 CHAPTER IX. THE DEFEAT OF THE MAJOR Major Fitz-David's visitor proved to be a plump, round-eyed, over-dressed girl with a florid complexion and straw-coloured hair. After first fixing on me a broad stare of astonishment, she pointedly addressed her apologies for intruding on us to the major alone. The creature evidently believed me to be the last new object of the old gentleman's idolatry, and she took no pains to disguise her jealous resentment on discovering us together. Major Fitz-David's had matters right in his own irresistible way. He kissed the hand of the over-dressed girl as devotedly as he had kissed mine. He told her she was looking charmingly. Then he led her with his happy mixture of admiration and respect back to the door by which she had entered, a second door communicating directly with the hall. "'Now, apologies necessary, my dear,' he said. "'This lady is with me on a matter of business. You will find your singing-master waiting for you upstairs. Begin your lesson and I will join you in a few minutes. Au revoir, my charming pupil, au revoir.' The young lady answered this polite little speech in a whisper, with her round eyes fixed distrustfully on me while she spoke. The door closed on her. Major Fitz-David was at liberty to set matters right with me in my turn. "'I call that young person one of my happy discoveries,' said the old gentleman complacently. She possesses, I don't hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it? I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good heavens, such singing! Her upper notes electrified me. I said to myself, Here is a born prima donna. I will bring her out. She is the third I have brought out in my time. I shall take her to Italy when her education is sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future queens of song. Listen, she is beginning her scales. What a voice! Brava, brava, bravissima!" The high soprano notes of the future queen of song rang through the house as he spoke. Of the loudness of the young lady's voice, there could be no sort of doubt. The sweetness and the purity of it admitted, in my opinion, of considerable dispute. Having said the polite words, which the occasion rendered necessary, I venture to recall Major Fitz-David to the subject in discussion between us, when his visitor had entered the room. The Major was very unwilling to return to the perilous topic on which we had just touched when the interruption occurred. He bet time with his forefinger to the singing upstairs. He asked me about my voice, and whether I sang, he remarked that life would be intolerable to him without love and art. A man in my place would have lost all patience, and would have given up the struggle and disgust. Being a woman, and having my end in view, my resolution was invincible. I fairly wore out the Major's resistance, and compelled him to surrender a discretion. It is only justice to add that, when he did make up his mind to speak to me again of you stars, he spoke frankly, and spoke to the point. I have known your husband, he began, since the time when he was a boy. At a certain period of his life a terrible misfortune fell upon him. The secret of that misfortune is known to his friends, and is religiously kept by his friends. It is the secret that he is keeping from you. He will never tell it to you as long as he lives, and he has bound me not to tell it under a promise given on my word of honour. He wished, dear Mrs. Woodwill, to be made acquainted with my position toward you stars. There it is. You persist in calling me Mrs. Woodwill, I said. Your husband wishes me to persist," the Major answered. He assumed the name of Woodwill fearing to give his own name when he first called at your uncle's house. He will now acknowledge no other. Remonstrance is useless. You must do what we do. You must give way to an unreasonable man. The best fellow in the world, in other respects, in this one matter as obstinate and self-willed as he can be. If you ask me my opinion, I tell you honestly that I think he was wrong in courting and marrying you under his false name. He trusted his honour and his happiness to your keeping in making you his wife. Why should he not trust the story of his troubles to you as well? His mother quite shares my opinion in this matter. You must not blame her for refusing to admit you into her confidence after your marriage. It was then too late. Before your marriage she did all she could do without betraying secrets which as a good mother she was bound to respect, to induce her son to act justly toward you. I commit no indiscretion when I tell you that you refused to sanction your marriage mainly for the reason that your stars refused to follow her advice and to tell you what his position really was. On my part I did all I could to support Mrs. MacAllan in the course that she took. When you stars wrote to tell me that he had engaged himself to marry a niece of my good friend, Dr. Starkweather, and that he had mentioned me as his reference, I wrote back to warn him that I would have nothing to do with the affair unless he revealed the whole truth about himself to his future wife. He refused to listen to me as he had refused to listen to his mother, and he held me at the same time to my promise to keep a secret. When Starkweather wrote to me I had no choice but to involve myself in an inception of which I thoroughly disapproved or to answer in a tone so guarded and so brief as to stop the correspondence at the outset. I chose the last alternative, and I fear I have offended my good old friend. You now see the painful position in which I am placed. To add to the difficulties of that situation your stars came here this very day to warn me to be on my guard in case of your addressing to me the very request which you have just made. He told me that you had met with his mother by an unlucky accident, and that you had discovered the family name. He declared that he had travelled to London for the express purpose of speaking to me personally on this serious subject. I know your weakness, he said, where women are concerned. Valeria is aware that you are my old friend. She will certainly write to you. She may even be bold enough to make her way into your house. Renew your promise to keep the great calamity of my life a secret on your honour and on your oath. Those were his words as nearly as I can remember them. I try to treat the thing lightly, I ridicule the absurdly theatrical notion of renewing my promise and all the rest of it. Quite useless. He refused to leave me. He reminded me of his unmerited sufferings, poor fellow, in the past time. It ended in his bursting into tears. You love him, and so do I. Can you wonder that I'll let him have his way? The result is that I am doubly bound to tell you nothing by the most sacred promise that a man can give. My dear lady, I call dearly side with you in this matter. I long to relieve your anxieties. But what can I do? He stopped and waited, gravely waited, to hear my reply. I had listened from beginning to end without interrupting him. The extraordinary change in his manner and in his way of expressing himself while he was speaking of your stars alarmed me as nothing had alarmed me yet. How terrible, I thought to myself, must this untold story be, if the mere act of referring to it makes light heart at major fits save it speak seriously and sadly, never smiling, never paying me a compliment, never even noticing the singing upstairs. My heart sank in me as I drew that startling conclusion. For the first time since I had entered the house, I was at the end of my resources. I knew neither what to say nor what to do next. And yet I kept my seat. Never had the resolution to discover what my husband was hiding from me been more firmly rooted in my mind than it was at that moment. I cannot account for the extraordinary inconsistency in my character which this confession implies. I can only describe the facts as they really were. The singing went on upstairs. Major fits David still waited impenetrably to hear what I had to say, to know what I resolved on doing next. Before I had decided what to say or what to do another domestic incident happened. In plain words another knocking announced a new visitor at the house door. On this occasion there was no rustling of woman's dress in the hall. On this occasion only the old servant entered the room, carrying a magnificent nose-gay in his hand. With Lady Clarinda's kind regards, to remind Major Fitz-David of his appointment. Another lady, this time a lady with a title, a great lady who sent her flowers and her messages without condescending it to concealment. The major, first apologising to me, wrote a few lines of acknowledgement and sent them out to the messenger. When the door was closed again he carefully selected one of the choicest flowers in the nose-gay. May I ask, he said, presenting the flower to me with his best grace, whether you now understand the delicate position in which I am placed between your husband and yourself? The little interruption caused by the appearance of the nose-gay had given a new impulse to my thoughts and had thus helped in some degree to restore me to myself. I was able at last to satisfy Major Fitz-David that his considerate and courteous explanation had not been thrown away upon me. I thank you most sincerely, Major. I said, you have convinced me that I must not ask you to forget on my account the promise which you have given to my husband. It is a sacred promise which I too am bound to respect. I quite understand that. The major drew a long breath of relief and patted me on the shoulder in high approval of what I had said to him. Admirably expressed, he rejoined, recovering as light-hearted looks and his loverlike ways all in a moment. My dear lady, you have the gift of sympathy. You see exactly how I am situated. Do you know? You remind me of my charming lady, Clarinda. She has the gift of sympathy, and she is exactly how I am situated. I shall so enjoy introducing you to each other," said the Major, plunging his long nose ecstatically into Lady Clarinda's flowers. I had my end still to gain and being, as you will have discovered by this time the most obstinate of living women, I still kept that end in view. I shall be delighted to meet Lady Clarinda, I replied, in the meantime. I will get up a little dinner," proceeded the Major with a burst of enthusiasm. You and I and Lady Clarinda, our young prima donna shall come in the evening and sing to us. Suppose we draw out the menu. My sweet friend, what is your favourite autumn soup? In the meantime, I persisted, to return to what we were speaking of just now. The Major's smile vanished. The Major's hand dropped the pen, designed to immortalise the name of my favourite autumn soup. Must we return to that? he asked pitiously. Only for a moment, I said. You remind me, per suit, Major Fitz-David, shaking his head sadly, of another charming friend of mine, a French friend, Madame Mirley-Fleur. You are a person of prodigious tenacity of purpose. Madame Mirley-Fleur is a person of prodigious tenacity of purpose. She happens to be in London. Shall we have her at our little dinner? The Major brightened at the idea and took up the pen again. Do tell me, he said, what is your favourite autumn soup? Pardon me, I begin. We were speaking just now. Oh, dear me, cried Major Fitz-David, is this the other subject? Yes, this is the other subject. The Major put down his pen for the second time, and regretfully dismissed from his mind Madame Mirley-Fleur and the autumn soup. Yes, he said, with a patient bow and a submissive smile. You were going to say? I was going to say, I rejoined, that your promise only pledges you not to tell the secret which my husband is keeping from me. You have given no promise not to answer me if I venture to ask you one or two questions. Major Fitz-David held up his hand warningly, and cast a sly look at me out of his bright little grey eyes. Stop, he said. My sweet friend, stop there. I know where your questions will lead me, and what the result will be if I once begin to answer them. When your husband was here to-day, he took occasion to remind me that I was as weak as water in the hands of a pretty woman. He is quite right. I am as weak as water. I can refuse nothing to a pretty woman. Dear and admirable lady, don't abuse your influence. Don't make an old soldier false to his word of honour. I try to say something here in defence of my motives. The Major clasped his hands and treatingly, and looked at me with a pleading simplicity wonderful to see. Why press it, he asked. I offer no resistance. I am a lamb. Why sacrifice me? I acknowledge your power. I throw myself on your mercy. All the misfortunes of my youth and my manhood have come to me through women. I am not a bit better in my age. I am just as fond of the women, and just as ready to be misled by them as ever, with one foot in the grave. Shocking, isn't it? But how true! Look at this mark! He lifted a curl of his beautiful brown wig, and showed me a terrible scar at the side of his head. That wound, supposed to be mortal at the time, was made by a pistol-bullet, he proceeded, not received in the service of my country. Oh, dear no! Received in the service of a much-injured lady at the hands of a scoundrel of a husband, in a duel abroad. Well, she was worth it. He kissed his hand affectionately to the memory of the dead or ebbsened lady, and pointed to a water-colour drawing of a pretty country-house hanging on the opposite wall. That finest date, he proceeded, once belonged to me. It was sold years and years since. And who had the money? The women. God bless them all, the women. I don't regret it. If I had another estate, I have no doubt it would go the same way. Your redorable sex has made its pretty playthings of my life, my time, and my money, and welcome. The one thing I have kept to myself is my honour, and now that is in danger. Yes, if you put your clever little questions with those lovely eyes, and with that gentle voice I know what will happen, you will deprive me of the last and best of all my possessions. Have I deserved to be treated in that way, and by you, my charming friend, by you of all people in the world, oh, fa-y-fa-y?" He paused and looked at me as before, the picture of artless entreaty, with his head a little on one side. I made another attempt to speak of the matter in dispute between us, from my own point of view. Made if its David instantly threw himself prostate on my mercy more innocently than ever. Ask of me anything else in the wide world, he said, but don't ask me to be false to my friend. Spare me that. And there is nothing I will not do to satisfy you. I mean what I say, mind. He went on, bending closer to me, and speaking more seriously than he had spoken yet. I think you are very hardly used. It is monstrous to expect that a woman placed in your situation will consent to be left for the rest of her life in the dark. No, no, if I saw you at this moment on the point of finding out for yourself what your task persists in hiding from you, I should remember that my promise, like all other promises, has its limits and reserves. I should consider myself bound in honour not to help you, but I would not lift a finger to prevent you from discovering the truth for yourself. At last he was speaking in good earnest. He laid a strong emphasis on his closing words. I laid a stronger emphasis on them still by suddenly leaving my chair. The impulse to spring to my feet was irresistible. Made if its David had started a new idea in my mind. And now we understand each other, I said. I will accept your own terms, major. I will ask nothing of you but what you have just offered to me of your own accord. What have I offered? he inquired, looking a little alarmed. Nothing that you need to repent of, I answered. Nothing which is not easy for you to grant. May I ask a bold question? Suppose this house was mine instead of yours. Consider it yours, cried the gallant old gentleman, from the garret to the kitchen consider it yours. A thousand thanks, major. I will consider it mine for the moment. You know, everybody knows that one of a woman's many weaknesses is curiosity. Suppose my curiosity led me to examine everything in my new house. Yes. Suppose I went from room to room and searched everything and peeped in everywhere. Do you think there would be any chance? The quick-witted major anticipated the nature of my question. He followed my example. He too started to his feet with a new idea in his mind. Would there be any chance, I went on, of my finding my own way to my husband's secret in this house? One word of reply, major, fits David, only one word. Yes or no? Don't excite yourself, cried the major. Yes or no, I repeated, more vehemently than ever. Yes, said the major, after a moment's consideration. It was the reply I had asked for, but it was not explicit enough, now I had got it to satisfy me. I felt the necessity of leading him, if possible, into details. Does yes mean that there is some sort of clue to the mystery, I asked. Something, for instance, which my eyes might see and my hands might touch if I could only find it? He considered again. I saw that I had succeeded in interesting him in some way unknown to myself, and I waited patiently until he was prepared to answer me. The thing you mention, he said, the clue, as you call it, might be seen and might be touched, supposing you could find it? In this house, I asked. The major advanced a step nearer to me and answered, In this room. My head began to swim, my heart throbbed violently, I tried to speak, it was in vain, the effort almost choked me. In the silence I could hear the music lessons still going on in the room above. The future prima donna had done practicing her scales, and was trying her voice now in selections from Italian operas. At the moment when I first heard her, she was singing the beautiful air from the somnambula, camperme sereno. I never hear that delicious melody to this day, without being instantly transported in imagination to the fatal back room in Vivian place. The major, strongly affected himself by this time, was the first to break the silence. Sit down again, he said, and pray take the easy chair, you are very much agitated, you want rest. He was right, I could stand no longer, I dropped into the chair. Major Fitz-David rang the bell, and spoke a few words to the servant at the door. I have been here a long time, I said faintly, tell me if I am in the way. In the way, he repeated, with his irresistible smile, you forget that you are in your own house. The servant returned to us, bringing with him a tiny bottle of champagne, and a plate full of delicate little sugar biscuits. I have had this wine bottled expressly for the ladies, said the Major. The biscuits come to me direct from Paris. As a favour to me, you must take some refreshment, and then he stopped and looked at me very attentively, and then, he resumed, shall I go to my young prima-donna upstairs, and leave you here alone? It was impossible to hint more delicately at the one request which I now headed in my mind to make to him. I took his hand, and pressed it gratefully. The tranquillity of my whole life to come is at stake, I said. When I am left here by myself, does your generous sympathy permit me to examine everything in the room? He signed to me to drink the champagne and eat a biscuit before he gave his answer. This is serious, he said. I wish you to be in perfect possession of yourself. Restore your strength, and then I will speak to you. I did as he bade me, in a minute from the time when I drank it, the delicious sparkling wine had begun to revive me. Is it your express wish, he resumed, that I should leave you here by yourself to search for the room? It is my express wish, I answered. I take a heavy responsibility on myself in granting your request, but I grant it for all that because I sincerely believe, as you believe, that the tranquillity of your life to come depends on you discovering the truth. Saying those words, he took two keys from his pocket. He will naturally feel a suspicion, he went on, of any locked doors that you may find here. The only locked places in the room are the doors of the cupboards under the long bookcase, and the door of the Italian cabinet in that corner. The small key opens the bookcase cupboards, the long key opens the cabinet door. With that explanation he laid the keys before me on the table. Thus far, he said, I have rigidly respected the promise which I made to your husband. I shall continue to be faithful to my promise whatever may be the result of your examination of the room. I am bound in honour not to assist you by word or deed, and not even at liberty to offer you the slightest hint, is that understood? Certainly. Very good. I have now a last word of warning to give you, and then I have done. If you do by any chance exceed in laying your hand on the clue, remember this, the discovery which follows will be a terrible one. If you have any doubt about your capacity to sustain a shock which will strike you to the soul, for God's sake, give up the idea of finding out your husband's secret at once and forever. I thank you for your warning, Major. I must face the consequences of making the discovery whatever they may be. You are positively resolved. Positively. Very well. Take any time you please. The house and every person in it are at your disposal. Ring the bell once if you want the man-servant. Ring twice if you wish the housemaid to wait on you. From time to time I shall look in myself to see how you are going on. I am responsible for your comfort and security, you know, while you honour me by remaining under my roof. He lifted my hand to his lips and fixed the last attentive look on me. I hope I am not running too great a risk, he said, more to himself than to me. The women have led me into many a rash action in my time. Have you led me a wonder into the rashest action of all? With those ominous last words he bowed gravely and left me alone in the room. End of chapter 9 Chapter number 10 of The Law and the Lady This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Vipgamula. The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins. Chapter 10 The Search The fire burning in the grate was not a very large one, and the outer air, as I had noticed on my way to the house, had something of a wintry sharpness in it that day. Still, my first feeling, when Major Fitz-David left me, was a feeling of heat and oppression, with its natural result, a difficulty in breathing freely. The nervous agitation of the time was, I suppose, answerable for these sensations. I took off my bonnet and mantle and gloves, and opened the window for a little while. Nothing was to be seen outside but a paved courtyard, with a skylight in the middle, closed at the further end by the wall of the major stables. A few minutes at the window cooled and refreshed me. I shut it down again and took my first step on the way of discovery. In other words, I began my first examination of the four walls around me and of all that they enclosed. I was amazed at my own calmness. My interview with Major Fitz-David had, perhaps, exhausted my capacity for feeling any strong emotion, for the time at least. It was a relief to me to be alone. It was a relief to me to begin the search. Those were my only sensations so far. The shape of the room was oblong. Of the two shorter walls, one contained the door in grooves, which I had already mentioned as communicating with the front room. The other was almost entirely occupied by the broad window which looked out on the courtyard. Taking the doorway wall first to what was there in the shape of furniture on either side of it, there was a car table on either side. Above each car table stood a magnificent china barrel placed on a gilt and carved bracket fixed to the wall. I opened the car tables. The drawers beneath contained nothing but cards and the usual counters on markers. With the exception of one pack, the cards in both tables were still wrapped in their paper covers exactly as they had come from the shop. I examined the loose pack card by card. No writing, no mark of any kind, was visible on any one of them. Existed by a library ladder, which stood against the bookcase, I looked next into the two china bouts. Both were perfectly empty. Was there anything more to examine on that side of the room? In the two corners there were two little chairs of inlaid wood with red silk cushions. I turned them up and looked under the cushions, and still I made no discoveries. When I had put the chairs back in their places, my search on one side of the room was complete. So far I had found nothing. I crossed to the opposite wall, the wall which contained the window. The window, occupying as I have said almost the entire length and height of the wall, was divided into three compartments and was adorned to their extremity by handsome curtains of dark red velvet. The ample heavy folds of the velvet left just room at the two corners of the wall for two little upright cabinets in bulk, containing rows of drawers and supporting two fine bronze productions reduced in size of the Venus mellow and the Venus Caliburnia. I had made a fits David's permission to do just what I pleased. I opened the six drawers in each cabinet and examined their contents without hesitation. Beginning with the cabinet in the right-hand corner, my investigations were soon completed. All the six drawers were alike occupied by a collection of fossils, which, judging by the curious paper inscriptions fixed on some of them, were associated with the past period of the major's life when he had speculated not very successfully in minds. After satisfying myself that the drawers contained nothing but the fossils and their inscriptions, I turned to the cabinet in the left-hand corner next. Here a variety of objects was revealed to view, and the examination accordingly occupied a much longer time. The top drawer contained a complete collection of Carpenter's tools and miniature relics probably of the far distant time when the major was a boy and when parents or friends had made him a present of a set of toy tools. The second drawer was filled with toys of another sort, presents made to major fits David by his fair friends. Embroided braces, smart smoking caps, quaint pink cushions, gorgeous slippers, glittering purses, all bore witness to the popularity of the friend of the women. The contents of the third drawer were of a less interesting sort. The entire space was filled with old account books ranging over a period of many years. After looking into each book and opening and shaking it uselessly in search of any loose papers, which might be hidden between the leaves, I came to the fourth drawer and found more relics of past pecuniary transactions in the shape of receipted bills neatly tied together and each inscribed at the back. Among the bills I found nearly a dozen loose papers, all equally unimportant. The fifth drawer was in sad confusion. I took out first a loose bundle of ornamental cards, each containing the list of dishes at past banquets given or attended by the major in London or Paris. Next a box full of delicately tinted quill pens, evidently a ladies gift. Next a quantity of old invitation cards. Next some dog's eared French plays and books of the opera. Next a pocket corkscrew, a bundle of cigarettes and a bunch of rusty keys. Lastly a passport, a set of luggage labels, a broken silver snuff box, two cigar cases and a torn map of Rome. Nothing anywhere to interest me, I thought, as I closed the fifth and opened the sixth and last drawer. The sixth drawer was at once a surprise and a disappointment. It literally contained nothing but the fragments of a broken vase. I was sitting at the time opposite to the cabinet in a low chair. In the momentary irritation caused by my discovery of the emptiness of the last drawer, I had just lifted my foot to push it back into its place when the door communicating with the hall opened and Major Fitz-David stood before me. His eyes, after first meeting mine, travelled downward to my foot. The instant he noticed the open drawer, I saw a change in his face. It was only for a moment, but in that moment he looked at me with a sudden suspicion and surprise, looked as if he had caught me with my hands on the clue. "'Pardon, don't let me disturb you,' said Major Fitz-David. I have only come here to ask you a question. What is it, Major? Have you met with any letters of mine in the course of your investigation?' I have found none yet, I answered. If I do discover any letters, I shall, of course, not take the liberty of examining them. "'I wanted to speak to you about that,' he rejoined. It only struck me a moment since upstairs that my letters might embarrass you. In your place I should feel some distrust of anything which I was not at liberty to examine. I think I can set this matter right, however, with very little trouble to either of us. It is no violation of any promises or pledges on my part if I simply tell you that my letters will not assist the discovery which you are trying to make. You can safely pass them over as objects that are not worth examining from your point of view. You understand me, I am sure?' "'I am much obliged to you, Major. I quite understand.' "'Are you feeling any fatigue?' "'None whatever, thank you.' "'And you still hope to succeed? You're not beginning to be discouraged already?' "'I am not in the least discouraged. With your kind leave I mean to persevere for some time yet.' I had not closed the drawer of the cabinet while we were talking, and I glanced carelessly as I answered him at the fragments of the broken vase. By this time he had got his feelings under perfect command. He too glanced at the fragments of the vase with an appearance of perfect indifference. I remembered the look of suspicion and surprise that had escaped him on entering the room, and I thought his indifference a little overacted. "'That doesn't look very encouraging,' he said, with a smile pointing to the shattered pieces of China in the drawer. "'Appearances are not always to be trusted,' I replied. "'The wisest thing I can do in my present situation is to suspect everything even down to a broken vase.' I looked hard at him as I spoke. He changed the subject. "'Does the music upstairs annoy you?' he asked. "'Not in the least major.' "'It will soon be over now. The singing master is going and the Italian master has just arrived. I'm spearing no pains to make my young prima donna a most accomplished person. In learning to sing she must also learn the language, which is especially the language of music. I shall perfect her in the accent when I take her to Italy. It is the height of my ambition to have her mistaken for an Italian when she sings in public. Is there anything I can do before I leave you again? May I send you some more champagne? Please, sir, yes.' "'A thousand thanks, Major. No more champagne for the present.' He turned at the door to kiss his hand to me at parting. At the same moment I saw his eyes wander slightly toward the bookcase. It was only for an instant. I had barely detected him before he was out of the room. Left by myself again, I looked at the bookcase, looked at it attentively for the first time. It was a handsome piece of furniture, an ancient carved oak, and it stood against the wall which ran parallel with the hall of the house. Accepting the space occupied in the upper corner of the room by the second door which opened into the hall, the bookcase built the whole length of the wall down to the window. The top was ornamented by vases, candelabra, and statuettes, and pairs placed in a row. Looking along the row, I noticed a vacant space on the top of the bookcase at the extremity of it which was nearest to the window. The opposite extremity, nearest to the door, was occupied by a handsome painted vase of a very peculiar pattern. Where was the corresponding vase, which ought to have been placed at the corresponding extremity of the bookcase? I returned to the open sixth drawer of the cabinet and looked in again. There was no mistaking the pattern on the fragments when I examined them now. The vase which had been broken was the vase which had stood in the place now vacant on the top of the bookcase at the end nearest to the window. Making this discovery, I took out the fragments down to the smallest morsel of the shattered china, and examined them carefully, one after another. I was too ignorant of the subject to be able to estimate the value of the vase or the antiquity of the vase, or even to know whether it were of British or of foreign manufacture. The ground was of a delicate cream colour. The ornaments traced on this were wreaths of flowers and cupids surrounding a medallion on either side of the vase. Upon the space within one of the medallions was painted with exquisite delicacy a woman's head, representing a nymph or a goddess, or perhaps a portrait of some celebrated person. I was not learned enough to say which. The other medallion enclosed the head of a man, also treated in the classical style, reclining shepherds and shepherdesses in wateau costumes, with their dogs and their sheep, formed the adornments of the pedestal. Such had the vase been in the days of its prosperity when it stood on the top of the bookcase. For what accident had it become broken? And why had Major Fitz-David's face changed when he found that I had discovered the remains of a shattered work of art in the cabinet drawer? The remains left those serious questions unanswered. The remains told me absolutely nothing. And yet if my own observation of the major were to be trusted, the way to the clue of which I was in search lay directly or indirectly through the broken vase. It was useless to pursue the question, knowing no more than I knew now. I returned to the bookcase. Thus far I had assumed, without any sufficient reason, that the clue of which I was in search must necessarily reveal itself through a written paper of some sort. It now occurred to me, after the movement which I had detected on the part of the major, that the clue might quite as probably present itself in the form of a book. I looked along the lower rows of shelves, sending just near enough to them to read the titles on the backs of the volumes. I saw Voltaire in red Morocco, Shakespeare in blue, Walter Scott in green, the history of England and Brown, the annual register in yellow calf. There I paused, wearied and discouraged already by the long rows of volumes. How, I thought to myself, am I to examine all these books? And what am I to look for, even if I do examine them all? Major Fitz-David had spoken of a terrible misfortune, which had darkened my husband's past life. In what possible way could any trace of that misfortune or any suggestive hint of something resembling it exist in the archives of the annual register or in the pages of Voltaire? The bare idea of such a thing seemed absurd. The mere attempt to make a serious examination in this direction was surely a wanton waste of time. And yet the major had certainly stolen a look at the bookcase, and again the broken vase at once stood on the bookcase. Did these circumstances justify me in connecting the vase and the bookcase as twin landmarks on the way that led to discovery? The question was not an easy one to decide on the spur of the moment. I looked up at the higher shelves. Here the collection of books exhibited a greater variety. The volumes were smaller and were not so carefully arranged as on the lower shelves. Some were bound in cloth, some were only protected by paper covers. One or two had fallen and lay flat on the shelves. Here and there I saw empty spaces from which books had been removed and not replaced. In short, there was no discouraging uniformity in these higher regions of the bookcase. The untidy top shelves looked suggestive of some lucky accident, which might unexpectedly lead the way to success. I decided if I did examine the bookcase at all to begin at the top. Where was the library ladder? I had left it against the partition wall which divided the back room from the room in front. Looking that way I necessarily looked also toward the door that ran in grooves, the imperfectly closed door through which I heard Major Fitz-David's question his servant on the subject of my personal appearance when I had first entered the house. No one had moved this door during the time of my visit. Everybody entering or leaving the room had used the other door which led into the hall. At the moment when I looked round something stirred in the front room. The movement led the light in suddenly through the small open space left by the partially closed door. Somebody had been watching me through the chink. I stepped softly to the door and pushed it back until it was wide open. There was the Major, discovered in the front room. I saw it in his face. He had been watching me at the bookcase. His hat was in his hand. He was evidently going out, and he dexterously took advantage of that circumstance to give plausible reason for being so near the door. I hope I didn't frighten you, he said. He startled me a little, Major. I am so sorry and so ashamed. I was just going to open the door and tell you that I am obliged to go out. I have received a pressing message from a lady. A charming person I should so like you to know her. She is in such trouble, poor thing. Little bills, you know, and nasty trades people who want their money, and a husband. Oh, dear me, a husband who is quite unworthy of her. The most interesting creature. You will remind me of her a little. You both have the same carriage of the head. I shall not be more than half an hour gone. Can I do anything for you? You are looking fatigued. Pray let me send for some more champagne. No? Promise to ring when you want it. That's right. Au revoir, my charming friend, au revoir. I pulled the door to begin the moment his back was turned and sat down for a while to compose myself. He had been watching me at the bookcase. The man who was in my husband's confidence, the man who knew where the clue was to be found, had been watching me at the bookcase. There was no doubt of it now. Made if it's David had shown me the hiding place of the secret in spite of himself. I looked with indifference at the other pieces of furniture, ranged against the fourth wall, which I had not examined yet. I surveyed without the slightest feeling of curiosity or the little elegant trifles scattered on the tables and on the chimney piece, each one of which might have been an object of suspicion to me under other circumstances. Even the water-colour drawing failed to interest me in my present frame of mind. I observed languidly that they were most of them portraits of ladies, fair riddles no doubt of the major's face illiteration, and I'd care to notice no more. My business in that room, I was certain of it now, began and ended with the bookcase. I left my seat to fetch the library ladder, determined to begin the work of investigation on the top shelves. On my way to the ladder, I passed one of the tables, and saw the keys lying on it, which made sure that David had left at my disposal. The smaller of the two keys instantly reminded me of the cupboards under the bookcase. I had strangely overlooked these. A vague distrust of the locked doors, a vague doubt of what they might be hiding from me stole into my mind. I left the ladder in its place against the wall, and set myself to examine the contents of the cupboards first. The cupboards were three in number. As I opened the first of them, the singing upstairs ceased. For a moment there was something almost oppressive in the sudden change from noise to silence. I suppose my nerves must have been overbrawled. The next sound in the house, nothing more remarkable than the creaking of a man's boots descending the stairs, made me shudder all over. The man was no doubt the singing master going away after giving his lesson. I heard the house door close on him, and started at the familiar sound as if it were something terrible which I had never heard before. Then there was silence again. I roused myself as well as I could and began my examination of the first cupboard. It was divided into two compartments. The top compartment contained nothing but boxes of cigars, ranged in rows one on another. The under compartment was devoted to a collection of shells. They were all huddled together anyhow, the major evidently setting a far higher value on his cigars than on his shells. I searched this lower compartment carefully for any object interesting to me which might be hidden in it. Nothing was to be found in any part of it besides the shells. As I opened the second cupboard it struck me that the light was beginning to fail. I looked at the window. It was hardly even in yet. The darkening of the light was produced by gathering clouds. Rain drops pattered against the glass. The autumn wind whistled mournfully in the corners of the courtyard. I mended the fire before I renewed my search. My nerves were in fault again, I suppose. I shivered when I went back to the bookcase. My hands trembled. I wondered what was the matter with me. The second cupboard revealed, in the upper division of it, some really beautiful cameos, not mounted, but laid on cotton wool and neat cardboard trays. In one corner, half hidden under one of the trays, they beeped out the white leaves of a little manuscript. I pounced on it eagerly, only to meet with a new disappointment. The manuscript proved to be a descriptive catalogue of the cameos. Nothing more. Turning to the lower division of the cupboard, I found more costly curiosities, in the shape of ivory carvings from Japan and specimens of rare silk from China. I began to feel weary of disinterring the major's treasures. The longer I searched, the farther I seemed to remove myself from the one object that I had it at heart to attain. After closing the door of the second cupboard, I almost doubted whether it would be worth my while to proceed farther and open the third and last door. A little reflection convinced me that it would be as well, now that I had begun my examination of the lower regions of the bookcase to go on with it to the end. I opened the last cupboard. On the upper shelf there appeared, in solitary grandeur, one object only, a gorgeously bound book. It was of a larger size than usual, judging of it by comparison with the dimensions of modern volumes. The binding was of blue velvet, with clasps of silver worked in beautiful arabesque patterns, and with a lock of the same precious metal to protect the book from prying eyes. When I took it up I found that the lock was not closed. Had I any right to take advantage of this accident and open the book? I have put the question since to some of my friends of both sexes. The women all agree that I was perfectly justified considering the serious interest that I had at stake in taking an advantage of any book in the major's house. The men differ from this view and declare that I ought to have put back the volume in blue velvet unopened, carefully guarding myself from any aftertemptation to look at it again by looking the cupboard door. I dare say the men are right. Being a woman, however, I opened the book without a moment's hesitation. The leaves were of the finest vellum, with tastefully designed illustrations all round them, and what did these highly ornamented pages contain? To my unutterable amazement and disgust, they contained locks of hair, let neatly into the centre of each page with inscriptions beneath, which proved them to be love tokens from various ladies who had touched the major's susceptible heart at different periods of his life. The inscriptions were written in other languages besides English, but they appeared to be all equally devoted to the same curious purpose, namely to remind the major of the dates at which his various attachments had come to an untimely end. Thus the first page exhibited a lock of the lightest flaxen hair with these lines beneath. My adored Madeleine. Eternal Constancy. Alice, July 22nd, 1839. The next page was adorned by a darker shade of hair, with a French inscription under it. Clémence, it's all de mon âme. Toujours fidèle. A lock of red hair followed, with a lamentation in Latin under it, a note being attached to the date of dissolution of partnership in this case stating that the lady was descended from the ancient Romans, and was therefore mourned appropriately in Latin by her devoted Fitz-David. More shades of hair and more inscriptions followed until I was weary of looking at them. I put down the book, disgusted with the creatures who had assisted in filling it, and then took it up again by an afterthought. Thus far I had thoroughly searched everything that had presented itself to my notice. Agreeable or not agreeable, it was plainly of serious importance to my own interests to go on as I had begun and thoroughly to search the book. I turned over the pages until I came to the first blank leaf. Seeing that they were all blank leaves from this place to the end, I lifted the volume by the back, and as a last measure of precaution shook it so as to dislodge any loose papers or cards which might have escaped my notice between the leaves. This time my patience was rewarded by discovery which indescribably irritated and distressed me. The 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 heart-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 court trip 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 a self-willed, heart-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 epaulettes, his sash, and other minor accountrements. 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 on 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 that 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 MacEllen. 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 talk to 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, there 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 replied 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 away. 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 rose the reviving influence of my better and nobler sense. Was the man whom I had enthrined 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 letter, and set it against the bookcase. 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, or 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 heightened colour 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 pot, 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 face hussy who calls her safe Lady Clarinda is married, and she sends him nose-gaze 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 show pinches, don't you see? I'm not easy in my mind when I see him leaving your mistress here to do just what you like. No offence. I speak out, I do. I want to know what you are about or by yourself in this room. How did you pick up with the Major? I never heard him speak of you before today. Under all the surface selfishness and coarseness of this strange girl, there was a certain frankness and freedom which pleaded in her favour to my mind at any rate, I answered frankly and freely on my side. Major Fitz-David is an old friend of my husbands, 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 a distrust of me at rest. To look about in this room for what? she asked. Her eyes fell on the library-ledder 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. It seemed 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 nose-gay lying on the side table where the major had left it, instantly forgetting me at 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 manner. 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 gim-cracks up there and rolled through Lady Clarinda and her flowers. She pointed to the top of the bookcase, 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 things stood there. He knows how I hate her flowers, and he put her nose-gay 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 tried it at the painted face. Over the vase vent, bless your heart, crashed 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. Hit a hurt ear, right? Yes, she'd say trials. I answered by an affirmative motion of my head. I was still speechless. The girl sauntered in a cool way to the far place, and taking up the tongs, returned with them to the bookcase. Here's where the book fell, she said, in the space between the bookcase 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's 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 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 MacAllen. I stopped and looked up at her. She started back from me with a scream of horror. 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. END OF CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI. THE RETURN TO LIFE. My first remembrance when I began to recover my senses was the remembrance of pain, agonising pain as if every nerve in my body were being twisted and torn out of me. My whole being, risen 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 laboured breathing. I felt my hands moving feebly 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, veckoning 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. He starts! 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 a simple, kindly way. Where's Hustas? 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 a 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 boy's answered, firmly and kindly. Compose yourself, madam. Mr. Woodwill 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 Hustas 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, quarrelous 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. Woodwill? Benjamin in his turn looked at Major Fitz-David and said, Will you? The Major signed to them both to leave us. They arose 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 at me. You hear how the Major speaks to me? She began. He blames me, poor me, for everything that has happened. I'm as innocent as the newborn babe. I acted for the best. I thought you wanted the book. I don't know what made you faint did what when I opened it. And the Major blames me, as if it was my fault. I am not one of the faintings all myself. But I feel it, I can tell you. Yes, I feel it, though I don't faint about it. I come off respectable parents, I do. My name's Hoyty, Miss Hoyty. I have my own self-respect and it's wounded. I say myself respects 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 doctors brought you to again. I think you might speak up for a poor girl whose work to death was singing and languages and whatnot. A poor girl who has nobody else to speak for her. I'm as respectable as you are if you come to that. My name's Hoyty, my parents are in business and my mama has seen better days and mixed in the best of company. Name's Hoyty 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 defence. He knew what terrible anxieties were oppressing me at that moment and considerably 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 Hoyty by kissing her hand and leading her as he might have let her touch her chest out of the room. I hope that foolish girl has not annoyed you at such a time as this. He said, very honestly, 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 for me at 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. You stars would easily frighten simple old Benjamin about my absence from the hotel, and once alarmed Benjamin would be persuaded with that 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. You stars has surprised and disappointed me. He spoke very gravely. His looks told me more than his words. His looks alarmed me. You stars has not quarrelled with you, I said. Oh, no! He understands that you have not broken your promise to him. Certainly, my young vocalist, Ms. Hoichi, 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 a prisoner a secret from all of them. Mr. Benjamin evidently has suspicions, but the doctor has no idea, and Ms. Hoichi 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. Or that the truest friend could do to spare you stars 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 today has fatally estranged you from him. Here is an end of our married life, he said to me. Now she knows what I am, now that she knows that I am the man who was tried at Edinburgh for poisoning my wife. I rose from the safer in horror. Good God! I cried. Does he still suppose that I doubt his innocence? He denies that it is possible for you or for anybody to believe in his innocence. 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 recollections, 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, as I had almost said, who could leave you at the moment when you first opened your eyes on him? I saw your stars 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, you went on, when you told me you had found out your husband's true name, but the discovery appeared to have suggested no painful association in your mind. It is not more than three years since all England was talking of your husband. One can hardly wonder at his taking or a huge 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 everyone else. Three years since my father was alive, I was living with him in a country house in Italy, up in the mountains, near Siena. We never saw an English newspaper or met with an English traveller for weeks and weeks together. It is just possible that there might have been some reference made to the trial and 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 and directly. Tell me, what has the verdict to do with my husband's horrible doubt of us? He starts as a free man. The verdict was not guilty, of course. Major Fitz David shook his head sadly. You Starrs was stride in Scotland, he said. There is a verdict allowed by the Scottish law, which, so far as I know, is not permitted by the laws of any other civilised country on the face of the earth. When the jury endowed, 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. Was that the verdict when you Starrs was stride? I asked. Yes. The jury were not quite satisfied that my husband was guilty, and not quite satisfied that my husband was innocent. Is that what the Scottish verdict means? That is what the Scottish verdict means. For three years that doubt about him and the minds of the jury who tried him has stood on public record. Oh, my poor darling! My innocent Nertyre understood it at last. The false name in which he had married me, the terrible words he had spoken when he had warned me to respect his secret, the still more terrible doubt that he felt of me at that moment. It was all intelligible to my sympathies. It was all clear to my understanding now. I got up again from the sofa, strong in a daring resolution which the Scottish verdict had suddenly kindled in me, a resolution at once too sacred and too desperate to be confided in the first instance to any other than my husband's ear. Take me to you, Starrs! I cried. I am strong enough to bear anything now. After one searching, look at me. The Major silently offered me his arm, and let me out of the room. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 OF THE LAW AND THE LADY This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Vipgamulla. The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins. Chapter 12 The Scottish Verdict We walk to the far end of the hall. Major Fitz-David opened the door of a long narrow room, built out at the back of the house as a smoking-room, and extending along one side of the courtyard as far as the stable wall. My husband was alone in the room, seated at the further end of it near the fireplace. He started to his feet and faced me in silence as I entered. The Major softly closed the door on us and retired. His Starrs never stood a step to meet me. I ran to him and threw my arms round his neck and kissed him. The embrace was not returned. The kiss was not returned. He passively submitted, nothing more. Your Starrs! I said. I never loved you more dearly than I love you at this moment. I never felt for you as I feel for you now. He released himself deliberately from my arms. He signed to me with a mechanical courtesy of a stranger to take a chair. Thank you, Valeria! he answered in cold, measured tones. You could say no less to me after what has happened, and you could say no more. Thank you. We were standing before the fireplace. He left me and walked away slowly, with his head down, apparently intending to leave the room. I followed him. I got before him. I placed myself between him and the door. Why do you leave me? I said. Why do you speak to me in this cruel way? Are you angry, you Starrs? My darling, if you are angry, I ask you to forgive me. It is I who ought to ask you a pardon. He replied. I beg you to forgive me, Valeria, for having made you my wife. He pronounced those words with a hopeless heartbreak and humility dreadful to see. I laid my hand on his bosom. I said, You Starrs, look at me. He slowly lifted his eyes to my face, eyes cold and clear and tearless, looking at me in steady resignation, in immovable despair. In the utter wretchedness of that moment, I was like him. I was as quiet and as cold as my husband. He chilled. He froze me. Is it possible, I said, that you doubt my belief in your innocence? He left the question unanswered. He sighed bitterly to himself. Poor woman, he said, as a stranger might have said pitying me. Poor woman. My heart swelled in me, as if it would burst. I lifted my hand from his bosom and laid it on his shoulder to support myself. I don't ask you to pity me, you Starrs. I ask you to do me justice. You're not doing me justice. If you had trusted me with the truth, in the days when we first knew that we loved each other, if you had told me all and more than all that I know now, as God is my witness, I would still have married you. Now do you doubt that I believe you are an innocent man? I don't doubt it, he said. All your impulse is a generous valour here. You are speaking generously and feeling generously. Don't blame me, my poor child, if I look on further than you do. If I see what is to come, too surely to come in the cruel future. The cruel future, I repeated. What do you mean? You believe in my innocence, Valeria. The jury who tried me doubted it, and have left that doubt on record. What reason have you, for believing in the face of the verdict that I am an innocent man? I want no reason. I believe in spite of the jury and spite of the verdict. Will your friends agree with you? When your uncle and aunt know what has happened, and sooner or later they must know it, what will they say? They will say, he began badly. He concealed from our niece that he has been wedded to a first wife. He married our niece under a fool's name. He may say he is innocent, but we have only his word for it. When he was put on his trial, the verdict was not proven. Not proven won't do for us, and the jury have done him in injustice. If he is innocent, let him prove it. That is what the world thinks and says of me. That is what your friends will think and say of me. The time is coming, Valeria, when you, even you, will feel that friends have reason to appeal to on their side, and that you have no reason on yours. The time will never come, I answered warmly. You've wronged me. You insult me and thinking it possible. He put my hand from him and drew back a step with a bitter smile. We have only been married a few days, Valeria. Your love for me is new and young. Time which wears away all things will wear away the first fervour of that love. Never, never! He drew back from me a little further still. Look at the world around you, he said. The happiest husbands and wives have their occasional misunderstandings and disagreements. The brightest married life has its passing clouds. When those days come for us, the doubts and fears that you don't feel now will find their way to you then. When the clouds rise in our married life, when I say my first harsh word, when you make your first hasty reply, then in the solitude of your own room, in the stillness of the wakeful night, you will think of my first wife's miserable death. You will remember that I was held responsible for it and that my innocence was never proved. You will say to yourself, did it begin in her time with a harsh word from him and with a hasty reply from her? Will it one day end with me as the jury are feared that it ended with her? Hideous questions for a wife to ask herself. He will stifle them. He will recoil from them like a good woman with horror. But when we meet the next morning, you will be on your guard and I shall see it. And now in my heart of hearts what it means. Embittered by that knowledge, my next harsh word might be harsh as still. Your next thoughts of me may remind you more vividly and more boldly that your husband was once tried as a poisoner and that the question of his first wife's death was never properly cleared up. Do you see what materials for a domestic hell are mingling for us here? Was it for nothing that I warned you, solemnly warned you to draw back when I found you bent on discovering the truth? Can I ever be at your bedside now, when you're ill and not remind you of the most innocent things I do of what happened at that other bedside in the time of that other woman whom I married first? If I pour out your medicine, I commit a suspicious action. They say I poisoned her in her medicine. If I bring you a cup of tea, I revive the remembrance of a horrid doubt. They say I put the arsenic in her cup of tea. If I kiss you when I leave the room, I remind you that the prosecution accused me of kissing her to save appearances and produce an effect on the nurse. Can we live together on such terms as these? No mortal creatures could support the misery of it. This very day I said to you, if you stare a step further in this matter, there is an end of your happiness for the rest of your life. You have taken that step, and the end has come to your happiness and to mine. The blight that cankers and kills is on you and on me for the rest of our lives. So far I had forced myself to listen to him. At those last words the picture of the future that he was placing before me became too hideous to be endured. I refused to hear more. You were talking horribly, I said. At your age and at mine, have we done with love and done with hope? It is blasphemy to love and hope to say it. Wait till you have read the trial, he answered. You mean to read it, I suppose. Every word of it, with a motive you starse which you have yet to know. No motive of yours, Valeria, no love and hope of yours can alter the inexorable facts. My first wife died poisoned, and the verdict of the jewellery has not absolutely acquitted me of the guilt of causing her death. As long as you were ignorant of that, the possibilities of happiness were always within our reach. No, you know it. I say again, our married life has at an end. No, I said, now I know it, our married life has begun, begun with a new object for your wife's devotion, with a new reason for your wife's love. What do you mean? I went near to him again and took his hand. What did you tell me the world has said of you? I asked. What did you tell me my friends would say of you? Not proven, won't do for us, if the jewellery have done him an injustice, if he is innocent. Let him prove it. Those were the words you put into the mouths of my friends. I adopt them for mine. I say, not proven, won't do for me. Prove you're right, you starse, to a verdict of not guilty. Why have you let three years pass without doing it? Shall I guess why? You have waited for your wife to help you. Here she is, my darling, ready to help you with all her heart and soul. Here she is, with one object in life, to show the world and to show the scot jewellery that her husband is an innocent man. I had roused myself, my pulses were throbbing, my voice rang through the room. Had I roused him, what was his answer? Read the trial. That was his answer. I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair, I shook him with all my strength. God forgive me, I could almost have struck him for the tone in which he had spoken, and the look that he had cast on me. I have told you that I mean to read the trial, I said. I mean to read it line by line with you. Some inexcusable mistake has been made. Evidence in your favour that might have been found has not been found. Suspicious circumstances have not been investigated. Crafty people have not been watched. You stars! The conviction of some dreadful oversight committed by you or by the person who helped you is firmly settled in my mind. The resolution to set that vile verdict right was the first resolution that came to me when I first heard of it in the next room. We will set it right. We must set it right. For your sake, for my sake, for the sake of our children, if we are blessed with children. Oh, my own love, don't look at me with those cold eyes. Don't answer me in those hard tones. Don't treat me as if I were talking ignorant me and madly of something that can never be. Still I never roused him. His next words were spoken compassionately rather than coldly. That was all. My defence was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land, he said. After such men have done their utmost and have failed, my poor valeria, what can you, what can I do? We can only submit. Never, I cried. The greatest lawyers are mortal men. The greatest lawyers have made mistakes before now, you can't deny that. Read the trial. For the third time he set those cruel words and said no more. In utter despair of moving him, feeling keenly bitterly, if I must own it, his merciless superiority to all that I had said to him and the honest fervour of my devotion and my love, I thought of Major Fitz-David as a last resort. In the disordered state of my mind, at that moment, it made no difference to me that the major had already tried to reason with him and had failed. In the face of the facts I had a blind belief in the influence of his old friend, if his old friend could only be prevailed upon to support my view. Wait for me one moment, I said. I want you to hear another opinion besides mine. I left him and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was not there. I knocked at the door of communication with the front room. It was opened instantly by the major himself. The doctor had gone away. Benjamin still remained in the room. Will you come and speak to your stars? I began. If you will only say what I want you to say. Before I could add a word more, I heard the house door opened and closed. Major Fitz-David and Benjamin heard it too. They looked at each other in silence. I ran back before the major could stop me to the room in which I had seen your stars. It was empty. My husband had left the house. End of Chapter 12 Chapter number 13 Of the Law and the Lady This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by V.P. Camilla The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins Chapter 13 The Man's Decision My first impulse was the reckless impulse to follow you stars, openly through the streets. The major and Benjamin both opposed this hasty resolution on my part. They appealed to my own sense of self-respect, without, so far as I remember it, producing the slightest effect on my mind. They were more successful when they entreated me next to be patient for my husband's sake. In mercy to you stars, they begat me to wait half an hour. If he failed to return in that time, they pledged themselves to accompany me in search of him to the hotel. In mercy to you stars, I consented to wait. What I suffered under the forced necessity of remaining passive at that crisis in my life, no words of mine can tell. It will be better if I go on with my narrative. Benjamin was the first to ask me what had passed between my husband and myself. He may speak freely, my dear, he said. I know what has happened since you have been in Major Fitz-David House. No one has told me about it. I found it out for myself. If you remember, I was struck by the name of Mac Ellen when you first mentioned it to me at my cottage. I couldn't guess why at the time. I know why now. Hearing this, I told them both unreservedly what I had said to you stars and how he had received it, to my unspeakable disappointment that both sided with my husband, treating my view of his position as a mere dream. They said it as he said it. You have not read the trial. I was really enraged with them. The facts are enough for me, I said. We know he is innocent. Why is his innocent not proved? It ought to be. It must be a cell-by. If the trial tell me it can't be done, I refuse to believe the trial. Where is the book, Major? Let me see for myself if his lawyers have left nothing for his wife to do. Did they love him as I love him? Give me the book. Major Fitz-David looked at Benjamin. It will only additionally shock and distress her if I give her the book, he said. Don't you agree with me? I interposed before Benjamin could answer. If you refuse my request, I said, you will oblige me, Major, to go to the nearest bookseller and tell him to buy the trial for me. I am determined to read it. This time Benjamin sided with me. Nothing can make matters worse than they answer. He said, if I may be permitted to advise, let her have her own way. The Major rose and took the book out of the Italian cabinet, which he had consigned it for safekeeping. My young friend tells me that she informed you of her regrettable outbreak of temper a few days since. He said as he handed me the volume. I was not aware at the time what book she had in her hand, when she so far forgot herself as to destroy the vase. When I left you in the study, I supposed the report of the trial to be in its customary place on the top shelf of the bookcase, and I own I felt some curiosity to know whether you would think of examining that shelf. Broken vase? It is needless to conceal it from you now, was one of a pair presented to me by your husband and his first wife only a week before the poor woman's terrible death. I felt my first presentiment that you were on the brink of discovery when I found you looking at the fragments, and I fancy you betrayed to you that something of the sort was disturbing me. You looked as if you noticed it. I did notice it, Major, and I too had a vague idea that I was on the way to discovery. Will you look at your watch, if we waited half an hour yet? My impatience had misled me. The ordeal of the half-hour was not yet at an end. Slowly and more slowly the heavy minutes followed each other, and still there were no signs of my husband's return. We tried to continue our conversation and failed. Nothing was audible. No sounds, but the ordinary sounds of the street disturbed the dreadful silence. Try as I might to repel it. There was one foreboding thought that pressed closer and closer on my mind as the interval of waiting wore its weary way on. I shuddered as I asked myself if our married life had come to an end, if Eustace had really left me. The Major saw what Benjamin's slower perception had not yet discovered that my fortitude was beginning to sink under the unreleavable depression of suspense. Come, he said, let us go to the hotel. It then wanted nearly five minutes to the half-hour. I looked, my gratitude to Major Fitz-David for spearing me those last minutes. I could not speak to him or to Benjamin in silence with record into a cab and drove to the hotel. The landlady met us in the hall. Nothing had been seen or heard of Eustace. There was a letter waiting for me upstairs on the table in our sitting-room. It had been left at the hotel by a messenger only a few minutes since. Trembling and breathless I ran up the stairs, the two gentlemen following me. The address of the letter was in my husband's handwriting. My heart sank in me as I looked at the lines. There could be but one reason for his writing to me, that closed envelope held his farewell words. I sat with the letter on my left, stupefied and capable of opening it. Kind-hearted Benjamin attempted to comfort and encourage me. The Major, with his larger experience of women, warned the old man to be silent. Wait! I heard him whisper. Speaking to her, we'll do no good now. Give her time. Acting on a sudden impulse I held out the letter to him as he spoke. Even moments might be of importance if Eustace had indeed left me. To give me time might be to lose the opportunity of recalling him. You are his old friend, I said, open his letter major and read it for me. Major Fitz-David opened the letter and read it through to himself. When he had done, he threw it on the table with a gesture which was almost a gesture of contempt. There's but one excuse for him, he said. The man is mad. Those words told me all. I knew the worst and knowing it, I could read the letter. It rends us. My beloved Valeria, when you read these lines, you read my farewell words. I returned to my solitary, unfriended life, my life before I knew you. My darling, you have been cruelly treated. You have been entrapped into marrying a man who has been publicly accused of poisoning his first wife and who has not been honourably and completely acquitted of the charge. And you know it. Can you live on terms of mutual confidence and mutual esteem with me when I have committed this fraud and when I stand toward you in this position? It was possible for you to live with me happily while you were in ignorance of the truth. It is not possible. Now you know all. No, the one atonement I can make is to leave you. You one chance of future happiness is to be disassociated at once and forever from my dishonoured life. I love you, Valeria, truly, devotedly, passionately, but the spectre of the poisoned woman rises between us. It makes no difference that I am innocent, even of the thought of harming my first wife. My innocence has not been proved. In this world my innocence can never be proved. You are young and loving and generous and hopeful. Bless others, Valeria, with your rare attractions and your delightful gifts. They of no avail with me. The poisoned woman stands between us. If you live with me now, you will see her as I see her. That torture shall never be yours. I love you. I leave you. Do you think me hard and cruel? Wait a little, and time will change that way of thinking. If the years go on, you will say to yourself, basely as he deceived me, there was some generosity in him. He was man enough to release me of his own free will. Yes, Valeria, I fully, freely release you. If it be possible to annull our marriage, let it be done. Recover your liberty by any means that you may be advised to employ, and be assured beforehand of my entire and implicit submission. My lawyers have the necessary instructions on the subject. Your uncle is only to communicate with them, and I think he will be satisfied of my resolution to do you justice. The one interest that I have now left in life is my interest in your welfare and your happiness in the time to come. Your welfare and your happiness are no longer to be found in your union with me. I can write no more. This letter will wait for you at the hotel. It will be useless to attempt to trace me. I know my own weakness. My heart is all yours. I might yield to you if I let you see me again. Show these lines to your uncle, and to any friend whose opinions you may value. I have only to sign my dishonoured name, and everyone will understand and applaud my motive for writing as I do. The name justifies, amply justifies, the letter. Forgive and forget me. Farewell. You stars, MacAllan. In those words he took a sleeve of me. We had then been married. Six days. End of chapter 13