 Chapter 46 Take care, Velaria," said Mrs. Macallan. I ask you no questions. I only caution you for your own sake. Eustace has noticed what I have noticed. Eustace has seen a change in you. Take care." So my mother-in-law spoke to me later in the day, when we happened to be alone. I had done my best to conceal all traces of the effect produced on me by the strange and terrible news from Glen Inge. But who could read what I had read, who could feel what I now felt and still maintain an undisturbed serenity of look and manner? If I had been the vilest hypocrite living, I doubt even then if my face could have kept my secret while my mind was full of Benjamin's letter. Having spoken her word of caution, Mrs. Macallan made no further advance to me. I daresay she was right. Still it seemed hard to be left without a word of advice or of sympathy, to decide for myself what it was my duty to my husband to do next. To show him Benjamin's narrative, in his state of health, and in the face of the warning addressed to me, was simply out of the question. At the same time it was equally impossible after I had already betrayed myself to keep him entirely in the dark. I thought over it anxiously in the night. When the morning came I decided to appeal to my husband's confidence in me. I went straight to the point in these terms. You starse, your mother said yesterday that you noticed a change in me when I came back from my drive. Is she right? Quite right, Valeria, he answered, speaking in lower tones than usual and not looking at me. We have no concealments from each other now, I answered, I ought to tell you and do tell you that I found a letter from England waiting at the bankers which has caused me some agitation and alarm. Will you leave it to me to choose my own time for speaking more plainly, and will you believe, love, that I am really doing my duty to work you as a good wife in making this request? I paused. He made no answer. I could see that he was secretly struggling with himself. Had I ventured too far? Had I overestimated the strength of my influence? My heart bet fast, my voice faltered, but I summoned Courage enough to take his hand and to make a last appeal to him. You starse, I said, don't you know me yet well enough to trust me? He turned toward me for the first time. I saw a last vanishing trace of doubt in his eyes as they looked into mine. You promise sooner or later to tell me the whole truth? He said, I promise with all my heart. I trust you, Valeria. His brightening eyes told me that he really meant what he said. We sealed our compact with a kiss. Pardon me for mentioning these trifles. I'm still writing, if you will kindly remember it, of our new honeymoon. By that day's post I answered Benjamin's letter telling him what I had done and entreating him if he and Mr. Plano approved of my conduct to keep me informed of any future discoveries which they might make at Glen Inch. After an interval, an endless interval, as it seemed to me, of ten days more, I received a second letter from my old friend, with another post script added by Mr. Plano. We are advancing steadily and successfully with the putting together of the letter, Benjamin wrote, the one new discovery which we have made is of serious importance to your husband. We have constructed certain sentences declaring in the plainest words that the arsenic which Eustace procured was purchased at the request of his wife, and was in her possession at Glen Inch. This, remember, is in the handwriting of the wife, and is signed by the wife, as we have also found out. Unfortunately, I am obliged to add that the objection to taking your husband into our confidence mentioned when our last road still remains in force, in greater force I may say than ever. The more we make out of the letter, the more inclined we are if we only studied our own feelings, to throw it back into the dust heap in mercy to the memory of the unhappy writer. I shall keep this open for a day or two. If there is more news to tell you by that time, you will hear of it from Mr. Plano. Mr. Plano's post script followed, dated three days later. The concluding part of the late Mrs. MacEllen's letter to your husband, the lawyer wrote, has proved accidentally to be the first part which we have succeeded in piecing together. With the exception of a few gaps still left here and there, the writing of the closing paragraphs has been perfectly reconstructed. I have neither the time nor the inclination to write to you on this sad subject in any detail. In the fortnight more, at the longest, we shall, I hope, send you a copy of the letter, complete from the first line to the last. Meanwhile, it is my duty to tell you that there is one bright side to this otherwise deplorable and shocking document. Legally speaking, as well as morally speaking, it absolutely vindicates your husband's innocence, and it may be lawfully used for this purpose if he can reconcile it to his conscience and to the mercy due to the memory of the dead, to permit the public exposure of the letter in court. Understand me he cannot be tried again on what we call the criminal charge, for certain technical reasons with which I need not trouble you. But if the facts which were involved at the criminal trial can also be shown to be involved in a civil action, and in this case they can, the entire matter may be made the subject of a new legal inquiry, and the verdict of a second jury, completely vindicating your husband, may thus be obtained. Keep this information to yourself for the present. Preserve the position which you have so sensibly adopted towards you stars, until you have read the restored letter. When you have done this, my own idea is that you will shrink in pity to him, from letting him see it. How he is to be kept in ignorance of what we have discovered is another question, the discussion of which must be deferred until we can consult together. Until that time comes I can only repeat my advice, wait till the next news reaches you from Glan Inge. I waited. What I suffered, what you stars thought of me, does not matter. Nothing matters now but the facts. In less than a fortnight more the task of restoring the letter was completed, accepting certain instances in which the morsel of the torn paper had been irretrievably lost, and in which it had been necessary to complete the sins in harmony with the writer's intention, the whole letter had been put together, and the promised copy of it was forwarded to me in Paris. Before you, too, read that dreadful letter, do me one favour. Let me briefly remind you of the circumstances under which you stars MacAllan married his first wife. Remember that the poor creature fell in love with him, without awakening any corresponding effection on his side. Remember that he separated himself from her, and did all he could to avoid her when he found this out. Remember that she presented herself at his residence in London, without a word of warning, that he did his best to save her reputation, that he failed, through no fault of his own, and that he ended, rashly ended, in a moment of despair, by marrying her, to silence the scandal that must otherwise have blighted her life as a woman for the rest of her days. After all this in mind, it is the sworn testimony of respectable witnesses, and pray do not forget however foolishly and blamable he may have written about her in the secret pages of his diary, that he was proved to have done his best to conceal from his wife the aversion, which the poor soul inspired in him, and that he was, in the opinion of those who could best judge him, at least a courteous and a considerate husband, if he could be no more. Now take the letter. It asks but one favour of you. It asks to be read by the light of Christ's teaching. Judge not, that ye be not judged. CHAPTER 47 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. THE LAW AND THE LADY by Wilkie Collins CHAPTER 47 THE WIFES' CONFESSION Glenn Inch, October 19th, 1800, Something. My husband, I have something very painful to tell you about one of your oldest friends. You have never encouraged me to come to you with any confidence of mine. If you had allowed me to be as familiar with you as some wives are with their husbands, I should have spoken to you personally, instead of writing. As it is, I don't know how you might receive what I have to say to you if I said it by word of mouth. So I've right. The man against whom I warn you is still a guest in this house. Miserimus Dexter. No fulzer or wickeder creature walks the earth. Don't throw my letter aside. I have waited to say this until I could find proof that might satisfy you. I have got the proof. You may remember that I ventured to express some disapproval when you first told me you had asked this man to visit us. If you had allowed me time to explain myself, I might have been bold enough to give you a good reason for the aversion I felt towards your friend. But you would not wait. You hastily and most unjustly accused me of feeling prejudiced against the miserable creature on account of his deformity. No other feeling than compassion for deformed persons has ever entered my mind. I have indeed almost a fellow feeling for them being that next worst thing myself to a deformity, a plain woman. I object to Mr. Dexter as your guest because he had asked me to be his wife in past days, and because I had reason to fear that he still regarded me after my marriage with a guilty and horrible love. Was it not my duty as a good wife to object to his being your guest at Glen Inch, and was it not your duty as a good husband to encourage me to say more? Well Mr. Dexter has been your guest for many weeks, and Mr. Dexter has dared to speak to me again of his love. He has insulted me and insulted you by declaring that he adores me and that you hate me. He has promised me a life of unalloyed happiness in a foreign country with my lover, and he has prophesised for me a life of unendurable misery at home with my husband. Why did I not make my complaint to you and have this monster dismissed from the house at once and for ever? Are you sure you would have believed me if I had complained, and if your bosom friend had denied all intention of insulting me, I heard you once say, when you were not aware that I was within hearing, that the vainest women are always the ugly women. You might have accused me of vanity, who knows. But I have no desire to shelter myself under this excuse. I am a jealous and happy creature, always doubtful of your affection for me, always fearing that another woman has got my place in your heart. Mr. Dexter has practised on this weakness of mine. He has declared he can prove to me, if I will permit him, that I am in your secret heart an object of loathing to you, that you shrink from touching me, that you cursed the hour when you were foolish enough to make me your wife. I have struggled as long as I could against the temptation to let him produce his proofs. It was a terrible temptation to a woman who was far from feeling sure of the sincerity of your affection for her, and it has ended in getting the better of my resistance. I wickedly concealed the disgust which the Thretch inspired in me. I wickedly gave him leave to explain himself. I wickedly permitted this enemy of yours and of mine to take me into his confidence. And why? Because I love you and you only, and because Miseramus Dexter's proposal did, after all, echo a doubt of you that had long been gnawing secretly at my heart. Forgive me, you stas. This is my first sin against you. It shall be my last. I will not spare myself. I will write a full confession of what I said to him and of what he said to me. You may make me suffer for it when you know what I have done, but you will at least be warned in time. You will see your fool's friend in his true light. I said to him, How can you prove to me that my husband hates me in secret? He answered, I can prove it under his own handwriting. You shall see it in his diary. I said, His diary has a lock and the drawer in which he keeps it has a lock. How can you get at the diary and the drawer? He answered, I have my own way of getting at both of them, without the slightest risk of being discovered by your husband. All you have to do is to give me the opportunity of seeing you privately. I will engage in return to bring the open diary with me to your room. I said, How can I give you the opportunity? What do you mean? He pointed to the key in the door of communication between my room and the little study. He said, With my infirmity I may not be able to profit by the first opportunity of visiting you here unobserved. I must be able to choose my own time and my own way of getting to you secretly. Let me take this key, leaving the door locked. When the key is missed, if you say it doesn't matter, if you point out that the door is locked, and tell the servants not to trouble themselves about finding the key, there will be no disturbance in the house, and I shall be in secure possession of a means of communication with you which no one will suspect. Will you do this? I have done it. Yes, I have become the accomplice of this double-faced villain. I have degraded myself and outraged you by making an appointment to pry into your diary. I know how base my conduct is. I can make no excuse. I can only repeat that I love you, and that I am sorely afraid you don't love me, and Miserimus Dexter offers to end my doubts by showing me the most secret thoughts of your heart in your own writing. He is to be with me for this purpose while you are out, some time in the course of the next two hours. I shall decline to be satisfied with only ones looking at your diary, and I shall make an appointment with him to bring it to me again at the same time tomorrow, before then you will receive these lines by the hands of my nurse. Go out as usual after reading them, but return privately and unlock the table drawer in which you keep your book. You will find it gone. Post yourself quietly in the little study, and you will discover the diary when Miserimus Dexter leaves me in the hands of your friend. The greatest difficulties of reconstruction occurred in this first portion of the torn letter. In the fourth paragraph from the beginning we have been obliged to supply lost words in no less than three places. In the ninth, tenth and seventeenth paragraph the same proceeding was, in a greater or lesser degree, found to be necessary. In all these cases the utmost pains have been taken to supply the deficiency in exact accordance with what happened to be the meaning of the writer as indicated in the existing pieces of the manuscript. October 20th. I have read your diary. At last I know what you really think of me. I have read what Miserimus Dexter promised I should read, the confession of your loathing of me in your own handwriting. You will not receive what I have wrote to you yesterday at the time or in the manner which I had proposed. Long as my letter is, I have still, after reading your diary, some more words to add. After I have closed and sealed the envelope and addressed it to you, I shall put it under my pillow. It will be found there when I am laid out for the grave. And then, you, stars, when it is too late for hope or help, my letter will be given to you. Yes, I have had enough of my life. Yes, I mean to die. I have already sacrificed everything but my life to my love for you. Now I know that my love is not returned, the last sacrifice left is easy. My death will set you free to marry Mrs. Bowley. You don't know what it cost me to control my hatred of her and to beg her to pay her visit here without minding my illness. I could never have done it if I had not been so fond of you and so fearful of irritating you against me by showing my jealousy. And how did you reward me? Let your diary answer. I tenderly embraced her this very morning, and I hope poor soul she did not discover the effort that it cost me. Well, I have discovered it now. I know that you privately think your life with me a purgatory. I know that you have compassionately hidden from me the sense of shrinking that comes over you when you are obliged to submit to my caresses. I am nothing but an obstacle, an utterly distasteful obstacle between you and the woman whom you love so dearly that you adore the earth which she touches with her foot. Be it so, I will stand in your way no longer. It is no sacrifice and no merit on my part. Life is unendurable to me. Now I know that the man whom I love with all my heart and soul secretly shrinks from me whenever I touch him. I have got the means of death close at hand. The arsenic that I twice asked you to buy for me is in my dressing case. I deceived you when I mentioned some commonplace domestic reasons for wanting it. My true reason was to try if I could not improve my ugly complexion, not from any vain feeling of mine, only to make myself look better and more lovable in your eyes. I have taken some of it for that purpose, but I have got plenty left to kill myself with. The poison will have its use at last. It might have failed to improve my complexion. It will not fail to relieve you of your ugly wife. Don't let me be examined after death. Show this letter to the doctor who attends me. It will tell him that I have committed suicide. It will prevent any innocent persons from being suspected of poisoning me. I want nobody to be blamed or punished. I shall remove the label and carefully empty the bottle containing the poison, so that he may not suffer on my account. I must wait here and rest a little while, then take up my letter again. It's far too long already, but these are my farewell words. I may surely dwell a little on my last talk with you. October 21st, two o'clock in the morning. I sent you out of the room yesterday when you came in to ask how I had passed the night. And I spoke of you shamefully, you stars, after you had gone to the hired nurse who attends on me. Forgive me, I'm almost beside myself now. You know why. Half past three. Oh, my husband, I have done the deed which will relieve you of the wife whom you hate. I have taken the poison, all of it that was left in the paper packet, which was the first that I found. If it's not enough to kill me, I have more left in the bottle. Ten minutes past five. You've just gone after giving me my composing draught. My courage failed me at the sight of you. I thought to myself, if you look at me kindly, I will confess what I've done and let him save my life. You never looked at me at all. You only looked at the medicine. I let you go without saying a word. Half past five. I begin to feel the first effects of the poison. The nurses sleep at the foot of my bed. I won't call for assistance. I won't wake her. I will die. Half past nine. The agony was beyond my endurance. I awoke the nurse. I have seen the doctor. Nobody suspects anything. Strange to say the pain has left me. I have evidently taken too little of the poison. I must open the bottle which contains the larger quantity. Fortunately you are not near me. My resolution to die or rather my loathing of life remains as bitterly unaltered as ever. To make sure of my courage, I have forbidden the nurse to send for you. She has just gone downstairs by my orders. I am free to get the poison out of my dressing-case. Ten minutes to ten. I had just time to hide the bottle after the nurse had left me when you came into my room. I had another moment of weakness when I saw you. I determined to give myself a last chance of life. That is to say, I determined to offer you a last opportunity of treating me kindly. I asked you to get me a cup of tea, if in paying me this little attention. You only encouraged me by one fond word or one fond look I resolved not to take the second dose of poison. You obeyed my wishes, but you were not kind. You gave me my tea, you stars, as if you were giving a drink to your dog. And then you wandered in a languid way, thinking, I suppose, of Mrs. Poli all the time, at my dropping the cup in, handing it back to you. I really could not help it. My hand would tremble. In my place, your hand might have trembled too, with the arsenic under the bat-cloth. You politely hoped, before he went away, that the tea would do me good. And, oh God, you could not even look at me when you said that. You looked at the broken bits of the tea cup. The instant you were out of the room I took the poison a double dose this time. I have a little request to make here while I think of it. After removing the label from the bottle and putting it back clean in my dressing-case, it struck me that I'd failed to take the same precaution in the early morning with the empty paper packet, bearing on it the name of the other chemist. I threw it aside on the counter in the pain of the bed, among some other loose papers. My ill-tempered nurse complained of the litter and crumpled them all up and put them away somewhere. I hope the chemist will not suffer through my carelessness. Pray bear it in mind to say that he is not to blame. Dexter. Something reminds me of Miserimus Dexter. He's put your diary back again in the drawer, and he presses me for an answer to his proposal. Has this false vredge any conscience? If he has, even he will suffer when my death answers him. The nurse has been in my room again. I've sent her away. I have told her I want to be alone. How's the time going? I cannot find my watch. Is the pain coming back again and paralyzing me? I don't feel it keenly yet. It may come back, though, at any moment. I have still to close my letter and to address it to you, and besides I must save up my strength to hide it under the pillow so that nobody find it until after my death. Farewell, my dear. I wish I had been a prettier woman, a more loving woman to word you I could not be. Even now I dread the sight of you, dear face. Even now, if I allowed myself the luxury of looking at you, I don't know that you might not charm me into confessing what I have done before it is too late to save me. But you are not here. Better as it is, better as it is. Once more farewell. Be happier than you have been with me. I love you, Eustace. I forgive you. When you have nothing else to think about, think sometimes as kindly as you can of your poor, ugly Sarah MacAllen. Note by Mr. Playmore. The lost words and phrases supplied in this concluding portion of the letter are so few in number that it is needless to mention them. The fragments which were found accidentally stuck together by the gum and which represent the part of the letter first completely reconstructed begin at the phrase, I spoke a few shamefully, Eustace, and end with a broken sentence, if in paying me this little attention you only encouraged me by one fond word or one fond look I resolve not to take. With the assistance thus afforded to us, the labour of putting together the concluding half of the letter dated October 20th was trifling, compared with the almost insurmountable difficulties which we encountered in dealing with the scattered wreck of the preceding pages. Yes, to this end it had come. I had devoted my life to the attainment of one object, and that object I had gained. There on the table before me lay the triumphant vindication of my husband's innocence, and in mercy to him, in mercy to the memory of his dead wife, my one hope was that he might never see it. My one desire was to hide the true meaning of my life, and to see the true meaning of my life, and to see the true meaning of my life, and to see the true meaning of my life, and to see it. My one desire was to hide it from the public view. I looked back at the strange circumstances under which the letter had been discovered. It was all my doing, as the lawyer had said, and yet what I had done I had so to speak done blindfold. The nearest accident might have altered the whole course of later events. I had over and over again interfered to Jack Ariel when she entreated the master to tell her a story. If she had not succeeded, in spite of my opposition, Miserie must dex this last effort of memory might never have been directed to the tragedy at Glen Inch. And again, if I had only remembered to move my chair, and so to give Benjamin the signal to leave off, he would never have written down the apparently senseless wits which have led us to the discovery of the truth. Looking back at events in this frame of mind, the very sight of the letter sickened and horrified me. I cursed the day which had disinterred the fragments of it from their foul tomb, just at the time when Eustace had found his weary way back to health and strength, just at the time when we were united again and happy again when a month or two more might make us father and mother, as well as husband and wife, that frightful record of suffering and sin had risen against us like an avenging spirit. There it faced me on the table, threatening my husband's tranquility. Neither all I knew if he had read it at the present critical stage of his recovery, even threatening his life. The hours struck from the clock on the mantelpiece. It was Eustace's time for paying me his morning visit in my own little room. He might come in at any moment. He might see the letter. He might snatch the letter out of my hand in a frenzy of terror and loathing. I caught up the vile sheets of paper and threw them into the fire. It was a fortunate thing that a copy only had been sent to me. If the original letter had been in its place, I believe I should have burnt the original at that moment. The last morsel of paper had been barely consumed by the flames when the door opened and Eustace came in. He glanced at the fire. The black cinders of the burned paper were still floating at the back of the grate. He had seen the letter brought to me at the breakfast table. Did he suspect what I had done? He said nothing. He stood gravely, looking into the fire. Then he advanced and fixed his eyes on me. I suppose I was very pale. The first words he spoke were words which asked me if I felt ill. I was determined not to deceive him, even in the merest trifle. I'm feeling a little nervous, Eustace. I answered, that's all. He looked at me again as if he expected me to say something more. I remained silent. He took a letter out of the breast pocket of his coat and laid it on the table before me, just where the confession had lain before I destroyed it. I have had a letter too this morning, he said, and I, Valeria, have no secrets from you. I understood the reproach which my husband's last words conveyed, but I made no attempt to answer him. Do you wish me to read it? was all I said, pointing to the envelope which he had laid on the table. I have already said that I have no secrets from you, he repeated. The envelope is open. See for yourself what is enclosed in it. I took out not a letter but a printed paragraph cut from a scotch newspaper. Read it, I read as follows. Strange doings at Glen Inch. A romance in real life seems to be in course of progress at Mr. McAllen's country house. Private excavations are taking place if our readers will pardon us the unsavory illusion at the dust heap of all places in the world. Something has assuredly been discovered, but nobody knows what. This alone is certain. For weeks past two strangers from London, super-intended by our respected fellow-citizen, Mr. Playmore, have been at work night and day in the library at Glen Inch with the door locked. Will the secret ever be revealed, and will it throw any light on a mysterious and shocking event which our readers have learned to associate with the past history of Glen Inch? Perhaps when Mr. McAllen returns, he may be able to answer these questions. In the meantime, we can only await events. I laid the newspaper slip on the table, in no very Christian frame of mind toward the person concerned in producing it. Some reporter in search of news had evidently been prying about the grounds at Glen Inch, and some busy body in the neighbourhood had in all probability sent the published paragraph to Ustas. Entirely at a loss what to do, I waited for my husband to speak. He did not keep me in suspense. He questioned me instantly. Do you understand what it means, Valeria? I answered honestly. I owned that I understood what it meant. He waited again, as if he expected me to say more. I still kept the only refuge left to me, the refuge of silence. Am I to know no more than I know now? He proceeded after an interval. Are you not bound to tell me what is going on in my own house? It is a common remark that people, if they can think at all, think quickly in emergencies. There was but one way out of the position in which my husband's last words had placed me. My instincts showed me the way. I suppose, at any rate, I took it. You have promised to trust me, I began. He admitted that he had promised. I must ask you for your own sake, you stars, to trust me for a little while longer. I will satisfy you if you will only give me time. His face darkened. How much longer must I wait? he asked. I saw that the time had come for trying some stronger form of persuasion than words. Kiss me, I said, before I tell you. He hesitated so like a husband, and I persisted so like a wife. There was no choice for him but to yield, having given me my kiss, not overgraciously. He insisted once more on knowing how much longer I wanted him to wait. I want you to wait, I answered, until our child is born. He started. My condition took him by surprise. I gently pressed his hand and gave him a look. He returned the look warmly enough this time to satisfy me. Say you consent, I whispered. He consented, so I put off the day of reckoning once more. So I gained time to consult again with Benjamin and Mr. Playmore. While you stars remained with me in the room, I was composed and capable of talking to him. But when he left me, after a time, to think over what happened between us and to remember how kindly he had given way to me, my heart turned pityingly to those other wives, better women some of them than I am, whose husbands under similar circumstances would have spoken hard words to them, but perhaps even have acted more cruelly still. The contrast thus suggested between their fate and mine quite overcame me. What had I done to deserve my happiness? What had they done poor souls to deserve their misery? My hearts were overwrought, I dare say, after reading the dreadful confession of you stars' first wife, I burst out crying, and I was all the better for it afterward. End of chapter 48 Chapter number 49 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 49 Past and Future I write from memory, unassisted by notes or diaries, and I have no distinct recollection of the length of our residence abroad. It certainly extended over a period of some month. Long after you stars was strong enough to take the journey to London the doctors persisted in keeping him in Paris. He had found symptoms of weakness in one of his lungs and his medical advisers, seeing that the hospital in the dry atmosphere of France warned him to be careful of breathing too soon the moist air of his own country. Thus it happened that we were still in Paris when I received my next news from Glen Inch. This time no letters passed on either side. To my surprise and delight Benjamin quietly made his appearance one morning in our pretty French drawing-room. He was so pretty naturally smart in his dress, and so incomprehensibly anxious, while my friends were in the way to make us understand that his reasons for visiting Paris were holiday reasons only, that I at once suspected him of having crossed the channel in a double character. Say, as tourists in search of pleasure, when third persons were present, as ambassador from Mr. Playmore when he and I had the room to ourselves. Later in the day I contrived that we should be left together and I soon found that my anticipations had not misled me. Mr. Playmore's express request to consult with me as to the future and to enlighten me as to the past. He presented me with his credentials in the shape of a little note from the lawyer. There are some few points, Mr. Playmore wrote, which the recovery of the letter does not seem to clear up. I have done my best with Mr. Benjamin's assistance to find the right explanation of these debatable matters, and I have treated the subject for the sake of brevity in the form of answers. Will you accept me as interpreter after the mistakes I made when you consulted me in Edinburgh? Events, I admit, have proved that I was entirely wrong in trying to prevent you from returning to Dexter and partially wrong in suspecting Dexter of being directly instead of indirectly answerable for the first Mrs. Eustace's death. I frankly make my confession and leave you to tell Mr. Benjamin whether you think my new catechism worthy of examination or not. I thought his new catechism, as he called it, decidedly worthy of examination. If you don't agree with this view, and if you are dying to be done with me and my narrative, pass on to the next chapter by all means. Benjamin produced the questions and answers and read them to me at my request in these terms. Questions suggested by the letter discovered at Glen Inch. First group. Questions relating to the diary. First question. Obtaining access to Mr. McAllen's private journal was Miserimus Dexter guided by any previous knowledge of its contents. Answer. It is doubtful if he had any such knowledge. The probabilities are that he noticed how carefully Mr. McAllen secured his diary from observation, that he inferred there from the existence of dangerous domestic secrets in the locked up pages, and that he speculated on using those secrets for his own purpose when he caused the false keys to be made. Second question. To what motive are we to attribute Miserimus Dexter's interference with the sheriff's officers on the day when they seized Mr. McAllen's diary along with his other papers? Answer. In replying to this question we must first do justice to Dexter himself. Informously, as we now know him to have acted, the man was not a downright fiend, that he secretly hated Mr. McAllen as his successful rival in the affections of the woman he loved, and that he did all he could to induce the unhappy lady to desert her husband are, in this case, facts not to be denied. On the other hand it is fairly to be doubted whether he were additionally capable of permitting the friend who trusted him to be tried for murder through his fault without making an effort to save the innocent man. It had naturally never occurred to Mr. McAllen being guiltless of his wife's death to destroy his diary and his letters in the fear that they might be used against him. Until the prompt and secret action of the fiscal took him by surprise the idea of his being charged with the murder of his wife was an idea which we know from his own statement had never even entered his mind. But Dexter must have looked at the matter from another point of view. In his last wandering words spoken when his mind broke down he refers to the diary in these terms. The diary will hang him I won't have him hanged. If he could have found his opportunity of getting at it in time or if the sheriff's officer had not been too quick for him there can be no reasonable doubt that Dexter would have himself destroyed the diary for seeing the consequences of its production in court. So strongly does he appear to have felt these considerations that he even resisted the officers in the execution of their duty. His agitation when he sent for Mr. Playmore to interfere was witnessed by that gentleman and it may not be a miss to add was genuine agitation beyond dispute. Questions of the second group relating to the wife's confession First question What prevented Dexter from destroying the letter when he first discovered it under the dead woman's pillow? Answer The same motives which led him to resist the seizure of the diary and to give his evidence in the prisoner's favor at the trial induced him to preserve the letter until the verdict was known. Looking back once more at his last words as taken down by Benjamin he may infer that if the verdict had been guilty he would not have hesitated to save the innocent husband by producing the wife's confession. There are degrees in all wickedness. Dexter was wicked enough to suppress the letter which wounded his vanity by revealing him as an object for loathing and contempt but he was not wicked enough deliberately to let an innocent man perish on the scaffold. He was capable of exposing the rival whom he hated to the infamy and torture of a public accusation of murder but in the event of an adverse verdict he shrank before the dire accrualty of letting him be hanged. Reflect in this connection on what he must have suffered, villain as he was when he first read the wife's confession. He had calculated and undermining her affection for her husband and wither had his calculations let him. He had driven the woman whom he loved to the last dreadful refuge of death by suicide. Give these considerations that you wait and you will understand that some little redeeming virtue might show itself as the result even of this man's remorse. Second question. What motive influenced Miserimus Dexter's conduct when Mrs. Valeria McAllen informed him that she proposed reopening the inquiry into the poisoning at Glen Inge? Answer. In all probability Dexter's guilty fears suggested to him that he might have been watched on the morning when he secretly entered the chamber in which the first star slay did. Feeling no scruples himself to restrain him from listening at doors and looking through keyholes he would be all the more ready to suspect other people of the same practices. With this dread in mind it would naturally occur to his mind that Mrs. Valeria might meet with a person who had watched him and might hear all that the person had discovered unless he let her restrain at the outset of her investigations. Her own jealous suspicion of Mrs. Bowley offered him the chance of easily doing this, and he was all the readyer to profit by the chance, being himself animated by the most hostile feeling toward that lady. He knew her as the enemy who destroyed the domestic peace of the mistress of the house. He loved the mistress of the house, and he hated her enemy accordingly. The preservation of his guilty secret and the persecution of Mrs. Bowley, there you have the greater and the lesser motive of his conduct in his relations with Mrs. Eustace II. Note by the writer of the narrative. Look back for a further illustration of this point of view to the scene at Benjamin's house, Chapter 35 where Dexter in a moment of ungovernable agitation betrays his own secret to Valeria. Benjamin laid down his notes and took off his spectacles. We have not thought it necessary further than this, he said. Is there any point you can think of that is still left unexplained? I reflected. There was no point of any importance left unexplained that I could remember, but there was one little matter suggested by the recent illusions to Mrs. Bowley, which I wished if possible to have thoroughly cleared up. If you and Mr. Playmore ever spoken together on the subject of my husband's former attachment to Mrs. Bowley, I asked. Has Mr. Playmore ever told you why your stars did not marry her after the trial? I put that question to Mr. Playmore myself, said Benjamin. He answered it easily enough. Being your husband's confidential friend and advisor, he was consulted when Mr. Your Stars brought to Mrs. Bowley after the trial, and he repeated the substance of the letter at my request. Would you like to hear what I remember of it in my turn? I owned that I should like to hear it. What in thereupon told me exactly coincided with what Miserimus Dexter had told me, as related in the 13th chapter of my narrative. Mrs. Bowley had been a witness of the public degradation of my husband, that was enough in itself to prevent him from marrying her. He broke off with her for the same reason which had led him to separate himself from me. Existence with a woman who knew that he had been tried for his life as a murderer was an existence which he had not resolution enough to face. The two accounts agreed in every particular. At last my jealous curiosity was pacified and Benjamin was free to dismiss the past from further consideration and to approach the more critical and more interesting topic of the future. His first inquiries related to Your Stars. He asked if my husband had any suspicion of the proceedings which had taken place at Glen Inge. I told him what had happened and how I had contrived to put off the inevitable disclosure for a time. My old friend's face cleared up as he listened to me. This will be good news for Mr. Playmore. He said, Our excellent friend the Louie is sorely afraid that our discoveries may compromise your position with your husband. On the one hand he is naturally anxious to spare Mr. You Stars the distress which he must certainly feel if he read his first wife's confession. On the other hand it's impossible injustice as Mr. Playmore puts it to the unborn children of your marriage to suppress a document which vindicates the memory of their father from the aspersion that the scotch verdict might otherwise cast on it. I listened attentively. Benjamin had touched on a trouble which was still secretly preying on my mind. How does Mr. Playmore propose to meet the difficulty? I asked. He can only meet it in one way, Benjamin replied. He proposes to seal up the original manuscript of the letter and to add it to a plain statement of the circumstances under which it was discovered supported by your scientific station and mine as witnesses to the fact. This done he must leave it to you to take your husband into your confidence at your own time. It will then be for Mr. You Stars to decide whether he will open the enclosure or whether he will leave it with the seal unbroken as an heirloom to his children to be made public or not at their discretion when they are of an age to think for themselves. Do you consent to this, my dear? Or would you prefer that Mr. Playmore should see your husband and act for you in the matter? I decided without hesitation to take the responsibility on myself. With the question of guiding you Stars' decision was concerned, I considered my influence to be decidedly superior to the influence of Mr. Playmore. My choice met with Benjamin's full approval. He arranged to write to Edinburgh these by that day's post. The one last thing now left to be settled related to our plans for returning to England. The doctors were the authorities on this subject. I promised to consult them about it at their next visit to you, Stars. Have you anything more to say to me? Benjamin inquired as he opened his writing case. I thought of Miserimus Dexter and Ariel, and I inquired if he had heard any news of them lately. My old friend sighed and warned me about the project. The best thing that can happen to that unhappy man is likely to happen, he said. The one change in him is a change that threatens paralysis. You may hear of his death before you get back to England. And Ariel, I asked. Quite unaltered, Benjamin answered, perfectly happy so long as she is with the master. From all I can hear of her poor soul, she doesn't laugh at the idea of his dying and she waits patiently in the firm persuasion that he will recognise her again. Benjamin's news saddened and silenced me. I left him to his letter. End of chapter 49 Chapter 50 of The Law and the Lady. This is 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 50 The Last of the Story In ten days more we returned to England, accompanied by Benjamin. Mrs. McAllen's house in London offered us ample accommodation. We gladly availed ourselves of her proposal when she invited us to stay with her until our child was born and our plans for the future were arranged. The sad news from the asylum for which my mind at Paris reached me soon after our return to England. Miserymus Dexter's release from the burden of life had come to him by slow degrees. A few hours before he breathed his last, he rallied for a while and recognised Ariel at his bedside. He feebly pronounced her name and looked at her and asked for me. They thought of sending for me, but it was too late. Before the messenger could be dispatched, he said, with a touch of his old self-importance. All of you, my brains are weary. I'm going to sleep. He closed his eyes in slumber and never awoke again. So for this man, too, the end came mercifully, without grief or pain. So that strange and many-sided life, with its guilt and its misery, its fitful flashes of poetry and humour, its fantastic gaity, cruelty and vanity, ran its distinct course and faded out like a dream. As for Ariel, she had lived for the master. What more could she do now the master was gone? She could die for him. They had mercifully allowed her to attend the funeral of Miseramus Dexter in the hope that the ceremony might avail to convince her of his death. The anticipation was not realised. She still persisted in denying that the master had left her. They were obliged to restrain the poor creature by force when the coffin and they could only remove her from the cemetery by the same means when the burial service was over. From that time her life alternated for a few weeks between fits of raving delirium and intervals of lethargic repose. At the annual ball given in the asylum, when the strict superintendence of the patients was in some degree relaxed, the alarm was raised a little before midnight that Ariel was missing. The nurse in charge had left her asleep and the invitation of going downstairs to look at the dancing when the woman returned to her post, Ariel was gone. The presence of strangers and the confusion incidental to the festival offered her facilities for escaping which would not have presented themselves at any other time. That night the search for her proved to be useless. The next morning brought with it the last touching and terrible tidings of her. She had straight back to the burial ground and she had been found towards sunrise of cold and exposure on Miserimus Dexter's grave. Faithful to the last, Ariel had followed the master. Faithful to the last, Ariel had died on the master's grave. Having written these said words, I turned willingly to a less painful theme. Events had separated me from Major Fitz-David after the date of the dinner party which had witnessed my memorable meeting with Lady Clarinda. From that I heard little or nothing of the Major and I am ashamed to say I had almost entirely forgotten him when I was reminded of the modern Don Juan by the amazing appearance of wedding cards addressed to me at my mother-in-law's house. The Major had settled in life at last and, more wonderful still, the Major had chosen as the lawful ruler of his household and himself the future Queen of Song. The round-eyed overdressed young lady with a widened soprano voice. We paid our visit of congratulations in due form and we really did feel for Major Fitz-David. The ordeal of marriage had some changed my gay and gallant admirer of former times that I hardly knew him again. He had lost all his pretensions to youth. He had become, hopelessly and undisguisedly, an old man. Standing behind the chair on which his imperious young wife sat and thrown, he looked at her every two words that he addressed to me as if he waited for her permission to open his lips and speak. Whenever she interrupted him and she did it over and over again without ceremony, he submitted with a senile docility and admiration at once absurd and shocking to see. Isn't she beautiful? he said to me in his wife's hearing. What a figure and what a voice! You remember her voice? It's a loss, my dear lady, an irretrievable loss to the operatic stage. Do you know when I think what that grand creature might have done? I sometimes ask myself if I really had any right to marry her. I feel upon my honour I feel as if I had committed a fraud on the public. As for the favourite object of this quaint mixture of admiration and regret she was pleased to receive me graciously as an old friend. While your stars was talking to the major, the bride drew me aside out of her hearing and explained her motives for marrying with a candour which was positively shameless. You see, we're a large family at home, quite unprovided for this odious young woman whispered in my ear. It's all very well about my being a queen of song and the rest of it. Lord bless you I've been often enough to the opera and I have learned enough of my music master to know what it takes to make a fine singer. I haven't the patience to work at it as those foreign women do. A parcel of brazen face jazzy bills, I hate them No, no, between you and me it was a great deal easier to get the money by marrying the old gentleman. Here I am provided for and thus all my family provided for too and nothing to do but to spend the money. I am fond of my family. I'm a good daughter and sister I am. See how I'm dressed. Look at the furniture I haven't played my cards badly, have I? It's a great advantage to marry an old man. You can twist him round your little finger. Happy! Oh, yes, I'm quite happy and I hope you are too. Were you living now? I shall call soon and have a long gossip with you. I always had a sort of liking for you and now I'm as good as you are. I want to be friends. I made a short and civil reply to this, determining inwardly that when she did visit me she should get no further than the house door. I don't gruple to say that I was thoroughly disgusted with her. When a woman sells herself to a man, that vile bargain is nonetheless infamous to my mind because it happens to be made under the sanction of the church and the law. As I sit at the desk thinking, my picture of the magent his wife vanishes from my memory and the last scene in my story comes slowly into view. The place is my bedroom. The persons, both, if you will be pleased to excuse them in bed, are myself and my son. He is already three weeks old and he is now lying fast asleep by his mother's side. My good uncle Stark, is coming to London to baptise him. Mrs. MacAllen will be his godmother and his godfathers will be Benjamin and Mr. Playmore. I wonder whether my christening will pass off more merrily than my wedding. The doctor has just left the house and some little perplexity about me. He has found me reclining as usual latterly in my armchair, but on this particular day he has detected symptoms of exhaustion, which he finds quite unaccountable under the circumstances and which warn him to visit his authority by sending me back to bed. The truth is that I have not taken the doctor into my confidence. There are two causes for those signs of exhaustion which have surprised my medical attendant, and the names of them are anxiety and suspense. On this day I have had last summoned courage enough to perform the promise which I made to my husband in Paris. He is informed by this time how his wife's confession was discovered. He knows on Mr. Playmore that the letter may be made the means, if he so willed, of publicly vindicating his innocence in a court of law. And, last and most important of all, he is now aware that the confession itself has been kept a sealed secret from him out of compassionate regard for his own peace of mind, as well as for the memory of the unhappy woman who was once his wife. These necessary disclosures I have communicated to my husband, not by word of mouth, when the French rank from speaking to him personally of his first wife, but by a written statement of the circumstances taken mainly out of my letters received in Paris from Benjamin and Mr. Playmore. He has now had ample time to read all that I have written to him, and to reflect on it in the retirement of his own study. I am waiting with a fatal letter in my hand, and my mother-in-law is waiting in the next room to me, to hear from his own lips whether he decides to take the seal or not. The minutes pass, and we still fail to hear his footsteps on the stairs. My doubts as to which way his decision may turn affect me more and more uneasily the longer I wait. The very possession of the letter in the present excited state of my nerves oppresses and revolts me. I shrink from touching it or looking at it. I move it about restlessly from place to place on the bed, and still I cannot keep it out of my mind. At last an odd fancy strikes me. I lift up one of the baby's hands, and put the letter under it, and so associate that dreadful record of sin and misery with something innocent and pretty that seems to hallow and to purify it. The minutes pass, for half hour longer strikes from the clock on the chimney-piece, and at last I hear him. He knocks softly and opens the door. He's deadly pale. I fancy I can detect traces of tears on his cheeks. But no outward signs of agitation escape him as he takes his seat by my side. I can see that he has waited until he could control himself for my sake. He takes my hand and kisses me tenderly. Valeria, he says, let me once more ask you to forgive what I said and did in the bygone time. If I understand nothing else, my love, I understand this. The proof of my innocence has been found, and I owe it entirely to the courage and the devotion of my wife. I wait a little to enjoy the full luxury of hearing him say those words, to revel in the love and the gratitude that moistened his dear eyes as they look at me. Then I rouse my resolution and put the momentous question on which our future depends. Do you wish to see the letter, Eustace? Instead of answering directly, he questions me in his turn. Have you got the letter here? Yes. Seal it up. Seal it up. He waits a little, considering what he is going to say next before he says it. Let me be sure that I know exactly what it is I have to decide," he proceeds. Suppose I insist on reading the letter. There I interrupt him. I know it is my duty to restrain myself, but I cannot do my duty. My darling, don't talk of reading the letter. Pray, pray, spare yourself." He holds up his hand for silence. I'm not thinking of myself, he says. I'm thinking of my dead wife. If I give up the public vindication of my innocence and my own lifetime, if I leave the seal of the letter unbroken, do you say, as Mr. Playmore says, that I shall be acting mercifully and tenderly toward the memory of my wife? Oh, Eustace, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt of it. Shall I be making some little atonement for any pain that I may have thoughtlessly caused her to suffer in her lifetime? Yes, yes. And, Valeria, shall I please you? My darling, you will enchant me. Where is the letter? In your son's hand, Eustace. He goes round to the other side of the bed and lifts the baby's little pink hand to his lips. For a while he waits so in sad and secret communion with himself. I see his mother softly open the door and watch him, as I am watching him. In a moment more our suspense is at an end. With a heavy sigh he lays the child's hand back in the sealed letter, and by that one little action says, as if in words to his son, I leave it to you. And so it ends, not as I thought it would end, not perhaps as you thought it would end. What do we know of our own lives? What do we know of the fulfilment of our dearest wishes? God knows, and that is best. Must I shut up the paper? Yes, there is nothing more for you to read or for me to read the script. Don't bear hardly good people on the follies and the eras of my husband's life. Abuse me as much as you please, but pray think kindly of your stars for my sake. End of chapter 50 End of The Lu and the Lady by Wilkie Collins