The Law and the Lady

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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. _She_ walked well. I couldn't resist the
temptation of seeing her again, in seeing you. It was _her_
movement, _her_ sweet, 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 interest
_you_ could 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.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

IN THE DARK.

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 recover, 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 is _our_ opinion," 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 for _him_
that 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 frighten _him._ 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.

CHAPTER XXIX.

IN THE LIGHT.

A LITTLE interval of solitude was a relief to me, as well as to
Miserrimus Dexter.

Startling doubts beset me as I walked restlessly backward and
forward, now in the anteroom, and now in the corridor outside. It
was plain that I had (quite innocently) disturbed the repose of
some formidable secrets in Miserrimus Dexter's mind. I confused
and wearied my poor brains in trying to guess what the secrets
might be. All my ingenuity--as after-events showed me--was wasted
on speculations not one of which even approached the truth. I was
on surer ground when I arrived at the conclusion that Dexter had
really kept every mortal creature out of his confidence. He could
never have betrayed such serious signs of disturbance as I had
noticed in him, if he had publicly acknowledged at the Trial, or
if he had privately communicated to any chosen friend, all that
he knew of the tragic and terrible drama acted in the bedchamber
at Gleninch. What powerful influence had induced him to close his
lips? Had he been silent in mercy to others? or in dread of
consequences to himself? Impossible to tell! Could I hope that he
would confide to Me what he had kept secret from Justice and
Friendship alike? When he knew what I really wanted of him, would
he arm me, out of his own stores of knowledge, with the weapon
that would win me victory in the struggle to come? The chances
were against it--there was no denying that. Still the end was
worth trying for. The caprice of the moment might yet stand my
friend, with such a wayward being as Miserrimus Dexter. My plans
and projects were sufficiently strange, sufficiently wide of the
ordinary limits of a woman's thoughts and actions, to attract his
sympathies. "Who knows," I thought to myself, "if I may not take
his confidence by surprise, by simply telling him the truth?"

The interval expired; the door was thrown open; the voice of my
host summoned me again to the inner room.

"Welcome back!" said Miserrimus Dexter.

"Dear Mrs. Valeria, I am quite myself again. How are you?"

He looked and spoke with the easy cordiality of an old friend.
During the period of my absence, short as it was, another change
had passed over this most multiform of living beings. His eyes
sparkled with good-humor; his cheeks were flushing under a new
excitement of some sort. Even his dress had undergone alteration
since I had seen it last. He now wore an extemporized cap of
white paper; his ruffles were tucked up; a clean apron was thrown
over the sea-green coverlet. He hacked his chair before me,
bowing and smiling, and waved me to a seat with the grace of a
dancing master, chastened by the dignity of a lord in waiting.

"I am going to cook," he announced, with the most engaging
simplicity. "We both stand in need of refreshment before we
return to the serious business of our interview. You see me in my
cook's dress; forgive it. There is a form in these things. I am a
great stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Please
sanction that proceeding by taking some wine too."

He filled a goblet of ancient Venetian glass with a purple-red
liquor, beautiful to see.

"Burgundy!" he said--"the king of wine: And this is the king of
Burgundies--Clos Vougeot. I drink to your health and happiness!"

He filled a second goblet for himself, and honored the toast by
draining it to the bottom. I now understood the sparkle in his
eyes and the flush in his cheeks. It was my interest not to
offend him. I drank a little of his wine, and I quite agreed with
him. I thought it delicious.

"What shall we eat?" he asked. "It must be something worthy of
our Clos Vougeot. Ariel is good at roasting and boiling joints,
poor wretch! but I don't insult your taste by offering you
Ariel's cookery. Plain joints!" he exclaimed, with an expression
of refined disgust. "Bah! A man who eats a plain joint is only
one remove from a cannibal or a butcher. Will you leave it to me
to discover something more worthy of us? Let us go to the
kitchen."

He wheeled his chair around, and invited me to accompany him with
a courteous wave of his hand.

I followed the chair to some closed curtains at one end of the
room, which I had not hitherto noticed. Drawing aside the
curtains, he revealed to view an alcove, in which stood a neat
little gas-stove for cooking. Drawers and cupboards, plates,
dishes, and saucepans, were ranged around the alcove--all on a
miniature scale, all scrupulously bright and clean. "Welcome to
the kitchen!" said Miserrimus Dexter. He drew out of a recess in
the wall a marble slab, which served as a table, and reflected
profoundly, with his hand to his head. "I have it!" he cried, and
opening one of the cupboards next, took from it a black bottle of
a form that was new to me. Sounding this bottle with a spike, he
pierced and produced to view some little irregularly formed black
objects, which might have been familiar enough to a woman
accustomed to the luxurious tables of the rich, but which were a
new revelation to a person like myself, who
had led a simple country life in the house of a clergyman with
small means. When I saw my host carefully lay out these occult
substances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and then
plunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them,
my curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say,
"What are those things, Mr. Dexter, and are we really going to
eat them?"

He started at the rash question, and looked at me with hands
outspread in irrepressible astonishment.

"Where is our boasted progress?" he cried. What is education but
a name? Here is a cultivated person who doesn't know Truffles
when she sees them!"

"I have heard of truffles," I answered, humbly, "but I never saw
them before. We had no such foreign luxuries as those, Mr.
Dexter, at home in the North."

Miserrimus Dexter lifted one of the truffles tenderly on his
spike, and held it up to me in a favorable light.

"Make the most of one of the few first sensations in this life
which has no ingredient of disappointment lurking under the
surface," he said. "Look at it; meditate over it. You shall eat
it, Mrs. Valeria, stewed in Burgundy!"

He lighted the gas for cooking with the air of a man who was
about to offer me an inestimable proof of his good-will.

"Forgive me if I observe the most absolute silence," he said,
"dating from the moment when I take this in my hand." He produced
a bright little stew-pan from his collection of culinary utensils
as he spoke. "Properly pursued, the Art of Cookery allows of no
divided attention," he continued, gravely. "In that observation
you will find the reason why no woman ever has reached, or ever
will reach, the highest distinction as a cook. As a rule, women
are incapable of absolutely concentrating their attention on any
one occupation for any given time. Their minds will run on
something else--say; typically, for the sake of illustration,
their sweetheart or their new bonnet. The one obstacle, Mrs.
Valeria, to your rising equal to the men in the various
industrial processes of life is not raised, as the women vainly
suppose, by the defective institutions of the age they live in.
No! the obstacle is in themselves. No institutions that can be
devised to encourage them will ever be strong enough to contend
successfully with the sweetheart and the new bonnet. A little
while ago, for instance, I was instrumental in getting women
employed in our local post-office here. The other day I took the
trouble--a serious business to me--of getting downstairs, and
wheeling myself away to the office to see how they were getting
on. I took a letter with me to register. It had an unusually long
address. The registering woman began copying the address on the
receipt form, in a business-like manner cheering and delightful
to see. Half way through, a little child-sister of one of the
other women employed trotted into the office, and popped under
the counter to go and speak to her relative. The registering
woman's mind instantly gave way. Her pencil stopped; her eyes
wandered off to the child with a charming expression of interest.
'Well, Lucy,' she said, 'how d'ye do?' Then she remembered
business again, and returned to her receipt. When I took it
across the counter, an important line in the address of my letter
was left out in the copy. Thanks to Lucy. Now a man in the same
position would not have seen Lucy--he would have been too closely
occupied with what he was about at the moment. There is the whole
difference between the mental constitution of the sexes, which no
legislation will ever alter as long as the world lasts! What does
it matter? Women are infinitely superior to men in the moral
qualities which are the true adornments of humanity. Be
content--oh, my mistaken sisters, be content with that!"

He twisted his chair around toward the stove. It was useless to
dispute the question with him, even if I had felt inclined to do
so. He absorbed himself in his stew-pan.

I looked about me in the room.

The same insatiable relish for horrors exhibited downstairs by
the pictures in the hall was displayed again here. The
photographs hanging on the wall represented the various forms of
madness taken from the life. The plaster casts ranged on the
shelf opposite were casts (after death) of the heads of famous
murderers. A frightful little skeleton of a woman hung in a
cupboard, behind a glazed door, with this cynical inscription
placed above the skull: "Behold the scaffolding on which beauty
is built!" In a corresponding cupboard, with the door wide open,
there hung in loose folds a shirt (as I took it to be) of chamois
leather. Touching it (and finding it to be far softer than any
chamois leather that my fingers had ever felt before), I
disarranged the folds, and disclosed a ticket pinned among them,
describing the thing in these horrid lines: "Skin of a French
Marquis, tanned in the Revolution of Ninety-three. Who says the
nobility are not good for something? They make good leather."

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