The Law and the Lady

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"You say you love me--and you leave me. I don't understand loving
a woman and leaving her. For my part, in spite of the hard things
you have said and written to me, and in spite of the cruel manner
in which you have left me, I love you--and I won't give you up.
No! As long as I live I mean to live your wife.

"Does this surprise you? It surprises _me._ If another woman
wrote in this manner to a man who had behaved to her as you have
behaved, I should be quite at a loss to account for her conduct.
I am quite at a loss to account for my own conduct. I ought to
hate you, and yet I can't help loving you. I am ashamed of
myself; but so it is.

"You need feel no fear of my attempting to find out where you
are, and of my trying to persuade you to return to me. I am not
quite foolish enough to do that. You are not in a fit state of
mind to return to me. You are all wrong, all over, from head to
foot. When you get right again, I am vain enough to think that
you will return to me of your own accord. And shall I be weak
enough to forgive you? Yes! I shall certainly be weak enough to
forgive you.

"But how are you to get right again?

"I have puzzled my brains over this question by night and by day,
and my opinion is that you will never get right again unless I
help you.

"How am I to help you?

"That question is easily answered. What the Law has failed to do
for you, your Wife must do for you. Do you remember what I said
when we were together in the back room at Major Fitz-David's
house? I told you that the first thought that came to me, when I
heard what the Scotch jury had done, was the thought of setting
their vile Verdict right. Well! Your letter has fixed this idea
more firmly in my mind than ever. The only chance that I can see
of winning you back to me, in the character of a penitent and
loving husband, is to change that underhand Scotch Verdict of Not
Proven into an honest English Verdict of Not Guilty.

"Are you surprised at the knowledge of the law which this way of
writing betrays in an ignorant woman? I have been learning, my
dear: the Law and the Lady have begun by understanding one
another. In plain English, I have looked into Ogilvie's 'Imperial
Dictionary,' and Ogilvie tells me, 'A verdict of Not Proven only
indicates that, in the opinion of the jury, there is a deficiency
in the evidence to convict the prisoner. A verdict of Not Guilty
imports the jury's opinion that the prisoner is innocent.'
Eustace, that shall be the opinion of the world in general, and
of the Scotch jury in particular, in your case. To that one
object I dedicate my life to come, if God spare me!

"Who will help me, when I need help, is more than I yet know.
There was a time when I had hoped that we should go hand in hand
together in doing this good work. That hope is at an end. I no
longer expect you, or ask you, to help me. A man who thinks as
you think can give no help to anybody--it is his miserable
condition to have no hope. So be it! I will hope for two, and
will work for two; and I shall find some one to help me--never
fear--if I deserve it.

"I will say nothing about my plans--I have not read the Trial
yet. It is quite enough for me that I know you are i nnocent.
When a man is innocent, there _must_ be a way of proving it: the
one thing needful is to find the way. Sooner or later, with or
without assistance, I shall find it. Yes! before I know any
single particular of the Case, I tell you positively--I shall
find it!

"You may laugh over this blind confidence on my part, or you may
cry over it. I don't pretend to know whether I am an object for
ridicule or an object for pity. Of one thing only I am certain: I
mean to win you back, a man vindicated before the world, without
a stain on his character or his name--thanks to his wife.

"Write to me, sometimes, Eustace; and believe me, through all the
bitterness of this bitter business, your faithful and loving

"VALERIA."

There was my reply! Poor enough as a composition (I could write a
much better letter now), it had, if I may presume to say so, one
merit. It was the honest expression of what I really meant and
felt.

I read it to Benjamin. He held up his hands with his customary
gesture when he was thoroughly bewildered and dismayed. "It seems
the rashest letter that ever was written," said the dear old man.
"I never heard, Valeria, of a woman doing what you propose to do.
Lord help us! the new generation is beyond my fathoming. I wish
your uncle Starkweather was here: I wonder what he would say? Oh,
dear me, what a letter from a wife to a husband! Do you really
mean to send it to him?"

I added immeasurably to my old friend's surprise by not even
employing the post-office. I wished to see the "instructions"
which my husband had left behind him. So I took the letter to his
lawyers myself.

The firm consisted of two partners. They both received me
together. One was a soft, lean man, with a sour smile. The other
was a hard, fat man, with ill-tempered eyebrows. I took a great
dislike to both of them. On their side, they appeared to feel a
strong distrust of me. We began by disagreeing. They showed me my
husband's "instructions," providing, among other things, for the
payment of one clear half of his income as long as he lived to
his wife. I positively refused to touch a farthing of his money.

The lawyers were unaffectedly shocked and astonished at this
decision. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in the
whole course of their experience. They argued and remonstrated
with me. The partner with the ill-tempered eyebrows wanted to
know what my reasons were. The partner with the sour smile
reminded his colleague satirically that I was a lady, and had
therefore no reasons to give. I only answered, "Be so good as to
forward my letter, gentlemen," and left them.

I have no wish to claim any credit to myself in these pages which
I do not honestly deserve. The truth is that my pride forbade me
to accept help from Eustace, now that he had left me. My own
little fortune (eight hundred a year) had been settled on myself
when I married. It had been more than I wanted as a single woman,
and I was resolved that it should be enough for me now. Benjamin
had insisted on my considering his cottage as my home. Under
these circumstances, the expenses in which my determination to
clear my husband's character might involve me were the only
expenses for which I had to provide. I could afford to be
independent, and independent I resolved that I would be.

While I am occupied in confessing my weakness and my errors, it
is only right to add that, dearly as I still loved my unhappy,
misguided husband, there was one little fault of his which I
found it not easy to forgive.

Pardoning other things, I could not quite pardon his concealing
from me that he had been married to a first wife. Why I should
have felt this so bitterly as I did, at certain times and
seasons, I am not able to explain. Jealousy was at the bottom of
it, I suppose. And yet I was not conscious of being
jealous--especially when I thought of the poor creature's
miserable death. Still, Eustace ought not to have kept _that_
secret from me, I used to think to myself, at odd times when I
was discouraged and out of temper. What would _he_ have said if I
had been a widow, and had never told him of it?

It was getting on toward evening when I returned to the cottage.
Benjamin appeared to have been on the lookout for me. Before I
could ring at the bell he opened the garden gate.

"Prepare yourself for a surprise, my dear," he said. "Your uncle,
the Reverend Doctor Starkweather, has arrived from the North, and
is waiting to see you. He received your letter this morning, and
he took the first train to London as soon as he had read it."

In another minute my uncle's strong arms were round me. In my
forlorn position, I felt the good vicar's kindness, in traveling
all the way to London to see me, very gratefully. It brought the
tears into my eyes--tears, without bitterness, that did me good.

"I have come, my dear child, to take you back to your old home,"
he said. "No words can tell how fervently I wish you had never
left your aunt and me. Well! well! we won't talk about it. The
mischief is done, and the next thing is to mend it as well as we
can. If I could only get within arm's-length of that husband of
yours, Valeria--There! there! God forgive me, I am forgetting
that I am a clergyman. What shall I forget next, I wonder?
By-the-by, your aunt sends you her dearest love. She is more
superstitious than ever. This miserable business doesn't surprise
her a bit. She says it all began with your making that mistake
about your name in signing the church register. You remember? Was
there ever such stuff? Ah, she's a foolish woman, that wife of
mine! But she means well--a good soul at bottom. She would have
traveled all the way here along with me if I would have let her.
I said, 'No; you stop at home, and look after the house and the
parish, and I'll bring the child back.' You shall have your old
bedroom, Valeria, with the white curtains, you know, looped up
with blue! We will return to the Vicarage (if you can get up in
time) by the nine-forty train to-morrow morning."

Return to the Vicarage! How could I do that? How could I hope to
gain what was now the one object of my existence if I buried
myself in a remote north-country village? It was simply
impossible for me to accompany Doctor Starkweather on his return
to his own house.

"I thank you, uncle, with all my heart," I said. "But I am afraid
I can't leave London for the present."

"You can't leave London for the present?" he repeated. "What does
the girl mean, Mr. Benjamin?" Benjamin evaded a direct reply.

"She is kindly welcome here, Doctor Starkweather," he said, "as
long as she chooses to stay with me."

"That's no answer," retorted my uncle, in his rough-and-ready
way. He turned to me. "What is there to keep you in London?" he
asked. "You used to hate London. I suppose there is some reason?"

It was only due to my good guardian and friend that I should take
him into my confidence sooner or later. There was no help for it
but to rouse my courage, and tell him frankly what I had it in my
mind to do. The vicar listened in breathless dismay. He turned to
Benjamin, with distress as well as surprise in his face, when I
had done.

"God help her!" cried the worthy man. "The poor thing's troubles
have turned her brain!"

"I thought you would disapprove of it, sir," said Benjamin, in
his mild and moderate way. "I confess I disapprove of it myself."

"'Disapprove of it' isn't the word," retorted the vicar. "Don't
put it in that feeble way, if you please. An act of
madness--that's what it is, if she really mean what she says." He
turned my way, and looked as he used to look at the afternoon
service when he was catechising an obstinate child. "You don't
mean it," he said, "do you?"

"I am sorry to forfeit your good opinion, uncle," I replied. "But
I must own that I do certainly mean it."

"In plain English," retorted the vicar, "you are conceited enough
to think that you can succeed where the greatest lawyers in
Scotland have failed. _They_ couldn't prove this man's innocence,
all working together. And _you_ are going to prove it
single-handed? Upon my word, you are a wonderful woman," cried my
uncle, suddenly descending from indignation
to irony. "May a plain country parson, who isn't used to lawyers
in petticoats, be permitted to ask how you mean to do it?"

"I mean to begin by reading the Trial, uncle."

"Nice reading for a young woman! You will be wanting a batch of
nasty French novels next. Well, and when you have read the
Trial--what then? Have you thought of that?"

"Yes, uncle; I have thought of that. I shall first try to form
some conclusion (after reading the Trial) as to the guilty person
who really committed the crime. Then I shall make out a list of
the witnesses who spoke in my husband's defense. I shall go to
those witnesses, and tell them who I am and what I want. I shall
ask all sorts of questions which grave lawyers might think it
beneath their dignity to put. I shall be guided, in what I do
next, by the answers I receive. And I shall not be discouraged,
no matter what difficulties are thrown in my way. Those are my
plans, uncle, so far as I know them now."

The vicar and Benjamin looked at each other as if they doubted
the evidence of their own senses. The vicar spoke.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you are going roaming
about the country to throw yourself on the mercy of strangers,
and to risk whatever rough reception you may get in the course of
your travels? You! A young woman! Deserted by your husband! With
nobody to protect you! Mr. Benjamin, do you hear her? And can you
believe your ears? I declare to Heaven _I_ don't know whether I
am awake or dreaming. Look at her--just look at her! There she
sits as cool and easy as if she had said nothing at all
extraordinary, and was going to do nothing out of the common way!
What am I to do with her?--that's the serious question--what on
earth am I to do with her?"

"Let me try my experiment, uncle, rash as it may look to you," I
said. "Nothing else will comfort and support me; and God knows I
want comfort and support. Don't think me obstinate. I am ready to
admit that there are serious difficulties in my way."

The vicar resumed his ironical tone.

"Oh!" he said. "You admit that, do you? Well, there is something
gained, at any rate."

"Many another woman before me," I went on, "has faced serious
difficulties, and has conquered them--for the sake of the man she
loved."

Doctor Starkweather rose slowly to his feet, with the air of a
person whose capacity of toleration had reached its last limits.

"Am I to understand that you are still in love with Mr. Eustace
Macallan?" he asked.

"Yes," I answered.

"The hero of the great Poison Trial?" pursued my uncle. "The man
who has deceived and deserted you? You love him?"

"I love him more dearly than ever."

"Mr. Benjamin," said the vicar, "if she recover her senses
between this and nine o'clock to-morrow morning, send her with
her luggage to Loxley's Hotel, where I am now staying.
Good-night, Valeria. I shall consult with your aunt as to what is
to be done next. I have no more to say."

"Give me a kiss, uncle, at parting."

"Oh yes, I'll give you a kiss. Anything you like, Valeria. I
shall be sixty-five next birthday; and I thought I knew something
of women, at my time of life. It seems I know nothing. Loxley's
Hotel is the address, Mr. Benjamin. Good-night."

Benjamin looked very grave when he returned to me after
accompanying Doctor Starkweather to the garden gate.

"Pray be advised, my dear," he said. "I don't ask you to consider
_my_ view of this matter, as good for much. But your uncle's
opinion is surely worth considering?"

I did not reply. It was useless to say any more. I made up my
mind to be misunderstood and discouraged, and to bear it.
"Good-night, my dear old friend," was all I said to Benjamin.
Then I turned away--I confess with the tears in my eyes--and took
refuge in my bedroom.

The window-blind was up, and the autumn moonlight shone
brilliantly into the little room.

As I stood by the window, looking out, the memory came to me of
another moonlight night, when Eustace and I were walking together
in the Vicarage garden before our marriage. It was the night of
which I have written, many pages back, when there were obstacles
to our union, and when Eustace had offered to release me from my
engagement to him. I saw the dear face again looking at me in the
moonlight; I heard once more his words and mine. "Forgive me," he
had said, "for having loved you--passionately, devotedly loved
you. Forgive me, and let me go."

And I had answered, "Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman--don't madden
me! I can't live without you. I must and will be your wife!" And
now, after marriage had united us, we were parted! Parted, still
loving each as passionately as ever. And why? Because he had been
accused of a crime that he had never committed, and because a
Scotch jury had failed to see that he was an innocent man.

I looked at the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and
these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. "No!" I said to myself.
"Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and
fail in my husband's cause.

The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will
begin it to-night."

I drew down the blind and lighted the candles. In the quiet
night, alone and unaided, I took my first step on the toilsome
and terrible journey that lay before me. From the title-page to
the end, without stopping to rest and without missing a word, I
read the Trial of my husband for the murder of his wife.

------------------

PART II.

PARADISE REGAINED.

------------------

CHAPTER XV.

THE STORY OF THE TRIAL. THE PRELIMINARIES.

LET me confess another weakness, on my part, before I begin the
Story of the Trial. I cannot prevail upon myself to copy, for the
second time, the horrible title-page which holds up to public
ignominy my husband's name. I have copied it once in my tenth
chapter. Let once be enough.

Turning to the second page of the Trial, I found a Note, assuring
the reader of the absolute correctness of the Report of the
Proceedings. The compiler described himself as having enjoyed
certain special privileges. Thus, the presiding Judge had himself
revised his charge to the jury. And, again, the chief lawyers for
the prosecution and the defense, following the Judge's example,
had revised their speeches for and against the prisoner. Lastly,
particular care had been taken to secure a literally correct
report of the evidence given by the various witnesses. It was
some relief to me to discover this Note, and to be satisfied at
the outset that the Story of the Trial was, in every particular,
fully and truly given.

The next page interested me more nearly still. It enumerated the
actors in the Judicial Drama--the men who held in their hands my
husband's honor and my husband's life. Here is the List:

THE LORD JUSTICE CLERK,}
LORD DRUMFENNICK, }Judges on the Bench.
LORD NOBLEKIRK, }

THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mintlaw), } DONALD DREW, Esquire
(Advocate-Depute).} Counsel for the Crown.

MR. JAMES ARLISS, W. S., Agent for the Crown.

THE DEAN OF FACULTY (Farmichael), } Counsel for the Panel
ALEXANDER CROCKET, Esquire (Advocate),} (otherwise the Prisoner)

MR. THORNIEBANK, W. S.,}
MR. PLAYMORE, W. S., } Agents for the Panel.

The Indictment against the prisoner then followed. I shall not
copy the uncouth language, full of needless repetitions (and, if
I know anything of the subject, not guiltless of bad grammar as
well), in which my innocent husband was solemnly and falsely
accused of poisoning his first wife. The less there is of that
false and hateful Indictment on this page, the better and truer
the page will look, to _my_ eyes.

To be brief, then, Eustace Macallan was "indicted and accused, at
the instance of David Mintlaw, Esquire, Her Majesty's Advocate,
for Her Majesty's interest," of the Murder of his Wife by poison,
at his residence called Gleninch, in the county of Mid-Lothian.
The poison was alleged to have been wickedly and feloniously
given by the prisoner to his wife Sara, on two occasions, in the
form of arsenic, administered in tea, medicine, "or other article
or articles of food or drink, to the prosecutor unknown." It was
further declared that the prisoner's wife had died of the poison
thus administered b y her husband, on one or other, or both, of
the stated occasions; and that she was thus murdered by her
husband. The next paragraph asserted that the said Eustace
Macallan, taken before John Daviot, Esquire, advocate,
Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian, did in his presence at
Edinburgh (on a given date, viz., the 29th of October), subscribe
a Declaration stating his innocence of the alleged crime: this
Declaration being reserved in the Indictment--together with
certain documents, papers and articles, enumerated in an
Inventory--to be used in evidence against the prisoner. The
Indictment concluded by declaring that, in the event of the
offense charged against the prisoner being found proven by the
Verdict, he, the said Eustace Macallan, "ought to be punished
with the pains of the law, to deter others from committing like
crimes in all time coming."

So much for the Indictment! I have done with it--and I am
rejoiced to be done with it.

An Inventory of papers, documents, and articles followed at great
length on the next three pages. This, in its turn, was succeeded
by the list of the witnesses, and by the names of the jurors
(fifteen in number) balloted for to try the case. And then, at
last, the Report of the Trial began. It resolved itself, to my
mind, into three great Questions. As it appeared to me at the
time, so let me present it here.

CHAPTER XVI.

FIRST QUESTION--DID THE WOMAN DIE POISONED?

THE proceedings began at ten o'clock. The prisoner was placed at
the Bar, before the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh. He
bowed respectfully to the Bench, and pleaded Not Guilty, in a low
voice.

It was observed by every one present that the prisoner's face
betrayed traces of acute mental suffering. He was deadly pale.
His eyes never once wandered to the crowd in the Court. When
certain witnesses appeared against him, he looked at them with a
momentary attention. At other times he kept his eyes on the
ground. When the evidence touched on his wife's illness and
death, he was deeply affected, and covered his face with his
hands. It was a subject of general remark and general surprise
that the prisoner, in this case (although a man), showed far less
self-possession than the last prisoner tried in that Court for
murder--a woman, who had been convicted on overwhelming evidence.
There were persons present (a small minority only) who considered
this want of composure on the part of the prisoner to be a sign
in his favor. Self-possession, in his dreadful position,
signified, to their minds, the stark insensibility of a heartless
and shameless criminal, and afforded in itself a presumption, not
of innocence, but of guilt.

The first witness called was John Daviot, Esquire,
Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian. He was examined by the Lord
Advocate (as counsel for the prosecution); and said:

"The prisoner was brought before me on the present charge. He
made and subscribed a Declaration on the 29th of October. It was
freely and voluntarily made, the prisoner having been first duly
warned and admonished."

Having identified the Declaration, the Sheriff-Substitute--being
cross-examined by the Dean of Faculty (as counsel for the
defense)--continued his evidence in these words:

"The charge against the prisoner was Murder. This was
communicated to him before he made the Declaration. The questions
addressed to the prisoner were put partly by me, partly by
another officer, the procurator-fiscal. The answers were given
distinctly, and, so far as I could judge, without reserve. The
statements put forward in the Declaration were all made in answer
to questions asked by the procurator-fiscal or by myself."

A clerk in the Sheriff-Clerk's office then officially produced
the Declaration, and corroborated the evidence of the witness who
had preceded him.

The appearance of the next witness created a marked sensation in
the Court. This was no less a person than the nurse who had
attended Mrs. Macallan in her last illness--by name Christina
Ormsay.

After the first formal answers, the nurse (examined by the Lord
Advocate) proceeded to say:

"I was first sent for to attend the deceased lady on the 7th of
October. She was then suffering from a severe cold, accompanied
by a rheumatic affection of the left knee-joint. Previous to this
I understood that her health had been fairly good. She was not a
very difficult person to nurse when you got used to her, and
understood how to manage her. The main difficulty was caused by
her temper. She was not a sullen person; she was headstrong and
violent--easily excited to fly into a passion, and quite reckless
in her fits of anger as to what she said or did. At such times I
really hardly think she knew what she was about. My own idea is
that her temper was made still more irritable by unhappiness in
her married life. She was far from being a reserved person.
Indeed, she was disposed (as I thought) to be a little too
communicative about herself and her troubles with persons like me
who were beneath her in station. She did not scruple, for
instance, to tell me (when we had been long enough together to
get used to each other) that she was very unhappy, and fretted a
good deal about her husband. One night, when she was wakeful and
restless, she said to me--"

The Dean of Faculty here interposed, speaking on the prisoner's
behalf. He appealed to the Judges to say whether such loose and
unreliable evidence as this was evidence which could be received
by the Court.

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