The Law and the Lady

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I could say no more. I walked by his side in silence, feeling the
miserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a
family secret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in
the body, we were separated, after a married life of barely four
days.

"Valeria," he asked, "have you nothing to say to me?"

"Nothing."

"Are you not satisfied with my explanation?"

I detected a slight tremor in his voice as he put that question.
The tone was, for the first time since we had spoken together, a
tone that my experience associated with him in certain moods of
his which I had already learned to know well. Among the hundred
thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises over a woman
who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her
than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who
shed tears on the smallest provocation: it is not in my
temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that little natural
change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to the
happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out
crying.

He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to
look at me.

I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of
my weakness and my want of spirit. I was determined not to look
at him.

In the silence that followed he suddenly dropped on his knees at
my feet, with a cry of despair that cut through me like a knife.

"Valeria! I am vile--I am false--I am unworthy of you. Don't
believe a word of what I have been saying--lies, lies, cowardly,
contemptible lies! You don't know what I have gone through; you
don't know how I have been tortured. Oh, my darling, try not to
despise me! I must have been beside myself when I spoke to you as
I did. You looked hurt; you looked offended; I didn't know what
to do. I wanted to spare you even a moment's pain--I wanted to
hush it up, and have done with it. For God's sake don't ask me to
tell you any more! My love! my angel! it's something between my
mother and me; it's nothing that need disturb you; it's nothing
to anybody now. I love you, I adore you; my whole heart and soul
are yours. Be satisfied with that. Forget what has happened. You
shall never see my mother again. We will leave this place
to-morrow. We will go away in the yacht. Does it matter where we
live, so long as we live for each other? Forgive and forget! Oh,
Valeria, Valeria, forgive and forget!"

Unutterable misery was in his face; unutterable misery was in his
voice. Remember this. And remember that I loved him.

"It is easy to forgive," I said, sadly. "For your sake, Eustace,
I will try to forget."

I raised him gently as I spoke. He kissed my hands with the air
of a man who was too humble to venture on any more familiar
expression of his gratitude than that. The sense of embarrassment
between us as we slowly walked on again was so unendurable that I
actually cast about in my mind for a subject of conversation, as
if I had been in the company of a stranger! In mercy to _him_, I
asked him to tell me about the yacht.

He seized on the subject as a drowning man seizes on the hand
that rescues him.

On that one poor little topic of the yacht he talked, talked,
talked, as if his life depended upon his not being silent for an
instant on the rest of the way back. To me it was dreadful to
hear him. I could estimate what he was suffering by the violence
which he--ordinarily a silent and thoughtful man--was now doing
to his true nature, and to the prejudices and habits of his life.
With the greatest difficulty I preserved my self-control until we
reached the door of our lodgings. There I was obliged to plead
fatigue, and ask him to let me rest for a little while in the
solitude of my own room.

"Shall we sail to-morrow?" he called after me suddenly, as I
ascended the stairs.

Sail with him to the Mediterranean the next day? Pass weeks and
weeks absolutely alone with him, in the narrow limits of a
vessel, with his horrible secret parting us in sympathy further
and further from each other day by day? I shuddered at the
thought of it.

"To-morrow is rather a short notice," I said. "Will you give me a
little longer time to prepare for the voyage?"

"Oh yes--take any time you like," he answered, not (as I thought)
very willingly. "While you are resting--there are still one or
two little things to be settled--I think I will go back to the
yacht. Is there anything I can do for you, Valeria, before I go?"

"Nothing--thank you, Eustace."

He hastened away to the harbor. Was he afraid of his own
thoughts, if he were left by himself in the house. Was the
company of the sailing-master and the steward better than no
company at all?

It was useless to ask. What did I know about him or his thoughts?
I locked myself into my room.

CHAPTER V.

THE LANDLADY'S DISCOVERY.

I SAT down, and tried to compose my spirits. Now or never was
the time to decide what it was my duty to my husband and my duty
to myself to do next.

The effort was beyond me. Worn out in mind and body alike, I was
perfectly incapable of pursuing any regular train of thought. I
vaguely felt--if I left things as they were--that I could never
hope to remove the shadow which now rested on the married life
that had begun so brightly. We might live together, so as to save
appearances. But to forget what had happened, or to feel
satisfied with my position, was beyond the power of my will. My
tranquillity as a woman--perhaps my dearest interests as a
wife--depended absolutely on penetrating the mystery of my
mother-in-law's conduct, and on discovering the true meaning of
the wild words of penitence and self-reproach which my husband
had addressed to me on our way home.

So far I could advance toward realizing my position--and no
further. When I asked myself what was to be done next, hopeless
confusion, maddening doubt, filled my mind, and transformed me
into the most listless and helpless of living women.

I gave up the struggle. In dull, stupid, obstinate despair, I
threw myself on my bed, and fell from sheer fatigue into a
broken, uneasy sleep.

I was awakened by a knock at the door of my room.

Was it my husband? I started to my feet as the idea occurred to
me. Was some new trial of my patience and my fortitude at hand?
Half nervously, half irritably, I asked who was there.

The landlady's voice answered me.

"Can I speak to you for a moment, if you please?"

I opened the door. There is no
disguising it--though I loved him so dearly, though I had left
home and friends for his sake--it was a relief to me, at that
miserable time, to know that Eustace had not returned to the
house.

The landlady came in, and took a seat, without waiting to be
invited, close by my side. She was no longer satisfied with
merely asserting herself as my equal. Ascending another step on
the social ladder, she took her stand on the platform of
patronage, and charitably looked down on me as an object of pity.

"I have just returned from Broadstairs," she began. "I hope you
will do me the justice to believe that I sincerely regret what
has happened."

I bowed, and said nothing.

"As a gentlewoman myself," proceeded the landlady--"reduced by
family misfortunes to let lodgings, but still a gentlewoman--I
feel sincere sympathy with you. I will even go further than that.
I will take it on myself to say that I don't blame _you_. No, no.
I noticed that you were as much shocked and surprised at your
mother-in-law's conduct as I was; and that is saying a great
deal--a great deal indeed. However, I have a duty to perform. It
is disagreeable, but it is not the less a duty on that account. I
am a single woman; not from want of opportunities of changing my
condition--I beg you will understand that--but from choice.
Situated as I am, I receive only the most respectable persons
into my house. There must be no mystery about the positions of
_my_ lodgers. Mystery in the position of a lodger carries with
it--what shall I say? I don't wish to offend you--I will say, a
certain Taint. Very well. Now I put it to your own common-sense.
Can a person in my position be expected to expose herself
to--Taint? I make these remarks in a sisterly and Christian
spirit. As a lady yourself--I will even go the length of saying a
cruelly used lady--you will, I am sure, understand--"

I could endure it no longer. I stopped her there.

"I understand," I said, "that you wish to give us notice to quit
your lodgings. When do you want us to go?"

The landlady held up a long, lean, red hand, in a sorrowful and
sisterly protest.

"No," she said. "Not that tone; not those looks. It's natural you
should be annoyed; it's natural you should be angry. But do--now
do please try and control yourself. I put it to your own
common-sense (we will say a week for the notice to quit)--why not
treat me like a friend? You don't know what a sacrifice, what a
cruel sacrifice, I have made--entirely for your sake.

"You?" I exclaimed. "What sacrifice?"

"What sacrifice?" repeated the landlady. "I have degraded myself
as a gentlewoman. I have forfeited my own self-respect." She
paused for a moment, and suddenly seized my hand in a perfect
frenzy of friendship. "Oh, my poor dear!" cried this intolerable
person. "I have discovered everything. A villain has deceived
you. You are no more married than I am!"

I snatched my hand out of hers, and rose angrily from my chair.

"Are you mad?" I asked.

The landlady raised her eyes to the ceiling with the air of a
person who had deserved martyrdom, and who submitted to it
cheerfully.

"Yes," she said. "I begin to think I _am_ mad--mad to have
devoted myself to an ungrateful woman, to a person who doesn't
appreciate a sisterly and Christian sacrifice of self. Well, I
won't do it again. Heaven forgive me--I won't do it again!"

"Do what again?" I asked.

"Follow your mother-in-law," cried the landlady, suddenly
dropping the character of a martyr, and assuming the character of
a vixen in its place. "I blush when I think of it. I followed
that most respectable person every step of the way to her own
door."

Thus far my pride had held me up. It sustained me no longer. I
dropped back again into my chair, in undisguised dread of what
was coming next.

"I gave you a look when I left you on the beach," pursued the
landlady, growing louder and louder and redder and redder as she
went on. "A grateful woman would have understood that look. Never
mind! I won't do it again I overtook your mother-in-law at the
gap in the cliff. I followed her--oh, how I feel the disgrace of
it _now!_--I followed her to the station at Broadstairs. She went
back by train to Ramsgate. _I_ went back by train to Ramsgate.
She walked to her lodgings. _I_ walked to her lodgings. Behind
her. Like a dog. Oh, the disgrace of it! Providentially, as I
then thought--I don't know what to think of it now--the landlord
of the house happened to be a friend of mine, and happened to be
at home. We have no secrets from each other where lodgers are
concerned. I am in a position to tell you, madam, what your
mother-in-law's name really is. She knows nothing about any such
person as Mrs. Woodville, for an excellent reason. Her name is
_not_ Woodville. Her name (and consequently her son's name) is
Macallan--Mrs. Macallan, widow of the late General Macallan. Yes!
your husband is _not_ your husband. You are neither maid, wife,
nor widow. You are worse than nothing, madam, and you leave my
house!"

I stopped her as she opened the door to go out. She had roused
_my_ temper by this time. The doubt that she had cast on my
marriage was more than mortal resignation could endure.

"Give me Mrs. Macallan's address," I said.

The landlady's anger receded into the background, and the
landlady's astonishment appeared in its place.

"You don't mean to tell me you are going to the old lady
herself?" she said.

"Nobody but the old lady can tell me what I want to know," I
answered. "Your discovery (as you call it) may be enough for
_you_; it is not enough for _me_. How do we know that Mrs.
Macallan may not have been twice married? and that her first
husband's name may not have been Woodville?"

The landlady's astonishment subsided in its turn, and the
landlady's curiosity succeeded as the ruling influence of the
moment. Substantially, as I have already said of her, she was a
good-natured woman. Her fits of temper (as is usual with
good-natured people) were of the hot and the short-lived sort,
easily roused and easily appeased.

"I never thought of that," she said. "Look here! if I give you
the address, will you promise to tell me all about it when you
come back?"

I gave the required promise, and received the address in return.

"No malice," said the landlady, suddenly resuming all her old
familiarity with me.

"No malice," I answered, with all possible cordiality on my side.

In ten minutes more I was at my mother-in-law's lodgings.

CHAPTER VI.

MY OWN DISCOVERY.

FORTUNATELY for me, the landlord did not open the door when I
rang. A stupid maid-of-all-work, who never thought of asking me
for my name, let me in. Mrs. Macallan was at home, and had no
visitors with her. Giving me this information, the maid led the
way upstairs, and showed me into the drawing-room without a word
of announcement.

My mother-in-law was sitting alone, near a work-table, knitting.
The moment I appeared in the doorway she laid aside her work,
and, rising, signed to me with a commanding gesture of her hand
to let her speak first.

"I know what you have come here for," she said. "You have come
here to ask questions. Spare yourself, and spare me. I warn you
beforehand that I will not answer any questions relating to my
son."

It was firmly, but not harshly said. I spoke firmly in my turn.

"I have not come here, madam, to ask questions about your son," I
answered. "I have come, if you will excuse me, to ask you a
question about yourself."

She started, and looked at me keenly over her spectacles. I had
evidently taken her by surprise.

"What is the question?" she inquired.

"I now know for the first time, madam, that your name is
Macallan," I said. "Your son has married me under the name of
Woodville. The only honorable explanation of this circumstance,
so far as I know, is that my husband is your son by a first
marriage. The happiness of my life is at stake. Will you kindly
consider my position? Will you let me ask you if you have been
twice married, and if the name of your first husband was
Woodville?"

She considered a little before she replied.

"The question is a perfectly natural one in your position," she
said. "But I think I had better not answer it."

"May I as k why?"

"Certainly. If I answered you, I should only lead to other
questions, and I should be obliged to decline replying to them. I
am sorry to disappoint you. I repeat what I said on the beach--I
have no other feeling than a feeling of sympathy toward _you._ If
you had consulted me before your marriage, I should willingly
have admitted you to my fullest confidence. It is now too late.
You are married. I recommend you to make the best of your
position, and to rest satisfied with things as they are."

"Pardon me, madam," I remonstrated. "As things are, I don't know
that I _am_ married. All I know, unless you enlighten me, is that
your son has married me under a name that is not his own. How can
I be sure whether I am or am not his lawful wife?"

"I believe there can be no doubt that you are lawfully my son's
wife," Mrs. Macallan answered. "At any rate it is easy to take a
legal opinion on the subject. If the opinion is that you are
_not_ lawfully married, my son (whatever his faults and failings
may be) is a gentleman. He is incapable of willfully deceiving a
woman who loves and trusts him. He will do you justice. On my
side, I will do you justice, too. If the legal opinion is adverse
to your rightful claims, I will promise to answer any questions
which you may choose to put to me. As it is, I believe you to be
lawfully my son's wife; and I say again, make the best of your
position. Be satisfied with your husband's affectionate devotion
to you. If you value your peace of mind and the happiness of your
life to come, abstain from attempting to know more than you know
now."

She sat down again with the air of a woman who had said her last
word.

Further remonstrance would be useless; I could see it in her
face; I could hear it in her voice. I turned round to open the
drawing-room door.

"You are hard on me, madam," I said at parting. "I am at your
mercy, and I must submit."

She suddenly looked up, and answered me with a flush on her kind
and handsome old face.

"As God is my witness, child, I pity you from the bottom of my
heart!"

After that extraordinary outburst of feeling, she took up her
work with one hand, and signed to me with the other to leave her.

I bowed to her in silence, and went out.

I had entered the house far from feeling sure of the course I
ought to take in the future. I left the house positively
resolved, come what might of it, to discover the secret which the
mother and son were hiding from me. As to the question of the
name, I saw it now in the light in which I ought to have seen it
from the first. If Mrs. Macallan _had_ been twice married (as I
had rashly chosen to suppose), she would certainly have shown
some signs of recognition when she heard me addressed by her
first husband's name. Where all else was mystery, there was no
mystery here. Whatever his reasons might be, Eustace had
assuredly married me under an assumed name.

Approaching the door of our lodgings, I saw my husband walking
backward and forward before it, evidently waiting for my return.
If he asked me the question, I decided to tell him frankly where
I had been, and what had passed between his mother and myself.

He hurried to meet me with signs of disturbance in his face and
manner.

"I have a favor to ask of you, Valeria," he said. "Do you mind
returning with me to London by the next train?"

I looked at him. In the popular phrase, I could hardly believe my
own ears.

"It's a matter of business," he went on, "of no interest to any
one but myself, and it requires my presence in London. You don't
wish to sail just yet, as I understand? I can't leave you here by
yourself. Have you any objection to going to London for a day or
two?"

I made no objection. I too was eager to go back.

In London I could obtain the legal opinion which would tell me
whether I were lawfully married to Eustace or not. In London I
should be within reach of the help and advice of my father's
faithful old clerk. I could confide in Benjamin as I could
confide in no one else. Dearly as I loved my uncle Starkweather,
I shrank from communicating with him in my present need. His wife
had told me that I made a bad beginning when I signed the wrong
name in the marriage register. Shall I own it? My pride shrank
from acknowledging, before the honeymoon was over, that his wife
was right.

In two hours more we were on the railway again. Ah, what a
contrast that second journey presented to the first! On our way
to Ramsgate everybody could see that we were a newly wedded
couple. On our way to London nobody noticed us; nobody would have
doubted that we had been married for years.

We went to a private hotel in the neighborhood of Portland Place.

After breakfast the next morning Eustace announced that he must
leave me to attend to his business. I had previously mentioned to
him that I had some purchases to make in London. He was quite
willing to let me go out alone, on the condition that I should
take a carriage provided by the hotel.

My heart was heavy that morning: I felt the unacknowledged
estrangement that had grown up between us very keenly. My husband
opened the door to go out, and came back to kiss me before he
left me by myself. That little after-thought of tenderness
touched me. Acting on the impulse of the moment, I put my arm
round his neck, and held him to me gently.

"My darling," I said, "give me all your confidence. I know that
you love me. Show that you can trust me too."

He sighed bitterly, and drew back from me--in sorrow, not in
anger.

"I thought we had agreed, Valeria, not to return to that subject
again," he said. "You only distress yourself and distress me."

He left the room abruptly, as if he dare not trust himself to say
more. It is better not to dwell on what I felt after this last
repulse. I ordered the carriage at once. I was eager to find a
refuge from my own thoughts in movement and change.

I drove to the shops first, and made the purchases which I had
mentioned to Eustace by way of giving a reason for going out.
Then I devoted myself to the object which I really had at heart.
I went to old Benjamin's little villa, in the by-ways of St.
John's Wood.

As soon as he had got over the first surprise of seeing me, he
noticed that I looked pale and care-worn. I confessed at once
that I was in trouble. We sat down together by the bright
fireside in his little library (Benjamin, as far as his means
would allow, was a great collector of books), and there I told my
old friend, frankly and truly, all that I have told here.

He was too distressed to say much. He fervently pressed my hand;
he fervently thanked God that my father had not lived to hear
what he had heard. Then, after a pause, he repeated my
mother-in-law's name to himself in a doubting, questioning tone.
"Macallan?" he said. "Macallan? Where have I heard that name? Why
does it sound as if it wasn't strange to me?"

He gave up pursuing the lost recollection, and asked, very
earnestly, what he could do for me. I answered that he could help
me, in the first place, to put an end to the doubt--an
unendurable doubt to _me_--whether I were lawfully married or
not. His energy of the old days when he had conducted my father's
business showed itself again the moment I said those words.

"Your carriage is at the door, my dear," he answered. "Come with
me to my own lawyer, without wasting another moment."

We drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields.

At my request Benjamin put my case to the lawyer as the case of a
friend in whom I was interested. The answer was given without
hesitation. I had married, honestly believing my husband's name
to be the name under which I had known him. The witnesses to my
marriage--my uncle, my aunt, and Benjamin--had acted, as I had
acted, in perfect good faith. Under those circumstances, there
was no doubt about the law. I was legally married. Macallan or
Woodville, I was his wife.

This decisive answer relieved me of a heavy anxiety. I accepted
my old friend's invitation to return with him to St. John's Wood,
and to make my luncheon at his early dinner.

On our way back I reverted to the one other subject which was now
uppermost in my mind. I reiterated my resolution to discover why
Eustace had
not married me under the name that was really his own.

My companion shook his head, and entreated me to consider well
beforehand what I proposed doing. His advice to me--so strangely
do extremes meet!--was my mother-in-law's advice, repeated almost
word for word. "Leave things as they are, my dear. In the
interest of your own peace of mind be satisfied with your
husband's affection. You know that you are his wife, and you know
that he loves you. Surely that is enough?"

I had but one answer to this. Life, on such conditions as my good
friend had just stated, would be simply unendurable to me.
Nothing could alter my resolution--for this plain reason, that
nothing could reconcile me to living with my husband on the terms
on which we were living now. It only rested with Benjamin to say
whether he would give a helping hand to his master's daughter or
not.

The old man's answer was thoroughly characteristic of him.

"Mention what you want of me, my dear," was all he said.

We were then passing a street in the neighborhood of Portman
Square. I was on the point of speaking again, when the words were
suspended on my lips. I saw my husband.

He was just descending the steps of a house--as if leaving it
after a visit. His eyes were on the ground: he did not look up
when the-carriage passed. As the servant closed the door behind
him, I noticed that the number of the house was Sixteen. At the
next corner I saw the name of the street. It was Vivian Place.

"Do you happen to know who lives at Number Sixteen Vivian Place?"
I inquired of my companion.

Benjamin started. My question was certainly a strange one, after
what he had just said to me.

"No," he replied. "Why do you ask?"

"I have just seen Eustace leaving that house."

"Well, my dear, and what of that?"

"My mind is in a bad way, Benjamin. Everything my husband does
that I don't understand rouses my suspicion now."

Benjamin lifted his withered old hands, and let them drop on his
knees again in mute lamentation over me.

"I tell you again," I went on, "my life is unendurable to me. I
won't answer for what I may do if I am left much longer to live
in doubt of the one man on earth whom I love. You have had
experience of the world. Suppose you were shut out from Eustace's
confidence, as I am? Suppose you were as fond of him as I am, and
felt your position as bitterly as I feel it--what would you do?"

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