The Law and the Lady

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"Cunegonda," he resumed, "takes from its place of concealment in
her bosom a written paper, and unfolds it. 'Look at this,' she
says. Damoride looks at the paper, and sinks again at her
mistress's feet in a paroxysm of horror and despair. Cunegonda is
in possession of a shameful secret in the maid's past life.
Cunegonda can say to her, 'Choose your alternative. Either submit
to an exposure which disgraces you and--disgraces your parents
forever--or make up your mind to obey Me.' Damoride might submit
to the disgrace if it only affected herself. But her parents are
honest people; she cannot disgrace her parents. She is driven to
her last refuge--there is no hope of melting the hard heart of
Cunegonda. Her only resource is to raise difficulties; she tries
to show that there are obstacles between her and the crime.
'Madam! madam!' she cries; 'how can I do it, when the nurse is
there to see me?' Cunegonda answers, 'Sometimes the nurse sleeps;
sometimes the nurse is away.' Damoride still persists. 'Madam!
madam! the door is kept locked, and the nurse has got the key.'"

The key! I instantly thought of the missing key at Gleninch. Had
he thought of it too? He certainly checked himself as the word
escaped him. I resolved to make the signal. I rested my elbow on
the arm of my chair, and played with my earring. Benjamin took
out his pencil and arranged his note-book so that Ariel could not
see what he was about if she happened to look his way.

We waited until it pleased Miserrimus Dexter to proceed. The
interval was a long one. His hand went up again to his forehead.
A duller and duller look was palpably stealing over his eyes.
When he did speak, it was not to go on with the narrative, but to
put a question.

"Where did I leave off?" he asked.

My hopes sank again as rapidly as they had risen. I managed to
answer him, however, without showing any change in my ,manner.

"You left off," I said, "where Damoride was speaking to
Cunegonda--"

"Yes, yes!" he interposed. "And what did she say?"

"She said, 'The door is kept locked, and the nurse has got the
key.'"

He instantly leaned forward in his chair.

"No!" he answered, vehemently. "You're wrong. 'Key?' Nonsense! I
never said 'Key.'"

"I thought you did, Mr. Dexter."

"I never did! I said something else, and you have forgotten it."

I refrained from disputing with him, in fear of what might
follow. We waited again. Benjamin, sullenly submitting to my
caprices, had taken down the questions and answers that had
passed between Dexter and myself. He still mechanically kept his
page open, and still held his pencil in readiness to go on.
Ariel, quietly submitting to the drowsy influence of the wine
while Dexter's voice was in her ears, felt uneasily the change to
silence. She glanced round her restlessly; she lifted her eyes to
"the Master."

There he sat, silent, with his hand to his head, still struggling
to marshal his wandering thoughts, still trying to see light
through the darkness that was closing round him.

"Master!" cried Ariel, piteously. "What's become of the story?"

He started as if she had awakened him out of a sleep; he shook
his head impatiently, as though he wanted to throw off some
oppression that weighed upon it.

"Patience, patience," he said. "The story is going on again."

He dashed at it desperately; he picked up the first lost thread
that fell in his way, reckless whether it were the right thread
or the wrong one:

"Damoride fell on her knees. She burst into tears. She said--"

He stopped, and looked about him with vacant eyes.

"What name did I give the other woman?" he asked, not putting the
question to me, or to either of my companions: asking it of
himself, or asking it of the empty air.

"You called the other woman Cunegonda," I said.

At the sound of my voice his eyes turned slowly--turned on me,
and yet failed to look at me. Dull and absent, still and
changeless, they were eyes that seemed to be fixed on something
far away. Even his voice was altered when he spoke next. It had
dropped to a quiet, vacant, monotonous tone. I had heard
something like it while I was watching by my husband's bedside,
at the time of his delirium--when Eustace's mind appeared to be
too weary to follow his speech. Was the end so near as this?

"I called her Cunegonda," he repeated. "And I called the other--"

He stopped once more.

"And you called the other Damoride," I said.

Ariel looked up at him with a broad stare of bewilderment. She
pulled impatiently at the sleeve of his jacket to attract his
notice.

"Is this the story, Master?" she asked.

He answered without looking at her, his changeless eyes still
fixed, as it seemed, on something far away.

"This is the story," he said, absently. "But why Cunegonda? why
Damoride? Why not Mistress and Maid? It's easier to remember
Mistress and Maid--"

He hesitated; he shivered as he tried to raise himself in his
chair. Then he seemed to rally "What did the Maid say to the
Mistress?" he muttered. "What? what? what?" He hesitated again.
Then something seemed to dawn upon him unexpectedly. Was it some
new thought that had struck him? or some lost thought that he had
recovered? Impossible to say.

He went on, suddenly and rapidly went on, in these strange words:

"'The letter,' the Maid said; 'the letter. Oh my heart. Every
word a dagger. A dagger in my heart. Oh, you letter. Horrible,
horrible, horrible letter.'"

What, in God's name, was he talking about? What did those words
mean?

Was he unconsciously pursuing his faint and fragmentary
recollections of a past time at Gleninch, under the delusion that
he was going on with the story? In the wreck of the other
faculties, was memory the last to sink? Was the truth, the
dreadful truth, glimmering on me dimly through the awful shadow
cast before it by the advancing, eclips e of the brain? My breath
failed me; a nameless horror crept through my whole being.

Benjamin, with his pencil in his hand, cast one warning look at
me. Ariel was quiet and satisfied. "Go on, Master," was all she
said. "I like it! I like it! Go on with the story."

He went on--like a man sleeping with his eyes open, and talking
in his sleep.

"The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the
Maid. The Mistress said, 'Show him the letter. Must, must, must
do it.' The Maid said, 'No. Mustn't do it. Shan't show it. Stuff.
Nonsense. Let him suffer. We can get him off. Show it? No. Let
the worst come to the worst. Show it, then.' The Mistress said--"
He paused, and waved his hand rapidly to and fro before his eyes,
as if he were brushing away some visionary confusion or
entanglement. "Which was it last?" he said--"Mistress or Maid?
Mistress? No. Maid speaks, of course. Loud. Positive. 'You
scoundrels. Keep away from that table. The Diary's there. Number
Nine, Caldershaws. Ask for Dandie. You shan't have the Diary. A
secret in your ear. The Diary will hang, him. I won't have him
hanged. How dare you touch my chair? My chair is Me! How dare you
touch Me?'"

The last words burst on me like a gleam of light! I had read them
in the Report of the Trial--in the evidence of the sheriff's
officer. Miserrimus Dexter had spoken in those very terms when he
had tried vainly to prevent the men from seizing my husband's
papers, and when the men had pushed his chair out of the room.
There was no doubt now of what his memory was busy with. The
mystery at Gleninch! His last backward flight of thought circled
feebly and more feebly nearer and nearer to the mystery at
Gleninch!

Ariel aroused him again. She had no mercy on him; she insisted on
hearing the whole story.

"Why do you stop, Master? Get along with it! get along with it!
Tell us quick--what did the Missus say to the Maid?"

He laughed feebly, and tried to imitate her.

"'What did the Missus say to the Maid?'" he repeated. His laugh
died away. He went on speaking, more and more vacantly, more and
more rapidly. "The Mistress said to the Maid. We've got him off.
What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grate. No
matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone. Tear it
up. Shake it up in the basket. Along with the rest. Shake it up.
Waste paper. Throw it away. Gone forever. Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara!
Gone forever.'"

Ariel clapped her hands, and mimicked him in her turn.

"'Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara!'" she repeated. "'Gone forever.' That's
prime, Master! Tell us--who was Sara?"

His lips moved, but his voice sank so low that I could barely
hear him. He began again, with the old melancholy refrain:

"The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the
Maid--" He stopped abruptly, and raised himself erect in the
chair; he threw up both his hands above his head, and burst into
a frightful screaming laugh. "Aha-ha-ha-ha! How funny! Why don't
you laugh? Funny, funny, funny, funny. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha--"

He fell back in the chair. The shrill and dreadful laugh died
away into a low sob. Then there was one long, deep, wearily drawn
breath. Then nothing but a mute, vacant face turned up to the
ceiling, with eyes that looked blindly, with lips parted in a
senseless, changeless grin. Nemesis at last! The foretold doom
had fallen on him. The night had come.

But one feeling animated me when the first shock was over. Even
the horror of that fearful sight seemed only to increase the pity
that I felt for the stricken wretch. I started impulsively to my
feet. Seeing nothing, thinking of nothing but the helpless figure
in the chair, I sprang forward to raise him, to revive him, to
recall him (if such a thing might still be possible) to himself.
At the first step that I took, I felt hands on me--I was
violently drawn back. "Are you blind?" cried Benjamin, dragging
me nearer and nearer to the door. "Look there!"

He pointed; and I looked.

Ariel had been beforehand with me. She had raised her master in
the chair; she had got one arm around him. In her free hand she
brandished an Indian club, torn from a "trophy" of Oriental
weapons that ornamented the wall over the fire-place. The
creature was transfigured! Her dull eyes glared like the eyes of
a wild animal. She gnashed her teeth in the frenzy that possessed
her. "You have done this!" she shouted to me, waving the club
furiously around and around over her head. "Come near him, and
I'll dash your brains out! I'll mash you till there's not a whole
bone left in your skin!" Benjamin, still holding me with one hand
opened the door with the other. I let him do with me as he would;
Ariel fascinated me; I could look at nothing but Ariel. Her
frenzy vanished as she saw us retreating. She dropped the club;
she threw both arms around him, and nestled her head on his
bosom, and sobbed and wept over him. "Master! master! They shan't
vex you any more. Look up again. Laugh at me as you used to do.
Say, 'Ariel, you're a fool.' Be like yourself again!" I was
forced into the next room. I heard a long, low, wailing cry of
misery from the poor creature who loved him with a dog's fidelity
and a woman's devotion. The heavy door was closed between us. I
was in the quiet antechamber, crying over that piteous sight;
clinging to my kind old friend as helpless and as useless as a
child.

Benjamin turned the key in the lock.

"There's no use in crying about it," he said, quietly. "It would
be more to the purpose, Valeria, if you thanked God that you have
got out of that room safe and sound. Come with me."

He took the key out of the lock, and led me downstairs into the
hall. After a little consideration, he opened the front door of
the house. The gardener was still quietly at work in the grounds.

"Your master is taken ill," Benjamin said; "and the woman who
attends upon him has lost her head--if she ever had a head to
lose. Where does the nearest doctor live?"

The man's devotion to Dexter showed itself as the woman's
devotion had shown itself--in the man's rough way. He threw down
his spade with an oath.

"The Master taken bad?" he said. "I'll fetch the doctor. I shall
find him sooner than you will."

"Tell the doctor to bring a man with him," Benjamin added. "He
may want help."

The gardener turned around sternly.

"_I'm_ the man," he said. "Nobody shall help but me."

He left us. I sat down on one of the chairs in the hall, and did
my best to compose myself. Benjamin walked to and fro, deep in
thought. "Both of them fond of him," I heard my old friend say to
himself. "Half monkey, half man--and both of them fond of him.
_That_ beats me."

The gardener returned with the doctor--a quiet, dark, resolute
man. Benjamin advanced to meet them. "I have got the key," he
said. "Shall I go upstairs with you?"

Without answering, the doctor drew Benjamin aside into a corner
of the hall. The two talked together in low voices. At the end of
it the doctor said, "Give me the key. You can be of no use; you
will only irritate her."

With those words he beckoned to the gardener. He was about to
lead the way up the stairs when I ventured to stop him.

"May I stay in the hall, sir?" I said. "I am very anxious to hear
how it ends."

He looked at me for a moment before he replied.

"You had better go home, madam," he said. "Is the gardener
acquainted with your address?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. I will let you know how it ends by means of the
gardener. Take my advice. Go home."

Benjamin placed my arm in his. I looked back, and saw the doctor
and the gardener ascending the stairs together on their way to
the locked-up room.

"Never mind the doctor," I whispered. "Let's wait in the garden."

Benjamin would not hear of deceiving the doctor. "I mean to take
you home," he said. I looked at him in amazement. My old friend,
who was all meekness and submission so long as there was no
emergency to try him, now showed the dormant reserve of manly
spirit and decision in his nature as he had never (in my
experience) shown it yet. He led me into the garden. We had kept
our cab: it was waiting for us at the gate.

On our way home Benjamin produced his note-book.

"What's to be done, my dear, with the gib berish that I have
written here?" he said.

"Have you written it all down?" I asked, in surprise.

"When I undertake a duty, I do it," he answered. "You never gave
me the signal to leave off--you never moved your chair. I have
written every word of it. What shall I do? Throw it out of the
cab window?"

"Give it to me."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I don't know yet. I will ask Mr. Playmore."

CHAPTER XLI.

MR. PLAYMORE IN A NEW CHARACTER.

BY that night's post--although I was far from being fit to make
the exertion--I wrote to Mr. Playmore, to tell him what had taken
place, and to beg for his earliest assistance and advice.

The notes in Benjamin's book were partly written in shorthand,
and were, on that account, of no use to me in their existing
condition. At my request, he made two fair copies. One of the
copies I inclosed in my letter to Mr. Playmore. The other I laid
by me, on my bedside table, when I went to rest.

Over and over again, through the long hours of the wakeful night,
I read and re-read the last words which had dropped from
Miserrimus Dexter's lips. Was it possible to interpret them to
any useful purpose? At the very outset they seemed to set
interpretation at defiance. After trying vainly to solve the
hopeless problem, I did at last what I might as well have done at
first--I threw down the paper in despair. Where were my bright
visions of discovery and success now? Scattered to the winds! Was
there the faintest chance of the stricken man's return to reason?
I remembered too well what I had seen to hope for it. The closing
lines of the medical report which I had read in Mr. Playmore's
office recurred to my memory in the stillness of the night--"When
the catastrophe has happened, his friends can entertain no hope
of his cure: the balance once lost, will be lost for life."

The confirmation of that terrible sentence was not long in
reaching me. On the next morning the gardener brought a note
containing the information which the doctor had promised to give
me on the previous day.

Miserrimus Dexter and Ariel were still where Benjamin and I had
left them together--in the long room. They were watched by
skilled attendants, waiting the decision of Dexter's nearest
relative (a younger brother, who lived in the country, and who
had been communicated with by telegraph. It had been found
impossible to part the faithful Ariel from her master without
using the bodily restraints adopted in cases of raging insanity.
The doctor and the gardener (both unusually strong men) had
failed to hold the poor creature when they first attempted to
remove her on entering the room. Directly they permitted her to
return to her master the frenzy vanished: she was perfectly quiet
and contented so long as they let her sit at his feet and look at
him.

Sad as this was, the report of Miserrimus Dexter's condition was
more melancholy still.

"My patient is in a state of absolute imbecility"--those were the
words in the doctor's letter; and the gardener's simple narrative
confirmed them as the truest words that could have been used. He
was utterly unconscious of poor Ariel's devotion to him--he did
not even appear to know that she was present in the room. For
hours together he remained in a state of utter lethargy in his
chair. He showed an animal interest in his meals, and a greedy
animal enjoyment of eating and drinking as much as he could
get--and that was all. "This morning," the honest gardener said
to me at parting, "we thought he seemed to wake up a bit. Looked
about him, you know, and made queer signs with his hands. I
couldn't make out what he meant; no more could the doctor. _She_
knew, poor thing--She did. Went and got him his harp, and put his
hand up to it. Lord bless you! no use. He couldn't play no more
than I can. Twanged at it anyhow, and grinned and gabbled to
himself. No: he'll never come right again. Any person can see
that, without the doctor to help 'em. Enjoys his meals, as I told
you; and that's all. It would be the best thing that could happen
if it would please God to take him. There's no more to be said. I
wish you good-morning, ma'am."

He went away with the tears in his eyes; and he left me, I own
it, with the tears in mine.

An hour later there came some news which revived me. I received a
telegram from Mr. Playmore, expressed in these welcome words:
"Obliged to go to London by to-night's mail train. Expect me to
breakfast to-morrow morning."

The appearance of the lawyer at our breakfast-table duly
followed the appearance of his telegram. His first words cheered
me. To my infinite surprise and relief, he was far from sharing
the despondent view which I took of my position.

"I don't deny," he said, "that there are some serious obstacles
in your way. But I should never have called here before attending
to my professional business in London if Mr. Benjamin's notes had
not produced a very strong impression on my mind. For the first
time, as _I_ think, you really have a prospect of success. For
the first time, I feel justified in offering (under certain
restrictions) to help you. That miserable wretch, in the collapse
of his intelligence, has done what he would never have done in
the possession of his sense and his cunning--he has let us see
the first precious glimmerings of the light of truth."

"Are you sure it _is_ the truth?" I asked.

"In two important particulars," he answered, "I know it to be the
truth. Your idea about him is the right one. His memory (as you
suppose) was the least injured of his faculties, and was the last
to give way under the strain of trying to tell that story. I
believe his memory to have been speaking to you (unconsciously to
himself) in all that he said from the moment when the first
reference to 'the letter' escaped him to the end."

"But what does the reference to the letter mean?" I asked. "For
my part, I am entirely in the dark about it."

"So am I," he answered, frankly. "The chief one among the
obstacles which I mentioned just now is the obstacle presented by
that same 'letter.' The late Mrs. Eustace must have been
connected with it in some way, or Dexter would never have spoken
of it as 'a dagger in his heart'; Dexter would never have coupled
her name with the words which describe the tearing up of the
letter and the throwing of it away. I can arrive with some
certainty at this result, and I can get no further. I have no
more idea than you have of who wrote the letter, or of what was
written in it. If we are ever to make that discovery--probably
the most important discovery of all--we must dispatch our first
inquiries a distance of three thousand miles. In plain English,
my dear lady, we must send to America."

This, naturally enough, took me completely by surprise. I waited
eagerly to hear why we were to send to America.

"It rests with you," he proceeded, "when you hear what I have to
tell you, to say whether you will go to the expense of sending a
man to New York, or not. I can find the right man for the
purpose; and I estimate the expense (including a telegram)--"

"Never mind the expense!" I interposed, losing all patience with
the eminently Scotch view of the case which put my purse in the
first place of importance. "I don't care for the expense; I want
to know what you have discovered."

He smiled. "She doesn't care for the expense," he said to
himself, pleasantly. "How like a woman!"

I might have retorted, "He thinks of the expense before he thinks
of anything else. How like a Scotchman!" As it was, I was too
anxious to be witty. I only drummed impatiently with my fingers
on the table, and said, "Tell me! tell me!"

He took out the fair copy from Benjamin's note-book which I had
sent to him, and showed me these among Dexter's closing words:
"What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grate. No
matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone."

"Do you really understand what those words mean?" I asked.

"I look back into my own experience," he answered, "and I
understand perfectly what the words mean."

"And can you make me understand them too?"

"Easily. In those incomprehensible sentences Dexter's memory has
correctly recalled certain facts. I have only to tell you the
facts, and you will be as wise as I am. At the time of the Trial,
your husband surprised and distressed me by insisting on the
instant dismissal of all the household servants at Gleninch. I
was instructed to pay them a quarter's wages in advance, to give
them the excellent written characters which their good conduct
thoroughly deserved, and to see the house clear of them at an
hour's notice. Eustace's motive for this summary proceeding was
much the same motive which animated his conduct toward you. 'If I
am ever to return to Gleninch,' he said, 'I cannot face my honest
servants after the infamy of having stood my trial for murder.'
There was his reason. Nothing that I could say to him, poor
fellow, shook his resolution. I dismissed the servants
accordingly. At an hour's notice, they quitted the house, leaving
their work for the day all undone. The only persons placed in
charge of Gleninch were persons who lived on the outskirts of the
park--that is to say, the lodge-keeper and his wife and daughter.
On the last day of the Trial I instructed the daughter to do her
best to make the rooms tidy. She was a good girl enough, but she
had no experience as a housemaid: it would never enter her head
to lay the bedroom fires ready for lighting, or to replenish the
empty match-boxes. Those chance words that dropped from Dexter
would, no doubt, exactly describe the state of his room when he
returned to Gleninch, with the prisoner and his mother, from
Edinburgh. That he tore up the mysterious letter in his bedroom,
and (finding no means immediately at hand for burning it) that he
threw the fragments into the empty grate, or into the waste-paper
basket, seems to be the most reasonable conclusion that we can
draw from what we know. In any case, he would not have much time
to think about it. Everything was done in a hurry on that day.
Eustace and his mother, accompanied by Dexter, left for England
the same evening by the night train. I myself locked up the
house, and gave the keys to the lodge-keeper. It was understood
that he was to look after the preservation of the reception-rooms
on the ground-floor; and that his wife and daughter were to
perform the same service between them in the rooms upstairs. On
receiving your letter, I drove at once to Gleninch to question
the old woman on the subject of the bedrooms, and of Dexter's
room especially. She remembered the time when the house was shut
up by associating it with the time when she was confined to her
bed by an attack of sciatica. She had not crossed the lodge door,
she was sure, for at least a week (if not longer after Gleninch
had been left in charge of her husband and herself. Whatever was
done in the way of keeping the bedrooms aired and tidy during her
illness was done by her daughter. She, and she only, must have
disposed of any letter which might have been lying about in
Dexter's room. Not a vestige of torn paper, as I can myself
certify, is to be discovered in any part of the room now. Where
did the girl find the fragments of the letter? and what did she
do with them? Those are the questions (if you approve of it)
which we must send three thousand miles away to ask--for this
sufficient reason, that the lodge-keeper's daughter was married
more than a year since, and that she is settled with her husband
in business at New York. It rests with you to decide what is to
be done. Don't let me mislead you with false hopes! Don't let me
tempt you to throw away your money! Even if this woman does
remember what she did with the torn paper, the chances, at this
distance of time, are enormously against our ever recovering a
single morsel of it. Be in no haste to decide. I have my work to
do in the city--I can give you the whole day to think it over."

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