The Law and the Lady

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This time my patience was rewarded by a discovery which
indescribably irritated and distressed me.

A small photograph, mounted on a card, fell out of the book. A
first glance showed me that it represented the portraits of two
persons.

One of the persons I recognized as my husband.

The other person was a woman.

Her face was entirely unknown to me. She was not young. The
picture represented her seated on a chair, with my husband
standing behind, and bending over her, holding one of her hands
in his. The woman's face was hard-featured and ugly, with the
marking lines of strong passions and resolute self-will plainly
written on it. Still, ugly as she was, I felt a pang of jealousy
as I noticed the familiarly affectionate action by which the
artist (with the permission of his sitters, of course) had
connected the two figures in a group. Eustace had briefly told
me, in the days of our courtship, that he had more than once
fancied himself to be in love before he met with me. Could this
very unattractive woman have been one of the early objects of his
admiration? Had she been near enough and dear enough to him to be
photographed with her hand in his? I looked and looked at the
portraits until I could endure them no longer. Women are strange
creatures--mysteries even to themselves. I threw the photograph
from me into a corner of the cupboard. I was savagely angry with
my husband; I hated--yes, hated with all my heart and soul!--the
woman who had got his hand in hers--the unknown woman with the
self-willed, hard-featured face.

All this time the lower shelf of the cupboard was still waiting
to be looked over.

I knelt down to examine it, eager to clear my mind, if I could,
of the degrading jealousy that had got possession of me.

Unfortunately, the lower shelf contained nothing but relics of
the Major's military life, comprising his sword and pistols, his
epaulets, his sash, and other minor accouterments. None of these
objects excited the slightest interest in me. My eyes wandered
back to the upper shelf; and, like the fool I was (there is no
milder word that can fitly describe me at that moment), I took
the photograph out again, and enraged myself uselessly by another
look at it. This time I observed, what I had not noticed before,
that there were some lines of writing (in a woman's hand) at the
back of the portraits. The lines ran thus:

'To Major Fitz-David, with two vases. From his friends, S. and E.
M."

Was one of those two vases the vase that had been broken? And was
the change that I had noticed in Major Fitz-David's face produced
by some past association in connection with it, which in some way
affected me? It might or might not be so. I was little disposed
to indulge in speculation on this topic while the far more
serious question of the initials confronted me on the back of the
photograph.

"S. and E. M.?" Those last two letters might stand for the
initials of my husband's name--his true name--Eustace Macallan.
In this case the first letter ("S.") in all probability indicated
_her_ name. What right had she to associate herself with him in
that manner? I considered a little--my memory exerted itself--I
suddenly called to mind that Eustace had sisters. He had spoken
of them more than once in the time before our marriage. Had I
been mad enough to torture myself with jealousy of my husband's
sister? It might well be so; "S." might stand for his sister's
Christian name. I felt heartily ashamed of myself as this new
view of the matter dawned on me. What a wrong I had done to them
both in my thoughts! I turned the photograph, sadly and
penitently, to examine the portraits again with a kinder and
truer appreciation of them.

I naturally looked now for a family likeness between the two
faces. There was no family likeness; on the contrary, they were
as unlike each other in form and expression as faces could be.
_Was_ she his sister, after all? I looked at her hands, as
represented in the portrait. Her right hand was clasped by
Eustace; her left hand lay on her lap. On the third finger,
distinctly visible, there was a wedding-ring. Were any of my
husband's sisters married? I had myself asked him the question
when he mentioned them to me, and I perfectly remembered that he
had replie d in the negative.

Was it possible that my first jealous instinct had led me to the
right conclusion after all? If it had, what did the association
of the three initial letters mean? What did the wedding-ring
mean? Good Heavens! was I looking at the portrait of a rival in
my husband's affections--and was that rival his Wife?

I threw the photograph from me with a cry of horror. For one
terrible moment I felt as if my reason was giving way. I don't
know what would have happened, or what I should have done next,
if my love for Eustace had not taken the uppermost place among
the contending emotions that tortured me. That faithful love
steadied my brain. That faithful love roused the reviving
influences of my better and nobler sense. Was the man whom I had
enshrined in my heart of hearts capable of such base wickedness
as the bare idea of his marriage to another woman implied? No!
Mine was the baseness, mine the wickedness, in having even for a
moment thought it of him!

I picked up the detestable photograph from the floor, and put it
back in the book. I hastily closed the cupboard door, fetched the
library ladder, and set it against the book-case. My one idea now
was the idea of taking refuge in employment of any sort from my
own thoughts. I felt the hateful suspicion that had degraded me
coming back again in spite of my efforts to repel it. The books!
the books! my only hope was to absorb myself, body and soul, in
the books.

I had one foot on the ladder, when I heard the door of the room
open--the door which communicated with the hall.

I looked around, expecting to see the Major. I saw instead the
Major's future prima donna standing just inside the door, with
her round eyes steadily fixed on me.

"I can stand a good deal," the girl began, coolly, "but I can't
stand _this_ any longer?"

"What is it that you can't stand any longer?" I asked.

"If you have been here a minute, you have been here two good
hours," she went on. "All by yourself in the Major's study. I am
of a jealous disposition--I am. And I want to know what it
means." She advanced a few steps nearer to me, with a heightening
color and a threatening look. "Is he going to bring _you_ out on
the stage?" she asked, sharply.

"Certainly not."

"He ain't in love with you, is he?"

Under other circumstances I might have told her to leave the
room. In my position at that critical moment the mere presence of
a human creature was a positive relief to me. Even this girl,
with her coarse questions and her uncultivated manners, was a
welcome intruder on my solitude: she offered me a refuge from
myself.

"Your question is not very civilly put," I said. "However, I
excuse you. You are probably not aware that I am a married
woman."

"What has that got to do with it?" she retorted. "Married or
single, it's all one to the Major. That brazen-faced hussy who
calls herself Lady Clarinda is married, and she sends him
nosegays three times a week! Not that I care, mind you, about the
old fool. But I've lost my situation at the railway, and I've got
my own interests to look after, and I don't know what may happen
if I let other women come between him and me. That's where the
shoe pinches, don't you see? I'm not easy in my mind when I see
him leaving you mistress here to do just what you like. No
offense! I speak out--I do. I want to know what you are about all
by yourself in this room? How did you pick up with the Major? I
never heard him speak of you before to-day."

Under all the surface selfishness and coarseness of this strange
girl there was a certain frankness and freedom which pleaded in
her favor--to my mind, at any rate. I answered frankly and freely
on my side.

"Major Fitz-David is an old friend of my husband's," I said, "and
he is kind to me for my husband's sake. He has given me
permission to look in this room--"

I stopped, at a loss how to describe my employment in terms which
should tell her nothing, and which should at the same time
successfully set her distrust of me at rest.

"To look about in this room--for what?" she asked. Her eye fell
on the library ladder, beside which I was still standing. "For a
book?" she resumed.

"Yes," I said, taking the hint. "For a book."

"Haven't you found it yet?"

"No."

She looked hard at me, undisguisedly considering with herself
whether I were or were not speaking the truth.

"You seem to be a good sort," she said, making up her mind at
last. "There's nothing stuck-up about you. I'll help you if I
can. I have rummaged among the books here over and over again,
and I know more about them than you do. What book do you want?"

As she put that awkward question she noticed for the first time
Lady Clarinda's nosegay lying on the side-table where the Major
had left it. Instantly forgetting me and my book, this curious
girl pounced like a fury on the flowers, and actually trampled
them under her feet!

"There!" she cried. "If I had Lady Clarinda here I'd serve her in
the same way."

"What will the Major say?" I asked.

"What do I care? Do you suppose I'm afraid of _him?_ Only last
week I broke one of his fine gimcracks up there, and all through
Lady Clarinda and her flowers!"

She pointed to the top of the book-case--to the empty space on it
close by the window. My heart gave a sudden bound as my eyes took
the direction indicated by her finger. _She_ had broken the vase!
Was the way to discovery about to reveal itself to me through
this girl? Not a word would pass my lips; I could only look at
her.

"Yes!" she said. "The thing stood there. He knows how I hate her
flowers, and he put her nosegay in the vase out of my way. There
was a woman's face painted on the china, and he told me it was
the living image of _her_ face. It was no more like her than I
am. I was in such a rage that I up with the book I was reading at
the time and shied it at the painted face. Over the vase went,
bless your heart, crash to the floor. Stop a bit! I wonder
whether _that's_ the book you have been looking after? Are you
like me? Do you like reading Trials?"

Trials? Had I heard her aright? Yes: she had said Trials.

I answered by an affirmative motion of my head. I was still
speechless. The girl sauntered in her cool way to the fire-place,
and, taking up the tongs, returned with them to the book-case.

"Here's where the book fell," she said--"in the space between the
book-case and the wall. I'll have it out in no time."

I waited without moving a muscle, without uttering a word.

She approached me with the tongs in one hand and with a plainly
bound volume in the other.

"Is that the book?" she said. "Open it, and see."

I took the book from her.

"It is tremendously interesting," she went on. "I've read it
twice over--I have. Mind you, _I_ believe he did it, after all."

Did it? Did what? What was she talking about? I tried to put the
question to her. I struggled--quite vainly--to say only these
words: "What are you talking about?"

She seemed to lose all patience with me. She snatched the book
out of my hand, and opened it before me on the table by which we
were standing side by side.

"I declare, you're as helpless as a baby!" she said,
contemptuously. "There! _Is_ that the book?"

I read the first lines on the title-page--

A COMPLETE REPORT OF THE TRIAL OF EUSTACE MACALLAN.

I stopped and looked up at her. She started back from me with a
scream of terror. I looked down again at the title-page, and read
the next lines--

FOR THE ALLEGED POISONING OF HIS WIFE.

There, God's mercy remembered me. There the black blank of a
swoon swallowed me up.

CHAPTER XI.

THE RETURN TO LIFE.

My first remembrance when I began to recover my senses was the
remembrance of Pain--agonizing pain, as if every nerve in my body
were being twisted and torn out of me. My whole being writhed and
quivered under the dumb and dreadful protest of Nature against
the effort to recall me to life. I would have given worlds to be
able to cry out--to entreat the unseen creatures about me to give
me back to death. How long that speechless agony held me I never
knew. In a longer or shorter time there stole over me slowly a
sleepy sense of relief. I heard my own labored breathing. I felt
my hands moving fee bly and mechanically, like the hands of a
baby. I faintly opened my eyes and looked round me--as if I had
passed through the ordeal of death, and had awakened to new
senses in a new world.

The first person I saw was a man--a stranger. He moved quietly
out of my sight; beckoning, as he disappeared, to some other
person in the room.

Slowly and unwillingly the other person advanced to the sofa on
which I lay. A faint cry of joy escaped me; I tried to hold out
my feeble hands. The other person who was approaching me was my
husband!

I looked at him eagerly. He never looked at me in return. With
his eyes on the ground, with a strange appearance of confusion
and distress in his face, he too moved away out of my sight. The
unknown man whom I had first noticed followed him out of the
room. I called after him faintly, "Eustace!" He never answered;
he never returned. With an effort I moved my head on the pillow,
so as to look round on the other side of the sofa. Another
familiar face appeared before me as if in a dream. My good old
Benjamin was sitting watching me, with the tears in his eyes.

He rose and took my hand silently, in his simple, kindly way.

"Where is Eustace?" I asked. "Why has he gone away and left me?"

I was still miserably weak. My eyes wandered mechanically round
the room as I put the question. I saw Major Fitz-David, I saw the
table on which the singing girl had opened the book to show it to
me. I saw the girl herself, sitting alone in a corner, with her
handkerchief to her eyes as if she were crying. In one mysterious
moment my memory recovered its powers. The recollection of that
fatal title-page came back to me in all its horror. The one
feeling that it roused in me now was a longing to see my
husband--to throw myself into his arms, and tell him how firmly I
believed in his innocence, how truly and dearly I loved him. I
seized on Benjamin with feeble, trembling hands. "Bring him back
to me!" I cried, wildly. "Where is he? Help me to get up!"

A strange voice answered, firmly and kindly: "Compose yourself,
madam. Mr. Woodville is waiting until you have recovered, in a
room close by."

I looked at him, and recognized the stranger who had followed my
husband out of the room. Why had he returned alone? Why was
Eustace not with me, like the rest of them? I tried to raise
myself, and get on my feet. The stranger gently pressed me back
again on the pillow. I attempted to resist him--quite uselessly,
of course. His firm hand held me as gently as ever in my place.

"You must rest a little," he said. "You must take some wine. If
you exert yourself now you will faint again."

Old Benjamin stooped over me, and whispered a word of
explanation.

"It's the doctor, my dear. You must do as he tells you."

The doctor! They had called the doctor in to help them! I began
dimly to understand that my fainting fit must have presented
symptoms far more serious than the fainting fits of women in
general. I appealed to the doctor, in a helpless, querulous way,
to account to me for my husband's extraordinary absence.

"Why did you let him leave the room?" I asked. "If I can't go to
him, why don't you bring him here to me?"

The doctor appeared to be at a loss how to reply to me. He looked
at Benjamin, and said, "Will you speak to Mrs. Woodville?"

Benjamin, in his turn, looked at Major Fitz-David, and said,
"Will _you?_" The Major signed to them both to leave us. They
rose together, and went into the front room, pulling the door to
after them in its grooves. As they left us, the girl who had so
strangely revealed my husband's secret to me rose in her corner
and approached the sofa.

"I suppose I had better go too?" she said, addressing Major
Fitz-David.

"If you please," the Major answered.

He spoke (as I thought) rather coldly. She tossed her head, and
turned her back on him in high indignation. "I must say a word
for myself!" cried this strange creature, with a hysterical
outbreak of energy. "I must say a word, or I shall burst!"

With that extraordinary preface, she suddenly turned my way and
poured out a perfect torrent of words on me.

"You hear how the Major speaks to me?" she began. "He blames
me--poor Me--for everything that has happened. I am as innocent
as the new-born babe. I acted for the best. I thought you wanted
the book. I don't know now what made you faint dead away when I
opened it. And the Major blames Me! As if it was my fault! I am
not one of the fainting sort myself; but I feel it, I can tell
you. Yes! I feel it, though I don't faint about it. I come of
respectable parents--I do. My name is Hoighty--Miss Hoighty. I
have my own self-respect; and it's wounded. I say my self-respect
is wounded, when I find myself blamed without deserving it. You
deserve it, if anybody does. Didn't you tell me you were looking
for a book? And didn't I present it to you promiscuously, with
the best intentions? I think you might say so yourself, now the
doctor has brought you to again. I think you might speak up for a
poor girl who is worked to death with singing and languages and
what not--a poor girl who has nobody else to speak for her. I am
as respectable as you are, if you come to that. My name is
Hoighty. My parents are in business, and my mamma has seen better
days, and mixed in the best of company."

There Miss Hoighty lifted her handkerchief again to her face, and
burst modestly into tears behind it.

It was certainly hard to hold her responsible for what had
happened. I answered as kindly as I could, and I attempted to
speak to Major Fitz-David in her defense. He knew what terrible
anxieties were oppressing me at that moment; and, considerately
refusing to hear a word, he took the task of consoling his young
prima donna entirely on himself. What he said to her I neither
heard nor cared to hear: he spoke in a whisper. It ended in his
pacifying Miss Hoighty, by kissing her hand, and leading her (as
he might have led a duchess) out of the room.

"I hope that foolish girl has not annoyed you--at such a time as
this," he said, very earnestly, when he returned to the sofa. "I
can't tell you how grieved I am at what has happened. I was
careful to warn you, as you may remember. Still, if I could only
have foreseen--"

I let him proceed no further. No human forethought could have
provided against what had happened. Besides, dreadful as the
discovery had been, I would rather have made it, and suffered
under it, as I was suffering now, than have been kept in the
dark. I told him this. And then I turned to the one subject that
was now of any interest to me--the subject of my unhappy husband.

"How did he come to this house?" I asked.

He came here with Mr. Benjamin shortly after I returned," the
Major replied.

"Long after I was taken ill?"

"No. I had just sent for the doctor--feeling seriously alarmed
about you."

"What brought him here? Did he return to the hotel and miss me?"

"Yes. He returned earlier than he had anticipated, and he felt
uneasy at not finding you at the hotel."

"Did he suspect me of being with you? Did he come here from the
hotel?"

"No. He appears to have gone first to Mr. Benjamin to inquire
about you. What he heard from your old friend I cannot say. I
only know that Mr. Benjamin accompanied him when he came here."

This brief explanation was quite enough for me--I understood what
had happened. Eustace would easily frighten simple old Benjamin
about my absence from the hotel; and, once alarmed, Benjamin
would be persuaded without difficulty to repeat the few words
which had passed between us on the subject of Major Fitz-David.
My husband's presence in the Major's house was perfectly
explained. But his extraordinary conduct in leaving the room at
the very time when I was just recovering my senses still remained
to be accounted for. Major Fitz-David looked seriously
embarrassed when I put the question to him.

"I hardly know how to explain it to you," he said. "Eustace has
surprised and disappointed me."

He spoke very gravely. His looks told me more than his words: his
looks alarmed me.

"Eustace has not quarreled with you?" I said.

"Oh no!"

"He understands that you have not broken your promise to him?"

"Certainly. My youn g vocalist (Miss Hoighty) told the doctor
exactly what had happened; and the doctor in her presence
repeated the statement to your husband."

"Did the doctor see the Trial?"

"Neither the doctor nor Mr. Benjamin has seen the Trial. I have
locked it up; and I have carefully kept the terrible story of
your connection with the prisoner a secret from all of them. Mr.
Benjamin evidently has his suspicions. But the doctor has no
idea, and Miss Hoighty has no idea, of the true cause of your
fainting fit. They both believe that you are subject to serious
nervous attacks, and that your husband's name is really
Woodville. All that the truest friend could do to spare Eustace I
have done. He persists, nevertheless, in blaming me for letting
you enter my house. And worse, far worse than this, he persists
in declaring the event of to-day has fatally estranged you from
him. 'There is an end of our married life,' he said to me, 'now
she knows that I am the man who was tried at Edinburgh for
poisoning my wife!"'

I rose from the sofa in horror.

"Good God!" I cried, "does Eustace suppose that I doubt his
innocence?"

"He denies that it is possible for you or for anybody to believe
in his innocence," the Major replied.

"Help me to the door," I said. "Where is he? I must and will see
him!"

I dropped back exhausted on the sofa as I said the words. Major
Fitz-David poured out a glass of wine from the bottle on the
table, and insisted on my drinking it.

"You shall see him," said the Major. "I promise you that. The
doctor has forbidden him to leave the house until you have seen
him. Only wait a little! My poor, dear lady, wait, if it is only
for a few minutes, until you are stronger."

I had no choice but to obey him. Oh, those miserable, helpless
minutes on the sofa! I cannot write of them without shuddering at
the recollection--even at this distance of time.

"Bring him here!" I said. "Pray, pray bring him here!"

"Who is to persuade him to come back?" asked the Major, sadly.
"How can I, how can anybody, prevail with a man--a madman I had
almost said!--who could leave you at the moment when you first
opened your eyes on him? I saw Eustace alone in the next room
while the doctor was in attendance on you. I tried to shake his
obstinate distrust of your belief in his innocence and of my
belief in his innocence by every argument and every appeal that
an old friend could address to him. He had but one answer to give
me. Reason as I might, and plead as I might, he still persisted
in referring me to the Scotch Verdict."

"The Scotch Verdict?" I repeated. "What is that?"

The Major looked surprised at the question.

"Have you really never heard of the Trial?" he said.

"Never."

"I thought it strange," he went on, "when you told me you had
found out your husband's true name, that the discovery appeared
to have suggested no painful association to your mind. It is not
more than three years since all England was talking of your
husband. One can hardly wonder at his taking refuge, poor fellow,
in an assumed name. Where could you have been at the time?"

"Did you say it was three years ago?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I think I can explain my strange ignorance of what was so well
known to every one else. Three years since my father was alive. I
was living with him in a country-house in Italy--up in the
mountains, near Sienna. We never saw an English newspaper or met
with an English traveler for weeks and weeks together. It is just
possible that there might have been some reference made to the
Trial in my father's letters from England. If there were, he
never told me of it. Or, if he did mention the case, I felt no
interest in it, and forgot it again directly. Tell me--what has
the Verdict to do with my husband's horrible doubt of us? Eustace
is a free man. The Verdict was Not Guilty, of course?"

Major Fitz-David shook his head sadly.

"Eustace was tried in Scotland," he said. "There is a verdict
allowed by the Scotch law, which (so far as I know) is not
permitted by the laws of any other civilized country on the face
of the earth. When the jury are in doubt whether to condemn or
acquit the prisoner brought before them, they are permitted, in
Scotland, to express that doubt by a form of compromise. If there
is not evidence enough, on the one hand, to justify them in
finding a prisoner guilty, and not evidence enough, on the other
hand, to thoroughly convince them that a prisoner is innocent,
they extricate themselves from the difficulty by finding a
verdict of Not Proven."

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