The Law and the Lady

W >> Wilkie Collins >> The Law and the Lady

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31

"Quite sure. But I don't say what my uncle says. Pray don't think
that!"

He suddenly pressed me to his bosom, and fixed his eyes on mine.
His look frightened me.

"Good-by, Valeria!" he said. "Try and think kindly of me, my
darling, when you are married to some happier man."

He attempted to leave me. I clung to him in an agony of terror
that shook me from head to foot.

"What do you mean?" I asked, as soon as I could speak. "I am
yours and yours only. What have I said, what have I done, to
deserve those dreadful words?"

"We must part, my angel," he answered, sadly. "The fault is none
of yours; the misfortune is all mine. My Valeria! how can you
marry a man who is an object of suspicion to your nearest and
dearest friends? I have led a dreary life. I have never found in
any other woman the sympathy with me, the sweet comfort and
companionship, that I find in you. Oh, it is hard to lose you! it
is hard to go back again to my unfriended life! I must make the
sacrifice, love, for your sake. I know no more why that letter is
what it is than you do. Will your uncle believe me? will your
friends believe me? One last kiss, Valeria! Forgive me for having
loved you--passionately, devotedly loved you. Forgive me--and let
me go!"

I held him desperately, recklessly. His eyes, put me beside
myself; his words filled me with a frenzy of despair.

"Go where you may," I said, "I go with you!
Friends--reputation--I care nothing who I lose, or what I lose!
Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman--don't madden me! I can't live
without you. I must and will be your wife!"

Those wild words were all I could say before the misery and
madness in me forced their way outward in a burst of sobs and
tears.

He yielded. He soothed me with his charming voice; he brought me
back to myself with his tender caresses. He called the bright
heaven above us to witness that he devoted his whole life to me.
He vowed--oh, in such solemn, such eloquent words!--that his one
thought, night and day, should be to prove himself worthy of such
love as mine. And had he not nobly redeemed the pledge? Had not
the betrothal of that memorable night been followed by the
betrothal at the altar, by the vows before God! Ah, what a life
was before me! What more than mortal happiness was mine!

Again I lifted my head from his bosom to taste the dear delight
of seeing him by my side--my life, my love, my husband, my own!

Hardly awakened yet from the absorbing memories of the past to
the sweet realities of the present, I let my cheek touch his
cheek, I whispered to him softly, "Oh, how I love you! how I love
you!"

The next instant I started back from him. My heart stood still. I
put my hand up to my face. What did I feel on my cheek? (_I_ had
not been weeping--I was too happy.) What did I feel on my cheek?
A tear!

His face was still averted from me. I turned it toward me, with
my own hands, by main force.

I looked at him--and saw my husband, on our wedding-day, with his
eyes full of tears.

CHAPTER III.

RAMSGATE SANDS.

EUSTACE succeeded in quieting my alarm. But I can hardly say
that he succeeded in satisfying my mind as well.

He had been thinking, he told me, of the contrast between his
past and his present life. Bitter remembrance of the years that
had gone had risen in his memory, and had filled him with
melancholy misgivings of his capacity to make my life with him a
happy one. He had asked himself if he had not met me too late--if
he were not already a man soured and broken by the
disappointments and disenchantments of the past? Doubts such as
these, weighing more and more heavily on his mind, had filled his
eyes with the tears which I had discovered--tears which he now
entreated me, by my love for him, to dismiss from my memory
forever.

I forgave him, comforted him, revived him; but there were moments
when the remembrance of what I had seen troubled me in secret,
and when I asked myself if I really possessed my husband's full
confidence as he possessed mine.

We left the train at Ramsgate.

The favorite watering-place was empty; the season was just over.
Our arrangements for the wedding tour included a cruise to the
Mediterranean in a yacht lent to Eustace by a friend. We were
both fond of the sea, and we were equally desirous, considering
the circumstances under which we had married, of escaping the
notice of friends and acquaintances. With this object in view,
having celebrated our marriage privately in London, we had
decided on instructing the sailing-master of the yacht to join us
at Ramsgate. At this port (when the season for visitors was at an
end) we could embark far more privately than at the popular
yachting stations situated in the Isle of Wight.

Three days passed--days of delicious solitude, of exquisite
happiness, never to be forgotten, never to be lived over again,
to the end of our lives!

Early on the morning of the fourth day, just before sunrise, a
trifling incident happened, which was noticeable, nevertheless,
as being strange to me in my experience of myself.

I awoke, suddenly and unaccountably, from a deep and dreamless
sleep with an all-pervading sensation of nervous uneasiness which
I had never felt before. In the old days at the Vicarage my
capacity as a sound sleeper had been the subject of many a little
harmless joke. From the moment when my head was on the pillow I
had never known what it was to awake until the maid knocked at my
door. At all seasons and times the long and uninterrupted repose
of a child was the repose that I enjoyed.

And now I had awakened, without any assignable cause, hours
before my usual time. I tried to compose myself to sleep again.
The effort was useless. Such a restlessness possessed me that I
was not even able to lie still in the bed. My husband was
sleeping soundly by my side. In the fear of disturbing him I
rose, and put on my dressing-gown and slippers.

I went to the window. The sun was just rising over the calm gray
sea. For a while the majestic spectacle before me exercised a
tranquilizing influence on the irritable condition of my nerves.
But ere long the old restlessness returned upon me. I walked
slowly to and fro in the room, until I was weary of the monotony
of the exercise. I took up a book, and laid it aside again. My
attention wandered; the author was powerless to recall it. I got
on my feet once more, and looked at Eustace, and admired him and
loved him in his tranquil sleep. I went back to the window, and
wearied of the beautiful morning. I sat down before the glass and
looked at myself. How haggard and worn I was already, through
awaking before my usual time! I rose again, not knowing what to
do next. The confinement to the four walls of the room began to
be intolerable to me. I opened the door that led into my
husband's dressing-room, and entered it, to try if the change
would relieve me.

The first object that I noticed was his dressing-case, open on
the toilet-table.

I took out the bottles and pots and brushes and combs, the knives
and scissors in one compartment, the writing materials in
another. I smelled the perfumes and pomatums; I busily cleaned
and dusted the bottles with my handkerchief as I took them out.
Little by little I completely emptied the dressing-case. It was
lined with blue velvet. In one corner I noticed a tiny slip of
loose blue silk. Taking it between my finger and thumb, and
drawing it upward, I discovered that there was a false bottom to
the case, forming a secret compartment for letters and papers. In
my strange condition--capricious, idle, inquisitive--it was an
amusement to me to take out the papers, just as I had taken out
everything else .

I found some receipted bills, which failed to interest me; some
letters, which it is needless to say I laid aside after only
looking at the addresses; and, under all, a photograph, face
downward, with writing on the back of it. I looked at the
writing, and saw these words:

"To my dear son, Eustace."

His mother! the woman who had so obstinately and mercilessly
opposed herself to our marriage!

I eagerly turned the photograph, expecting to see a woman with a
stern, ill-tempered, forbidding countenance. To my surprise, the
face showed the remains of great beauty; the expression, though
remarkably firm, was yet winning, tender, and kind. The gray hair
was arranged in rows of little quaint old-fashioned curls on
either side of the head, under a plain lace cap. At one corner of
the mouth there was a mark, apparently a mole, which added to the
characteristic peculiarity of the face. I looked and looked,
fixing the portrait thoroughly in my mind. This woman, who had
almost insulted me and my relatives, was, beyond all doubt or
dispute, so far as appearances went, a person possessing unusual
attractions--a person whom it would be a pleasure and a privilege
to know.

I fell into deep thought. The discovery of the photograph quieted
me as nothing had quieted me yet.

The striking of a clock downstairs in the hall warned me of the
flight of time. I carefully put back all the objects in the
dressing-case (beginning with the photograph) exactly as I had
found them, and returned to the bedroom. As I looked at my
husband, still sleeping peacefully, the question forced itself
into my mind, What had made that genial, gentle mother of his so
sternly bent on parting us? so harshly and pitilessly resolute in
asserting her disapproval of our marriage?

Could I put my question openly to Eustace when he awoke? No; I
was afraid to venture that length. It had been tacitly understood
between us that we were not to speak of his mother--and, besides,
he might be angry if he knew that I had opened the private
compartment of his dressing-case.

After breakfast that morning we had news at last of the yacht.
The vessel was safely moored in the inner harbor, and the
sailing-master was waiting to receive my husband's orders on
board.

Eustace hesitated at asking me to accompany him to the yacht. It
would be necessary for him to examine the inventory of the
vessel, and to decide questions, not very interesting to a woman,
relating to charts and barometers, provisions and water. He asked
me if I would wait for his return. The day was enticingly
beautiful, and the tide was on the ebb. I pleaded for a walk on
the sands; and the landlady at our lodgings, who happened to be
in the room at the time, volunteered to accompany me and take
care of me. It was agreed that we should walk as far as we felt
inclined in the direction of Broadstairs, and that Eustace should
follow and meet us on the sands, after having completed his
arrangements on board the yacht.

In half an hour more the landlady and I were out on the beach.

The scene on that fine autumn morning was nothing less than
enchanting. The brisk breeze, the brilliant sky, the flashing
blue sea, the sun-bright cliffs and the tawny sands at their
feet, the gliding procession of ships on the great marine highway
of the English Channel--it was all so exhilarating, it was all so
delightful, that I really believe if I had been by myself I could
have danced for joy like a child. The one drawback to my
happiness was the landlady's untiring tongue. She was a forward,
good-natured, empty-headed woman, who persisted in talking,
whether I listened or not, and who had a habit of perpetually
addressing me as "Mrs. Woodville," which I thought a little
overfamiliar as an assertion of equality from a person in her
position to a person in mine.

We had been out, I should think, more than half an hour, when we
overtook a lady walking before us on the beach.

Just as we were about to pass the stranger she took her
handkerchief from her pocket, and accidentally drew out with it a
letter, which fell unnoticed by her, on the sand. I was nearest
to the letter, and I picked it up and offered it to the lady.

The instant she turned to thank me, I stood rooted to the spot.
There was the original of the photographic portrait in the
dressing-case! there was my husband's mother, standing face to
face with me! I recognized the quaint little gray curls, the
gentle, genial expression, the mole at the corner of the mouth.
No mistake was possible. His mother herself!

The old lady, naturally enough, mistook my confusion for shyness.
With perfect tact and kindness she entered into conversation with
me. In another minute I was walking side by side with the woman
who had sternly repudiated me as a member of her family; feeling,
I own, terribly discomposed, and not knowing in the least whether
I ought or ought not to assume the responsibility, in my
husband's absence, of telling her who I was.

In another minute my familiar landlady, walking on the other side
of my mother-in-law, decided the question for me. I happened to
say that I supposed we must by that time be near the end of our
walk--the little watering-place called Broadstairs. "Oh no, Mrs.
Woodville! cried the irrepressible woman, calling me by my name,
as usual; "nothing like so near as you think!"

I looked with a beating heart at the old lady.

To my unutterable amazement, not the faintest gleam of
recognition appeared in her face. Old Mrs. Woodville went on
talking to young Mrs. Woodville just as composedly as if she had
never heard her own name before in her life!

My face and manner must have betrayed something of the agitation
that I was suffering. Happening to look at me at the end of her
next sentence, the old lady started, and said, in her kindly way,

"I am afraid you have overexerted yourself. You are very
pale--you are looking quite exhausted. Come and sit down here;
let me lend you my smelling-bottle."

I followed her, quite helplessly, to the base of the cliff. Some
fallen fragments of chalk offered us a seat. I vaguely heard the
voluble landlady's expressions of sympathy and regret; I
mechanically took the smelling-bottle which my husband's mother
offered to me, after hearing my name, as an act of kindness to a
stranger

If I had only had myself to think of, I believe I should have
provoked an explanation on the spot. But I had Eustace to think
of. I was entirely ignorant of the relations, hostile or
friendly, which existed between his mother and himself. What
could I do?

In the meantime the old lady was still speaking to me with the
most considerate sympathy. She too was fatigued. she said. She
had passed a weary night at the bedside of a near relative
staying at Ramsgate. Only the day before she had received a
telegram announcing that one of her sisters was seriously ill.
She was herself thank God, still active and strong, and she had
thought it her duty to start at once for Ramsgate. Toward the
morning the state of the patient had improved. "The doctor
assures me ma'am, that there is no immediate danger; and I
thought it might revive me, after my long night at the bedside,
if I took a little walk on the beach."

I heard the words--I understood what they meant--but I was still
too bewildered and too intimidated by my extraordinary position
to be able to continue the conversation. The landlady had a
sensible suggestion to make--the landlady was the next person who
spoke.

"Here is a gentleman coming," she said to me, pointing in the
direction of Ramsgate. You can never walk back. Shall we ask him
to send a chaise from Broadstairs to the gap in the cliff?"

The gentleman advanced a little nearer.

The landlady and I recognized him at the same moment. It was
Eustace coming to meet us, as we had arranged. The irrepressible
landlady gave the freest expression to her feelings. Oh, Mrs.
Woodville, ain't it lucky? here is Mr. Woodville himself ."

Once more I looked at my mother-in-law. Once more the name failed
to produce the slightest effect on her. Her sight was not so keen
as ours; she had not recognized her son yet. He had young eyes
like us, and he recognized his mother. For a mome nt he stopped
like a man thunderstruck. Then he came on--his ruddy face white
with suppressed emotion, his eyes fixed on his mother.

"You here!" he said to her.

"How do you do, Eustace?" she quietly rejoined. "Have _you_ heard
of your aunt's illness too? Did you know she was staying at
Ramsgate?"

He made no answer. The landlady, drawing the inevitable inference
from the words that she had just heard, looked from me to my
mother-in-law in a state of amazement, which paralyzed even her
tongue. I waited with my eyes on my husband, to see what he would
do. If he had delayed acknowledging me another moment, the whole
future course of my life might have been altered--I should have
despised him.

He did _not_ delay. He came to my side and took my hand.

"Do you know who this is?" be said to his mother.

She answered, looking at me with a courteous bend of her head:

"A lady I met on the beach, Eustace, who kindly restored to me a
letter that I dropped. I think I heard the name" (she turned to
the landlady): Mrs. Woodville, was it not?"

My husband's fingers unconsciously closed on my hand with a grasp
that hurt me. He set his mother right, it is only just to say,
without one cowardly moment of hesitation.

"Mother," he said to her, very quietly, "this lady is my wife."

She had hitherto kept her seat. She now rose slowly and faced her
son in silence. The first expression of surprise passed from her
face. It was succeeded by the most terrible look of mingled
indignation and contempt that I ever saw in a woman's eyes.

"I pity your wife," she said.

With those words and no more, lifting her hand she waved him back
from her, and went on her way again, as we had first found her,
alone.

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE WAY HOME.

LEFT by ourselves, there was a moment of silence among us.
Eustace spoke first.

"Are you able to walk back?" he said to me. "Or shall we go on to
Broadstairs, and return to Ramsgate by the railway?"

He put those questions as composedly, so far as his manner was
concerned, as if nothing remarkable had happened. But his eyes
and his lips betrayed him. They told me that he was suffering
keenly in secret. The extraordinary scene that had just passed,
far from depriving me of the last remains of my courage, had
strung up my nerves and restored my self-possession. I must have
been more or less than woman if my self-respect had not been
wounded, if my curiosity had not been wrought to the highest
pitch, by the extraordinary conduct of my husband's mother when
Eustace presented me to her. What was the secret of her despising
him, and pitying me? Where was the explanation of her
incomprehensible apathy when my name was twice pronounced in her
hearing? Why had she left us, as if the bare idea of remaining in
our company was abhorrent to her? The foremost interest of my
life was now the interest of penetrating these mysteries. Walk? I
was in such a fever of expectation that I felt as if I could have
walked to the world's end, if I could only keep my husband by my
side, and question him on the way.

"I am quite recovered," I said. "Let us go back, as we came, on
foot."

Eustace glanced at the landlady. The landlady understood him.

"I won't intrude my company on you, sir," she said, sharply. "I
have some business to do at Broadstairs, and, now I am so near, I
may as well go on. Good-morning, Mrs. Woodville."

She laid a marked emphasis on my name, and she added one
significant look at parting, which (in the preoccupied state of
my mind at that moment) I entirely failed to comprehend. There
was neither time nor opportunity to ask her what she meant. With
a stiff little bow, addressed to Eustace, she left us as his
mother had left us taking the way to Broadstairs, and walking
rapidly.

At last we were alone.

I lost no time in beginning my inquiries; I wasted no words in
prefatory phrases. In the plainest terms I put the question to
him:

"What does your mother's conduct mean?"

Instead of answering, he burst into a fit of laughter--loud,
coarse, hard laughter, so utterly unlike any sound I had ever yet
heard issue from his lips, so strangely and shockingly foreign to
his character as _I_ understood it, that I stood still on the
sands and openly remonstrated with him.

"Eustace! you are not like yourself," I said. You almost frighten
me."

He took no notice. He seemed to be pursuing some pleasant train
of thought just started in his mind.

"So like my mother!" he exclaimed, with the air of a man who felt
irresistibly diverted by some humorous idea of his own. "Tell me
all about it, Valeria!"

"Tell _you_!" I repeated. "After what has happened, surely it is
your duty to enlighten _me_."

"You don't see the joke," he said.

"I not only fail to see the joke," I rejoined, "I see something
in your mother's language and your mother's behavior which
justifies me in asking you for a serious explanation."

"My dear Valeria, if you understood my mother as well as I do, a
serious explanation of her conduct would be the last thing in the
world that you would expect from me. The idea of taking my mother
seriously!" He burst out laughing again. "My darling, you don't
know how you amuse me."

It was all forced: it was all unnatural. He, the most delicate,
the most refined of men--a gentleman in the highest sense of the
word--was coarse and loud and vulgar! My heart sank under a
sudden sense of misgiving which, with all my love for him, it was
impossible to resist. In unutterable distress and alarm I asked
myself, "Is my husband beginning to deceive me? is he acting a
part, and acting it badly, before we have been married a week?" I
set myself to win his confidence in a new way. He was evidently
determined to force his own point of view on me. I determined, on
my side, to accept his point of view.

"You tell me I don't understand your mother," I said, gently.
"Will you help me to understand her?"

"It is not easy to help you to understand a woman who doesn't
understand herself," he answered. "But I will try. The key to my
poor dear mother's character is, in one word--Eccentricity."

If he had picked out the most inappropriate word in the whole
dictionary to describe the lady whom I had met on the beach,
"Eccentricity" would have been that word. A child who had seen
what I saw, who had heard what I heard would have discovered that
he was trifling--grossly, recklessly trifling--with the truth

"Bear in mind what I have said," he proceeded; "and if you want
to understand my mother, do what I asked you to do a minute
since--tell me all about it. How came you to speak to her, to
begin with?"

"Your mother told you, Eustace. I was walking just behind her,
when she dropped a letter by accident--"

"No accident," he interposed. "The letter was dropped on
purpose."

"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "Why should your mother drop the
letter on purpose?"

"Use the key to her character, my dear. Eccentricity! My mother's
odd way of making acquaintance with you."

"Making acquaintance with me? I have just told you that I was
walking behind her. She could not have known of the existence of
such a person as myself until I spoke to her first."

"So you suppose, Valeria."

"I am certain of it."

"Pardon me--you don't know my mother as I do."

I began to lose all patience with him.

"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that your mother was out on
the sands to-day for the express purpose of making acquaintance
with Me?"

"I have not the slightest doubt of it," he answered, coolly.

"Why, she didn't even recognize my name!" I burst out. "Twice
over the landlady called me Mrs. Woodville in your mother's
hearing, and twice over, I declare to you on my word of honor, it
failed to produce the slightest impression on her. She looked and
acted as if she had never heard her own name before in her life."

"'Acted' is the right word," he said, just as composedly as
before. "The women on the stage are not the only women who can
act. My mother's object was to make herself thoroughly acquainted
with you, and to throw you off your guard by speaking in the
character of a stranger. It is exactly like her to take that
roundabout way of satisfying her curiosity about a
daughter-in-law she disapproves of . If I had not joined you when
I did, you would have been examined and cross-examined about
yourself and about me, and you would innocently have answered
under the impression that you were speaking to a chance
acquaintance. There is my mother all over! She is your enemy,
remember--not your friend. She is not in search of your merits,
but of your faults. And you wonder why no impression was produced
on her when she heard you addressed by your name! Poor innocent!
I can tell you this--you only discovered my mother in her own
character when I put an end to the mystification by presenting
you to each other. You saw how angry she was, and now you know
why."

I let him go on without saying a word. I listened--oh! with such
a heavy heart, with such a crushing sense of disenchantment and
despair! The idol of my worship, the companion, guide, protector
of my life--had he fallen so low? could he stoop to such
shameless prevarication as this?

Was there one word of truth in all that he had said to me? Yes!
If I had not discovered his mother's portrait, it was certainly
true that I should not have known, not even have vaguely
suspected, who she really was. Apart from this, the rest was
lying, clumsy lying, which said one thing at least for him, that
he was not accustomed to falsehood and deceit. Good Heavens! if
my husband was to be believed, his mother must have tracked us to
London, tracked us to the church, tracked us to the railway
station, tracked us to Ramsgate! To assert that she knew me by
sight as the wife of Eustace, and that she had waited on the
sands and dropped her letter for the express purpose of making
acquaintance with me, was also to assert every one of these
monstrous probabilities to be facts that had actually happened!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31