The Law and the Lady

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It is not saying much for myself, I know--but, having confessed
it when I was wrong, let me, at least, record it when I did what
was right--I decided instantly on giving up all further
connection with the recovery of the torn letter. If Eustace asked
me the question, I was resolved to be able to answer truly: "I
have made the sacrifice that assures your tranquillity. When
resignation was hardest, I have humbled my obstinate spirit, and
I have given way for my husband's sake."

There was half an hour to spare before I left the vicarage for
the railway station. In that interval I wrote again to Mr.
Playmore, telling him plainly what my position was, and
withdrawing, at once and forever, from all share in investigating
the mystery which lay hidden under the dust-heap at Gleninch.

CHAPTER XLIV.

OUR NEW HONEYMOON.

It is not to be disguised or denied that my spirits were
depressed on my journey to London.

To resign the one cherished purpose of my life, when I had
suffered so much in pursuing it, and when I had (to all
appearance) so nearly reached the realization of my hopes, was
putting to a hard trial a woman's fortitude and a woman's sense
of duty. Still, even if the opportunity had been offered to me, I
would not have recalled my letter to Mr. Playmore. "It is done,
and well done," I said to myself; "and I have only to wait a day
to be reconciled to it--when I give my husband my first kiss."

I had planned and hoped to reach London in time to start for
Paris by the night-mail. But the train was twice delayed on the
long journey from the North; and there was no help for it but to
sleep at Benjamin's villa, and to defer my departure until the
morning.

It was, of course, impossible for me to warn my old friend of the
change in my plans. My arrival took him by surprise. I found him
alone in his library, with a wonderful illumination of lamps and
candles, absorbed over some morsels of torn paper scattered on
the table before him.

"What in the world are you about?" I asked.

Benjamin blushed--I was going to say, like a young girl; but
young girls have given up blushing in these latter days of the
age we live in.

"Oh, nothing, nothing!" he said, confusedly. "Don't notice it."

He stretched out his hand to brush the morsels of paper off the
table. Those morsels raised a sudden suspicion in my mind. I
stopped him.

"You have heard from Mr. Playmore!" I said. "Tell me the truth,
Benjamin. Yes or no?"

Benjamin blushed a shade deeper, and answered, "Yes."

"Where is the letter?"

"I mustn't show it to you, Valeria."

This (need I say it?) made me determined to see the letter. My
best way of persuading Benjamin to show it to me was to tell him
of the sacrifice that I had made to my husband's wishes. "I have
no further voice in the matter," I added, when I had done. "It
now rests entirely with Mr. Playmore to go on or to give up; and
this is my last opportunity of discovering what he really thinks
about it. Don't I deserve some little indulgence? Have I no claim
to look at the letter?"

Benjamin was too much surprised, and too much pleased with me,
when he heard what had happened, to be able to resist my
entreaties. He gave me the letter.

Mr. Playmore wrote to appeal confidentially to Benjamin as a
commercial man. In the long course of his occupation in business,
it was just possible that he might have heard of cases in which
documents have been put together again after having been torn up
by design or by accident. Even if his experience failed in this
particular, he might be able to refer to some authority in London
who would be capable of giving an opinion on the subject. By way
of explaining his strange request, Mr. Playmore reverted to the
notes which Benjamin had taken at Miserrimus Dexter's house, and
informed him of the serious importance of "the gibberish" which
he had reported under protest. The letter closed by recommending
that any correspondence which ensued should be kept
a secret from me--on the ground that it might excite false hopes
in my mind if I were informed of it.

I now understood the tone which my worthy adviser had adopted in
writing to me. His interest in the recovery of the letter was
evidently so overpowering that common prudence compelled him to
conceal it from me, in case of ultimate failure. This did not
look as if Mr. Playmore was likely to give up the investigation
on my withdrawal from it. I glanced again at the fragments of
paper on Benjamin's table, with an interest in them which I had
not felt yet.

"Has anything been found at Gleninch?" I asked.

"No," said Benjamin. "I have only been trying experiments with a
letter of my own, before I wrote to Mr. Playmore."

"Oh, you have torn up the letter yourself, then?"

"Yes. And, to make it all the more difficult to put them together
again, I shook up the pieces in a basket. It's a childish thing
to do, my dear, at my age--"

He stopped, looking very much ashamed of himself.

"Well," I went on; "and have you succeeded in putting your letter
together again?"

"It's not very easy, Valeria. But I have made a beginning. It's
the same principle as the principle in the 'Puzzles' which we
used to put together when I was a boy. Only get one central bit
of it right, and the rest of the Puzzle falls into its place in a
longer or a shorter time. Please don't tell anybody, my dear.
People might say I was in my dotage. To think of that gibberish
in my note-book having a meaning in it, after all! I only got Mr.
Playmore's letter this morning; and--I am really almost ashamed
to mention it--I have been trying experiments on torn letters,
off and on, ever since. You won't tell upon me, will you?"

I answered the dear old man by a hearty embrace. Now that he had
lost his steady moral balance, and had caught the infection of my
enthusiasm, I loved him better than ever.

But I was not quite happy, though I tried to appear so. Struggle
against it as I might, I felt a little mortified when I
remembered that I had resigned all further connection with the
search for the letter at such a time as this. My one comfort was
to think of Eustace. My one encouragement was to keep my mind
fixed as constantly as possible on the bright change for the
better that now appeared in the domestic prospect. Here, at
least, there was no disaster to fear; here I could honestly feel
that I had triumphed. My husband had come back to me of his own
free will; he had not given way, under the hard weight of
evidence--he had yielded to the nobler influences of his
gratitude and his love. And I had taken him to my heart
again--not because I had made discoveries which left him no other
alternative than to live with me, but because I believed in the
better mind that had come to him, and loved and trusted him
without reserve. Was it not worth some sacrifice to have arrived
at this result! True--most true! And yet I was a little out of
spirits. Ah, well! well! the remedy was within a day's journey.
The sooner I was with Eustace the better.

Early the next morning I left London for Paris by the
tidal-train. Benjamin accompanied me to the Terminus.

"I shall write to Edinburgh by to-day's post," he said, in the
interval before the train moved out of the station. "I think I
can find the man Mr. Playmore wants to help him, if he decides to
go on. Have you any message to send, Valeria?"

"No. I have done with it, Benjamin; I have nothing more to say."

"Shall I write and tell you how it ends, if Mr. Playmore does
really try the experiment at Gleninch?"

I answered, as I felt, a little bitterly.

"Yes," I said "Write and tell me if the experiment fail."

My old friend smiled. He knew me better than I knew myself.

"All right!" he said, resignedly. "I have got the address of your
banker's correspondent in Paris. You will have to go there for
money, my dear; and you _may_ find a letter waiting for you in
the office when you least expect it. Let me hear how your husband
goes on. Good-by--and God bless you!"

That evening I was restored to Eustace.

He was too weak, poor fellow, even to raise his head from the
pillow. I knelt down at the bedside and kissed him. His languid,
weary eyes kindled with a new life as my lips touched his. "I
must try to live now," he whispered, "for your sake."

My mother-in-law had delicately left us together. When he said
those words the temptation to tell him of the new hope that had
come to brighten our lives was more than I could resist.

"You must try to live now, Eustace," I said, "for some one else
besides me."

His eyes looked wonderingly into mine.

"Do you mean my mother?" he asked.

I laid my head on his bosom, and whispered back--"I mean your
child."

I had all my reward for all that I had given up. I forgot Mr.
Playmore; I forgot Gleninch. Our new honeymoon dates, in my
remembrance, from that day.

The quiet time passed, in the by-street in which we lived. The
outer stir and tumult of Parisian life ran its daily course
around us, unnoticed and unheard. Steadily, though slowly,
Eustace gained strength. The doctors, with a word or two of
caution, left him almost entirely to me. "You are his physician,"
they said; "the happier you make him, the sooner he will
recover." The quiet, monotonous round of my new life was far from
wearying me. I, too, wanted repose--I had no interests, no
pleasures, out of my husband's room.

Once, and once only, the placid surface of our lives was just
gently ruffled by an allusion to the past. Something that I
accidentally said reminded Eustace of our last interview at Major
Fitz-David's house. He referred, very delicately, to what I had
then said of the Verdict pronounced on him at the Trial; and he
left me to infer that a word from my lips, confirming what his
mother had already told him, would quiet his mind at once and
forever.

My answer involved no embarrassments or difficulties; I could and
did honestly tell him that I had made his wishes my law. But it
was hardly in womanhood, I am afraid, to be satisfied with merely
replying, and to leave it there. I thought it due to me that
Eustace too should concede something, in the way of an assurance
which might quiet _my_ mind. As usual with me, the words followed
the impulse to speak them. "Eustace," I asked, "are you quite
cured of those cruel doubts which once made you leave me?"

His answer (as he afterward said) made me blush with pleasure.
"Ah, Valeria, I should never have gone away if I had known you
then as well as I know you now!"

So the last shadows of distrust melted away out of our lives.

The very remembrance of the turmoil and the trouble of my past
days in London seemed now to fade from my memory. We were lovers
again; we were absorbed again in each other; we could almost
fancy that our marriage dated back once more to a day or two
since. But one last victory over myself was wanting to make my
happiness complete. I still felt secret longings, in those
dangerous moments when I was left by myself, to know whether the
search for the torn letter had or had not taken place. What
wayward creatures we are! With everything that a woman could want
to make her happy, I was ready to put that happiness in peril
rather than remain ignorant of what was going on at Gleninch! I
actually hailed the day when my empty purse gave me an excuse for
going to my banker's correspondent on business, and so receiving
any letters waiting for me which might be placed in my hands.

I applied for my money without knowing what I was about;
wondering all the time whether Benjamin had written to me or not.
My eyes wandered over the desks and tables in the office, looking
for letters furtively. Nothing of the sort was visible. But a man
appeared from an inner office: an ugly man, who was yet beautiful
to my eyes, for this sufficient reason--he had a letter in his
hand, and he said, "Is this for you, ma'am?"

A glance at the address showed me Benjamin's handwriting.

Had they tried the experiment of recovering the letter? and had
they failed?

Somebody put my money in my bag, and politely led me out to the
little hired carriage which was waiting for me at the door. I
remember nothing distinctly until I open ed the letter on my way
home. The first words told me that the dust-heap had been
examined, and that the fragments of the torn letter had been
found.

CHAPTER XLV.

THE DUST-HEAP DISTURBED.

My head turned giddy. I was obliged to wait and let my
overpowering agitation subside, before I could read any more.

Looking at the letter again, after an interval, my eyes fell
accidentally on a sentence near the end, which surprised and
startled me.

I stopped the driver of the carriage, at the entrance to the
street in which our lodgings were situated, and told him to take
me to the beautiful park of Paris--the famous Bois de Boulogne.
My object was to gain time enough, in this way, to read the
letter carefully through by myself, and to ascertain whether I
ought or ought not to keep the receipt of it a secret before I
confronted my husband and his mother at home.

This precaution taken, I read the narrative which my good
Benjamin had so wisely and so thoughtfully written for me.
Treating the various incidents methodically, he began with the
Report which had arrived, in due course of mail, from our agent
in America.

Our man had successfully traced the lodgekeeper's daughter and
her husband to a small town in one of the Western States. Mr.
Playmore's letter of introduction at once secured him a cordial
reception from the married pair, and a patient hearing when he
stated the object of his voyage across the Atlantic.

His first questions led to no very encouraging results. The woman
was confused and surprised, and was apparently quite unable to
exert her memory to any useful purpose. Fortunately, her husband
proved to be a very intelligent man. He took the agent privately
aside, and said to him, "I understand my wife, and you don't.
Tell me exactly what it is you want to know, and leave it to me
to discover how much she remembers and how much she forgets."

This sensible suggestion was readily accepted. The agent waited
for events a day and a night.

Early the next morning the husband said to him, "Talk to my wife
now, and you'll find she has something to tell you. Only mind
this. Don't laugh at her when she speaks of trifles. She is half
ashamed to speak of trifles, even to me. Thinks men are above
such matters, you know. Listen quietly, and let her talk--and you
will get at it all in that way."

The agent followed his instructions, and "got at it" as follows:

The woman remembered, perfectly well, being sent to clean the
bedrooms and put them tidy, after the gentlefolks had all left
Gleninch. Her mother had a bad hip at the time, and could not go
with her and help her. She did not much fancy being alone in the
great house, after what had happened in it. On her way to her
work she passed two of the cottagers' children in the
neighborhood at play in the park. Mr. Macallan was always kind to
his poor tenants, and never objected to the young ones round
about having a run on the grass. The two children idly followed
her to the house. She took them inside, along with her--not
liking the place, as already mentioned, and feeling that they
would be company in the solitary rooms.

She began her work in the Guests' Corridor--leaving the room in
the other corridor, in which the death had happened, to the last.

There was very little to do in the two first rooms. There was not
litter enough, when she had swept the floors and cleaned the
grates, to even half fill the housemaid's bucket which she
carried with her. The children followed her about; and, all
things considered, were "very good company" in the lonely place.

The third room (that is to say, the bedchamber which had been
occupied by Miserrimus Dexter was in a much worse state than the
other two, and wanted a great deal of tidying. She did not much
notice the children here, being occupied with her work. The
litter was swept up from the carpet, and the cinders and ashes
were taken out of the grate, and the whole of it was in the
bucket, when her attention was recalled to the children by
hearing one of them cry.

She looked about the room without at first discovering them.

A fresh outburst of crying led her in the right direction, and
showed her the children under a table in a corner of the room.
The youngest of the two had got into a waste-paper basket. The
eldest had found an old bottle of gum, with a brush fixed in the
cork, and was gravely painting the face of the smaller child with
what little remained of the contents of the bottle. Some natural
struggles, on the part of the little creature, had ended in the
overthrow of the basket, and the usual outburst of crying had
followed as a matter of course.

In this state of things the remedy was soon applied. The woman
took the bottle away from the eldest child, and gave it a "box on
the ear." The younger one she set on its legs again, and she put
the two "in the corner" to keep them quiet. This done, she swept
up such fragments of the torn paper in the basket as had fallen
on the floor; threw them back again into the basket, along with
the gum-bottle; fetched the bucket, and emptied the basket into
it; and then proceeded to the fourth and last room in the
corridor, where she finished her work for that day.

Leaving the house, with the children after her, she took the
filled bucket to the dust-heap, and emptied it in a hollow place
among the rubbish, about half-way up the mound. Then she took the
children home; and there was an end of it for the day.

Such was the result of the appeal made to the woman's memory of
domestic events at Gleninch.

The conclusion at which Mr. Playmore arrived, from the facts
submitted to him, was that the chances were now decidedly in
favor of the recovery of the letter. Thrown in, nearly midway
between the contents of the housemaid's bucket, the torn morsels
would be protected above as well as below, when they were emptied
on the dust-heap.

Succeeding weeks and months would add to that protection, by
adding to the accumulated refuse. In the neglected condition of
the grounds, the dust-heap had not been disturbed in search of
manure. There it had stood, untouched, from the time when the
family left Gleninch to the present day. And there, hidden deep
somewhere in the mound, the fragments of the letter must be.

Such were the lawyer's conclusions. He had written immediately to
communicate them to Benjamin. And, thereupon, what had Benjamin
done?

After having tried his powers of reconstruction on his own
correspondence, the prospect of experimenting on the mysterious
letter itself had proved to be a temptation too powerful for the
old man to resist. "I almost fancy, my dear, this business of
yours has bewitched me," he wrote. "You see I have the misfortune
to be an idle man. I have time to spare and money to spare. And
the end of it is that I am here at Gleninch, engaged on my own
sole responsibility (with good Mr. Playmore's permission) in
searching the dust-heap!"

Benjamin's description of his first view of the field of action
at Gleninch followed these characteristic lines of apology.

I passed over the description without ceremony. My remembrance of
the scene was too vivid to require any prompting of that sort. I
saw again, in the dim evening light, the unsightly mound which
had so strangely attracted my attention at Gleninch. I heard
again the words in which Mr. Playmore had explained to me the
custom of the dust-heap in Scotch country-houses. What had
Benjamin and Mr. Playmore done? What had Benjamin and Mr.
Playmore found? For me, the true interest of the narrative was
there--and to that portion of it I eagerly turned next.

They had proceeded methodically, of course, with one eye on the
pounds, shillings, and pence, and the other on the object in
view. In Benjamin, the lawyer had found what he had not met with
in me--a sympathetic mind, alive to the value of "an abstract of
the expenses," and conscious of that most remunerative of human
virtues, the virtue of economy.

At so much a week, they had engaged men to dig into the mound and
to sift the ashes. At so much a week, they had hired a tent to
shelter the open dust-heap from wind and weather. At so much a
week, they had engaged the services of a young man (pers onally
known to Benjamin), who was employed in a laboratory under a
professor of chemistry, and who had distinguished himself by his
skillful manipulation of paper in a recent case of forgery on a
well-known London firm. Armed with these preparations, they had
begun the work; Benjamin and the young chemist living at
Gleninch, and taking it in turns to superintend the proceedings.

Three days of labor with the spade and the sieve produced no
results of the slightest importance. However, the matter was in
the hands of two quietly determined men. They declined to be
discouraged. They went on.

On the fourth day the first morsels of paper were found.

Upon examination, they proved to be the fragments of a
tradesman's prospectus. Nothing dismayed, Benjamin and the young
chemist still persevered. At the end of the day's work more
pieces of paper were turned up. These proved to be covered with
written characters. Mr. Playmore (arriving at Gleninch, as usual,
every evening on the conclusion of his labors in the law) was
consulted as to the handwriting. After careful examination, he
declared that the mutilated portions of sentences submitted to
him had been written, beyond all doubt, by Eustace Macallan's
first wife!

This discovery aroused the enthusiasm of the searchers to fever
height.

Spades and sieves were from that moment forbidden utensils.
However unpleasant the task might be, hands alone were used in
the further examination of the mound. The first and foremost
necessity was to place the morsels of paper (in flat cardboard
boxes prepared for the purpose) in their order as they were
found. Night came; the laborers were dismissed; Benjamin and his
two colleagues worked on by lamplight. The morsels of paper were
now turned up by dozens, instead of by ones and twos. For a while
the search prospered in this way; and then the morsels appeared
no more. Had they all been recovered? or would renewed
hand-digging yield more yet? The next light layers of rubbish
were carefully removed--and the grand discovery of the day
followed. There (upside down) was the gum-bottle which the
lodge-keeper's daughter had spoken of. And, more precious still,
there, under it, were more fragments of written paper, all stuck
together in a little lump, by the last drippings from the
gum-bottle dropping upon them as they lay on the dust-heap!

The scene now shifted to the interior of the house. When the
searchers next assembled they met at the great table in the
library at Gleninch.

Benjamin's experience with the "Puzzles" which he had put
together in the days of his boyhood proved to be of some use to
his companions. The fragments accidentally stuck together would,
in all probability, be found to fit each other, and would
certainly (in any case) be the easiest fragments to reconstruct
as a center to start from.

The delicate business of separating these pieces of paper, and of
preserving them in the order in which they had adhered to each
other, was assigned to the practiced fingers of the chemist. But
the difficulties of his task did not end here. The writing was
(as usual in letters) traced on both sides of the paper, and it
could only be preserved for the purpose of reconstruction by
splitting each morsel into two--so as artificially to make a
blank side, on which could be spread the fine cement used for
reuniting the fragments in their original form.

To Mr. Playmore and Benjamin the prospect of successfully putting
the letter together, under these disadvantages, seemed to be
almost hopeless. Their skilled colleague soon satisfied them that
they were wrong.

He drew their attention to the thickness of the paper--note-paper
of the strongest and best quality--on which the writing was
traced. It was of more than twice the substance of the last paper
on which he had operated, when he was engaged in the forgery
ease; and it was, on that account, comparatively easy for him
(aided by the mechanical appliances which he had brought from
London) to split the morsels of the torn paper, within a given
space of time which might permit them to begin the reconstruction
of the letter that night.

With these explanations, he quietly devoted himself to his work.
While Benjamin and the lawyer were still poring over the
scattered morsels of the letter which had been first discovered,
and trying to piece them together again, the chemist had divided
the greater part of the fragments specially confided to him into
two halves each; and had correctly put together some five or six
sentences of the letter on the smooth sheet of cardboard prepared
for that purpose.

They looked eagerly at the reconstructed writing so far.

It was correctly done: the sense was perfect. The first result
gained by examination was remarkable enough to reward them for
all their exertions. The language used plainly identified the
person to whom the late Mrs. Eustace had addressed her letter.

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