The Law and the Lady

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"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? I _must_ write 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 accus ed (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 in _her_ power 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.

"If _this_ doesn'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 will _not_
persist. 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. _How_ anxiously, 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.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MR. DEXTER AT HOME.

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--_he_
felt 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 tur ned
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 a 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 mu sical 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 I 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, _you_ have a musical laugh--_I_ have 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."

"Pardon _me,_" 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."

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