a woman
for complaining; she lives in a perfect atmosphere of ill-temper
and discontent.

"My new offenses are two in number: I never ask her to play to me
now; and when she puts on a new dress expressly to please me, I
never notice it. Notice it! Good Heavens! The effort of my life
is _not_ to notice her in anything she does or says. How could I
keep my temper, unless I kept as much as possible out of the way
of private interviews with her? And I do keep my temper. I am
never hard on her; I never use harsh language to her. She has a
double claim on my forbearance---she is a woman, and the law has
made her my wife. I remember this; but I am human. The less I see
of her--exc ept when visitors are present--the more certain I can
feel of preserving my self-control.

"I wonder what it is that makes her so utterly distasteful to me?
She is a plain woman; but I have seen uglier women than she whose
caresses I could have endured without the sense of shrinking that
comes over me when I am obliged to submit to _her_ caresses. I
keep the feeling hidden from her. She loves me, poor thing--and I
pity her. I wish I could do more; I wish I could return in the
smallest degree the feeling with which she regards me. But no--I
can only pity her. If she would be content to live on friendly
terms with me, and never to exact demonstrations of tenderness,
we might get on pretty well. But she wants love. Unfortunate
creature, she wants love!

"Oh, my Helena! I have no love to give her. My heart is yours.

"I dreamed last night that this unhappy wife of mine was dead.
The dream was so vivid that I actually got out of my bed and
opened the door of her room and listened.

"Her calm, regular breathing was distinctly audible in the
stillness of the night. She was in a deep sleep: I closed the
door again and lighted my candle and read. Helena was in all my
thoughts; it was hard work to fix my attention on the book. But
anything was better than going to bed again, and dreaming perhaps
for the second time that I too was free.

"What a life mine is! what a life my wife's is! If the house were
to take fire, I wonder whether I should make an effort to save
myself or to save her?"

The last two passages read referred to later dates still.

"A gleam of brightness has shone over this dismal existence of
mine at last.

"Helena is no longer condemned to the seclusion of widowhood.
Time enough has passed to permit of her mixing again in society.
She is paying visits to friends in our part of Scotland; and, as
she and I are cousins, it is universally understood that she
cannot leave the North without also spending a few days at my
house. She writes me word that the visit, however embarrassing it
may be to us privately, is nevertheless a visit that must be made
for the sake of appearances. Blessings on appearances! I shall
see this angel in my purgatory--and all because Society in
Mid-Lothian would think it strange that my cousin should be
visiting in my part of Scotland and not visit Me!

"But we are to be very careful. Helena says, in so many words, 'I
come to see you, Eustace, as a sister. You must receive me as a
brother, or not receive me at all. I shall write to your wife to
propose the day for my visit. I shall not forget--do you not
forget--that it is by your wife's permission that I enter your
house.'

"Only let me see her! I will submit to anything to obtain the
unutterable happiness of seeing her!"

The last extract followed, and consisted of these lines only:

"A new misfortune! My wife has fallen ill. She has taken to her
bed with a bad rheumatic cold, just at the time appointed for
Helena's visit to Gleninch. But on this occasion (I gladly own
it!) she has behaved charmingly. She has written to Helena to say
that her illness is not serious enough to render a change
necessary in the arrangements, and to make it her particular
request that my cousin's visit shall take place upon the day
originally decided on.

"This is a great sacrifice made to me on my wife's part. Jealous
of every woman under forty who comes near me, she is, of course,
jealous of Helena--and she controls herself, and trusts me!

"I am bound to show my gratitude for this and I will show it.
From this day forth I vow to live more affectionately with my
wife. I tenderly embraced her this very morning, and I hope, poor
soul, she did not discover the effort that it cost me."

There the readings from the Diary came to an end.

The most unpleasant pages in the whole Report of the Trial
were--to me--the pages which contained the extracts from my
husband's Diary. There were expressions here and there which not
only pained me, but which almost shook Eustace's position in my
estimation. I think I would have given everything I possessed to
have had the power of annihilating certain lines in the Diary. As
for his passionate expressions of love for Mrs. Beauly, every one
of them went through me like a sting. He had whispered words
quite as warm into my ears in the days of his courtship. I had no
reason to doubt that he truly and dearly loved me. But the
question was, Had he just as truly and dearly loved Mrs. Beauly
before me? Had she or I--won the first love of his heart? He had
declared to me over and over again that he had only fancied
himself to be in love before the day when we met. I had believed
him then. I determined to believe him still. I did believe him.
But I hated Mrs. Beauly!

As for the painful impression produced in Court by the readings
from the letters and the Diary, it seemed to be impossible to
increase it. Nevertheless it _was_ perceptibly increased. In
other words, it was rendered more unfavorable still toward the
prisoner by the evidence of the next and last witness called on
the part of the prosecution.

William Enzie, under-gardener at Gleninch, was sworn, and deposed
as follows:

On the twentieth of October, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, I
was sent to work in the shrubbery, on the side next to the garden
called the Dutch Garden. There was a summer-house in the Dutch
Garden, having its back set toward the shrubbery. The day was
wonderfully fine and--warm for the time of year.

"Passing to my work, I passed the back of the summer-house. I
heard voices inside--a man's voice and a lady's voice. The lady's
voice was strange to me. The man's voice I recognized as the
voice of my master. The ground in the shrubbery was soft, and my
curiosity was excited. I stepped up to the back of the
summer-house without being heard, and I listened to what was
going on inside.

"The first words I could distinguish were spoken in my master's
voice. He said, 'If I could only have foreseen that you might one
day be free, what a happy man I might have been!' The lady's
voice answered, 'Hush! you must not talk so.' My master said upon
that, 'I must talk of what is in my mind; it is always in my mind
that I have lost you.' He stopped a bit there, and then he said
on a sudden, 'Do me one favor, my angel! Promise me not to marry
again.' The lady's voice spoke out thereupon sharply enough,
'What do you mean?' My master said, 'I wish no harm to the
unhappy creature who is a burden on my life; but suppose--'
'Suppose nothing,' the lady said; 'come back to the house.'

"She led the way into the garden, and turned round, beckoning my
master to join her. In that position I saw her face plainly, and
I knew it for the face of the young widow lady who was visiting
at the house. She was pointed out to me by the head-gardener when
she first arrived, for the purpose of warning me that I was not
to interfere if I found her picking the flowers. The gardens at
Gleninch were shown to tourists on certain days, and we made a
difference, of course, in the matter of the flowers between
strangers and guests staying in the house. I am quite certain of
the identity of the lady who was talking with my master. Mrs.
Beauly was a comely person--and there was no mistaking her for
any other than herself. She and my master withdrew together on
the way to the house. I heard nothing more of what passed between
them."

This witness was severely cross-examined as to the correctness of
his recollection of the talk in the summer-house, and as to his
capacity for identifying both the speakers. On certain minor
points he was shaken. But he firmly asserted his accurate
remembrance of the last words exchanged between his master and
Mrs. Beauly; and he personally described the lady in terms which
proved that he had corruptly identified her.

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