 CHAPTER 27 Mr. Dexter at home I found all the idle boys in the neighbourhoods collected around the pony-chase expressing in the occult language of slang their high enjoyment and depreciation of the appearance of Ariel in her man's jacket and hat. The pony was fidgety, he felt the influence of the popular uproar. His driver said whip-in-hand, magnificently impenetrable to the guips and jests that were flying around her. I said good-morning on getting into the chase. Ariel only said, gee up, and started the pony. I made up my mind to perform the journey to the distant northern suburb in silence. It was evidently useless for me to attempt to speak, and experience informed me that I need not expect to hear a wordfall from the lips of my companion. Experience, however, is not always infallible. After driving for half an hour in stolid silence, Ariel astounded me by suddenly bursting into speech. Do you know what we are coming to? She asked, keeping her eyes straight between the pony's ears. No, I answered. I don't know the road. What are we coming to? We are coming to a canal. Well? Well, I have other mind to upset you in the canal. This formidable announcement appeared to require some explanation, but took the liberty of asking for it. Why should you upset me? I inquired. Because I hate you, was the cool and candid reply. What have I done to offend you, I asked next. What do you want with a master? Ariel asked in her turn. Do you mean Mr. Dexter? Yes. I want to have some talk with Mr. Dexter. You don't. You want to take my place. You want to brush his hair and oil his beard instead of me. You've wretched. I now began to understand. The idea which Miserimus Dexter had jestingly put into her head in exhibiting her to us on the previous night had been ripening slowly in that dull brain and had found its way outward into words about fifteen hours afterwards under the irritating influence of my presence. I don't want to touch his hair or his beard, I said. I leave that entirely to you. She looked around at me, her fat face flushing, her dull eyes dilating, with the unaccustomed effort to express herself in speech and to understand what was said to her in return. Say that again, she burst out, and say it slower this time. I said it again, and I said it slower. Swear it! She cried, getting more and more excited. I preserved my gravity, the canal was just visible in the distance, and swore it. Are you satisfied now? I asked. There was no answer. Her last resources of speech were exhausted. The strange creature looked back again straight between the pony's ears, emitted hoarsely a grunt of relief, and never more looked at me, never more spoke to me for the rest of the journey. We drove past the banks of the canal, and I escaped immersion. We rattled in our jingling little vehicle, through the streets and across the waste patches of ground, which I dimly remembered in the darkness, and which looked more squallet and more hideous than ever in the broad daylight. The chase turned down a lane too narrow for the passage of any larger vehicle, and stopped at a wall and a gate that were new objects to me. Opening the gate with her key and leading the pony, Ariel introduced me to the back garden and yard of Miserimus Dexter's rotten and rambling old house. The pony walked off independently to his stable with a chase behind him. My silent companion led me through a bleak and barren kitchen and a long stone passage. Opening a door at the end, she admitted to me to the back of the hall into which Mrs. McAllen and I had penetrated by the front entrance to the house. Here Ariel lifted a whistle which hung around her neck, and blew the shrill-trilling notes with the sound of which I was already familiar as the means of communication between Miserimus Dexter and his slave. The whistling over, the slave's unwilling lips struggled into speech for the last time. "'Wait till you hear the master whistle,' she said, then go upstairs. So I was to be whistled for like a dog, and worse still there was no help for it but to submit like a dog. Had Ariel any excuses to make? Nothing of the sort. She turned her shapeless back on me and vanished into the kitchen region of the house. After waiting for a minute or two and hearing no signal from the floor above, I advanced into the broader and brighter part of the hall, to look by daylight at the pictures which I had only imperfectly discovered in the darkness of the night. A painted inscription in many colours, just under the cornice of the ceiling, informed me that the works on the walls were the production of the all-accomplished Dexter himself. Not satisfied with being poet and composer, he was painter as well. On one wall the subjects were described as illustration of the passions. On the other as episodes and the life of the wandering Jew. Chance speculators, like myself, were gravely warned by means of the inscription to view the pictures as efforts of pure imagination. Persons who look for mere nature in works of art, the inscription announced, are persons to whom Mr. Dexter does not address himself with a brush. He relies entirely on his imagination. Nature puts him out. Taking due care to dismiss all ideas of nature from my mind, to begin with, I looked at the pictures which represented the passions first. Little as I knew critically of art, I could see that Missouri must dexter knew still less of the rules of drawing, colour and composition. His pictures were, in the strictest meaning of that expressive word, Dorbs. The diseased and riotous delight of the painter in representing horrors was, with certain exceptions to be hereafter mentioned, the only remarkable quality that I could discover in a series of his works. The first of the passion pictures illustrated revenge. The corpse, in fancy costume, lay on the bank of a foaming river under the shade of a giant tree. An infuriated man, also in fancy costume, stood astride over the dead body, with his sword lifted to the lowering sky and watched with a horrid expression of delight the blood of the man whom he had just killed dripping slowly in a procession of big red drops down the broad blade of his weapon. The next picture illustrated cruelty in many compartments. In one I saw a disemboweled horse savagely spurred on by his rider at a bullfight. In another, an aged philosopher was dissecting a living cat and gloating over his work. In a third, two pagans politely congratulated each other on the torture of two saints one saint was roasting on a grit iron, the other hung up to a tree by his heels had been just skinned and was not quite dead yet. Feeling no great desire, after these specimens, to look at any more of the illustrated passions, I turned to the opposite wall to be instructed in the career of the Wandering Jew. Here a second inscription informed me that the painter considered the flying Dutchman to be no other than the Wandering Jew, pursuing his interminable journey by sea. The marine adventures of this mysterious personage were the adventures chosen for representation by Dexter's brush. The first picture showed me a harbour on a rocky coast, a vessel was at anchor with a helmsman singing on the deck. The sea in the offing was black and rolling, thunder-clouds lay low on the horizon, split by broad flashes of lightning. In the glare of the lightning, heaving and pitching appeared the misty form of the phantom ship approaching the shore. When this work, badly as it was painted, there were really signs of a powerful imagination and even of a poetical feeling for the supernatural. The next picture showed the phantom ship moored to the horror and astonishment of the helmsman behind the earthly vessel in the harbour. The Jew had stepped on shore. His boat was on the beach, his crew, little men with stony white faces dressed in funeral black, set in silent rows on the seats of the boat, with their rows in their lean long hands. The Jew, also in black, stood with his eyes and hands raised imploringly to the thunderous heaven, the wild creatures of land and sea, the tiger, the rhinoceros, the crocodile, the sea serpent, the shark and the devil fish, surrounded the accursed wanderer in a mystic circle, daunted and fascinated at the sight of him. The lightning was gone. The sky and sea had darkened to a great black blank. A faint and lurid light lighted the scene, falling downward from a torch, brandished by an avenging spirit that hovered over the Jew on outspread vulture wings. Wild as the picture might be in its conception, there was a suggestive power in it which I confess strongly impressed me. The mysterious silence on the house and my strange position at the moment, no doubt had their effect on my mind. While I was still looking at the ghastly composition before me, the shrill, trilling sound of the whistle upstairs burst on the stillness. For the moment my nerves were so completely upset that I started with a cry of alarm. I felt a momentary impulse to open the door and run out. The idea of trusting myself alone with the man who had painted those frightful pictures actually terrified me. I was obliged to sit down on one of the hallchairs. Some minutes passed before my mind recovered its balance, and I began to feel like my own ordinary self again. The whistle sounded impatiently for the second time. I rose and ascended the broad flight of stairs which led to the first story. To draw back at the point which I had now reached would have utterly degraded me in my own estimation. Still, my heart did certainly beat faster than usual as I approached the door of the circular androm, and I honestly acknowledged that I saw my own imprudence just then in a singularly vivid light. There was a glass over the mental piece in the androm. I lingered for a moment nervous as I was to see how I looked in the glass. The hanging tapestry over the inner door had been left partially drawn aside. Softly, as I moved, the dog's ears of misery must extra-court the sound of my dress on the floor. The fine tenor voice, which I had last heard singing, caught me softly. Is that Mrs. Valeria? Please don't wait there, come in. I entered the inner room. The wheelchair advanced to meet me so slowly and so softly that I hardly knew it again. Miserimus Dexter languidly held at his hand. His head inclined pensively to one side, his large blue eyes looked at me piteously. Not a vestige seemed to be left of the raging, shouting creature of my first visit, who was Napoleon at one moment and Shakespeare at another. Mr. Dexter of the morning was a mild, thoughtful, melancholy man who only recalled Mr. Dexter of the night by the inveterate oddity of his dress. His jacket, on this occasion, was of pink-kiltered silk. The coverlet, which hid his deformity, matched the jacket in pale-sea green satin, and to complete these strange vagaries of costume, his wrists were actually adorned with massive bracelets of gold, formed on the severely simple models which have descended to us from ancient times. How good of you to cheer in charming by coming here, he said, in his most mournful and most musical tones. I have dressed expressly to receive you in the prettiest clothes I have. Don't be surprised. Except in this ignoble and material nineteenth century men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful colours as well as women. A hundred years ago a gentleman in pink silk was a gentleman properly dressed. Fifteen hundred years ago the patricians of the classic times wore bracelets exactly like mine. I despise the brutish contempt for beauty and the mean dread of expense which degrade a gentleman's costume to black cloth and limited gentleman's ornaments to a finger-ring in the age I live in. I like to be bright and beautiful, especially when brightness and beauty come to see me. You don't know how precious your society is to me. This is one of my melancholy days. Tears rise unbidden to my eyes. I sigh and sorrow over myself. I languish for pity. Just think of what I am. A poor solitary creature cursed with a frightful deformity. How pitiable! How dreadful! My affectant heart wasted. My extraordinary talents, useless and misapplied—sad, sad, sad—please pity me. His eyes were positively filled with tears—tears of compassion for himself. He looked at me and spoke to me with the wailing, crerulous entreaty of a sick child wanting to be nursed. I was utterly at a loss of what to do. It was perfectly ridiculous, but I was never more embarrassed in my life. Please pity me, he repeated. Don't be cruel. I only ask a little thing. Pretty Mrs. Valeria, say you pity me. I said I pitied him, and I felt that I blushed as I did it. Thank you, said Miss Erin, must extra humbly. It doesn't be good. Go a little further. Pat my hand. I tried to restrain myself, but the sense of the absurdity at this last petition quite gravely addressed to me, remember, was too strong to be controlled. I burst out laughing. Miss Erin must extra looked at me with a blank astonishment which only increased my merriment. Had I offended him, apparently not, recovering from his astonishment he laid his head luxuriously on the back of his chair, with the expression of a man who was listening critically to performance of some sort. When I had quite exhausted myself, he raised his head and clapped his shapely white hands and honoured me with an encore. Do it again, he said, still in the same childish way. Mary, Mrs. Valeria, you have a musical laugh. I have a musical ear. Do it again. I was serious enough by this time. I am ashamed of myself, Mr. Dexter. I said, pray forgive me. He made no answer to this. I doubt if he heard me. His variable temper appeared to be in cause of undergoing some new change. He said, looking at my dress, as I supposed, with a steady and anxious attention gravely forming his own conclusions, steadfastly pursuing his own train of thought. Mrs. Valeria, he burst out suddenly. You are not comfortable in that chair. Pardon me, I replied, I am quite comfortable. Pardon me, he rejoined. There is a chair of Indian basket work at that end of the room, which is much better suited to you. Will you accept my apologies, if I am rude enough to allow you to fetch it for yourself? I have a reason. He had a reason. What new piece of eccentricity was he about to exhibit? I rose and fetched the chair. It was light enough to be quite easily carried. As I returned to him, I noticed that his eyes were strangely employed in what seemed to be the closest scrutiny of my dress. And stranger still the result of this appeared to be partly to interest and partly to distress him. I placed the chair near him, and was about to take my seat in it, when he sent me back again on another errand to the end of the room. Oblige me indescribably, he said. There is a handscreen hanging on the wall which matches the chair. We are rather near the fire here. You may find the screen useful. Once more forgive me for letting you fetch it for yourself. Once more let me assure you that I have a reason. Here was his reason, reiterated and fatically reiterated, for the second time. Curiosity made me as completely the obedient servant of his cap-races as Ariel herself. I fetched the handscreen, returning with it I met his eyes still fixed with the same incomprehensible attention on my perfectly plain and unpretending dress, and still expressing the same curious mixture of interest and regret. Thank you a thousand times, he said. You have quite innocently wrung my heart. But you have not the less done me an inestimable kindness. Will you promise not to be offended with me if I confess the truth? He was approaching his explanation I never gave a promise more readily in my life. I have rudely allowed you to fetch your chair and your screen for yourself, he went on. My motive will seem a very strange one, I am afraid. Did you observe that I noticed you very attentively? Too attentively, perhaps? Yes, I said. I thought you were noticing my dress. He shook his head and sighed bitterly, not your dress, he said, and not your face. Your dress is dark, your face is still strange to me. Dear Mrs. Valeria, I wanted to see you walk. To see me walk? What did he mean? Where was that erratic mind of his wandering to now? You have a rare accomplishment for an English woman, he resumed. You walk well. She walked well. I couldn't resist the temptation of seeing her again and seeing you. It was her movement, her sweet, simple, unsought grace, not yours, when you walked to the end of the room and returned to me. You raised her from the dead when you fetched the chair and the screen. Pardon me for making use of you, the idea was innocent, the motive was sacred. You have distressed and delighted me. My heart bleeds, and thanks you. He paused for a moment, and let his head droop on his breast, then suddenly raced it again. Surely we were talking about her last night, he said. What did I say? What did you say? My memory is confused. I half remember, half forget. Please remind me, you're not offended with me, are you? I might have been offended with another man, not with him. I was far too anxious to find my way into his confidence, now that he had touched off his own accord on the subject of Eustace's first wife, to be offended with Miseramus Dexter. We were speaking, I answered, of Mrs. Eustace MacAllan's death, and we were saying to one another, he interrupted me, leaning forward eagerly in his chair. Yes, yes, he exclaimed, and I was wondering what interest you could have in penetrating the mystery of her death. Tell me, confide in me, I'm dying to know. Not even you have a stronger interest in that subject than the interest that I feel, I said. The happiness of my whole life to come depends on my clearing up the mystery. God, God, why, he cried, stop, I'm exciting myself, I mustn't do that, I must have all my wits about me, I mustn't wonder, the thing is too serious, wait a minute. An elegant little basket was hooked onto one of the arms of his chair. He opened it, and drew out a strip of embroidery, partially finished, with the necessary materials for working, a complete. We looked at each other across the embroidery. He noticed my surprise. Women, he said, wisely composed their minds, and helped themselves to think quietly by doing needlework. Why are men such fools as to deny themselves the same admirable resource, the simple and soothing occupation which keeps the nerfs steady and leaves the mind calm and free? As a man, I follow the woman's wise example, Mrs. Valeria, permit me to compose myself. After rearranging his embroidery, this extraordinary being began to work with the patient and nimble dexterity of an accomplished needle-woman. Now, said Miss Arrimus Dexter, if you are ready I am, you talk, I work, please begin. I obeyed him, and began. End of Chapter 27 Chapter number 28 of The Law and The Lady. This is a LibriVox recording. With such a man as Miss Arrimus Dexter and with such a purpose as I had in view, no half-confidences were possible. I must either risk the most unreserved acknowledgement of the interests that I really had at stake, or I must make the best excuse that occurred to me for abandoning my contemplated experiment at the last moment. In my present critical situation no such refuge as a middle course lay before me, even if I had been inclined to take it. At things were I ran risks, and plunged headlong into my own affairs at starting. Thus far you know little or nothing about me, Mr. Dexter, I said. You are, as I believe, quite unaware that my husband and I are not living together at the present time. Is it necessary to mention your husband, he asked coldly, without looking up from his embroidery and without pausing in his work? It is absolutely necessary, I answered, I can explain myself to you in no other way. He bent his head and sighed resignedly. You and your husband are not living together at the present time, he resumed. Does that mean that your stares has left you? He has left me, and has gone abroad. Have any necessity for it? Without the least necessity. Has he appointed no time for his return to you? If he persevere in his present resolution, Mr. Dexter, you stares will never return to me. For the first time he raised his head from his embroidery, with a sudden appearance of interest. Is the quarrel so serious as that, he asked? Are you free of each other, pretty Mrs. Valeria, by common consent of both parties? The tone in which he put the question was not at all to my liking. The look he fixed on me was a look which unpleasantly suggested that I had trusted myself alone with him, and that he might end in taking advantage of it. I reminded him quietly by my manner more than by my words of the respect which he owed to me. You are entirely mistaken, I said. There is no anger, there is not even a misunderstanding between us. Your parting has cost bitter sorrow, Mr. Dexter, to him and to me. He submitted to be said right with eronical resignation. I am all attention, he said, threading his needle. Pray go on, I won't interrupt you again. Acting on this invitation, I told him the truth about my husband and myself quite unreservedly, taking care, however, at the same time, to put you stars as motifs in the best light that they would bear. There he must dexter drop his embroidery on his lap and laugh softly to himself with an impish enjoyment of my poor little narrative, which set every nerve in me on edge as I looked at him. I see nothing to laugh at, I said sharply. His beautiful blue eyes rested on me with a look of innocent surprise. Nothing to laugh at, he repeated, in such an exhibition of human folly as you have just described. His expression suddenly changed, his face darkened and hardened very strangely. Stop, he cried, before I could answer him. There can be only one reason for your taking it as seriously as you do. Mrs. Valeria, you are fond of your husband. Fond of him isn't strong enough to express it, I retorted. I love him with my whole heart. Miseramus Dexter stroked his magnificent beard and contemplatively repeated my words. You love him with your whole heart. Do you know why? Because I can't help it, I answered doggedly. He smiled satirically and went on with his embroidery. Curious, he said to himself, you start this first while I've loved him too. There are some men whom the women all like, and there are other men whom the women never care for, without the least reason for it in either case. The one man is just as good as the other, just as handsome, as agreeable, as honourable, and as high in rank as the other. And yet, for number one, they will go through fire and water, and for number two, they won't so much as turn their heads to look at him. Why? They don't know themselves, as Mrs. Valeria has just said. If there are physical reason for it? If there's some potent, mech-nactic emanation from number one, which number two doesn't possess, I must investigate this when I have the time, and when I find myself in the humour. Having so far settled the question to his own entire satisfaction, he looked up at me again. I am still in the dark about you and your motives, he said. I am still as far as ever from understanding what your interest is in investigating that hideous tragedy at Glen Inge. Clever Mrs. Valeria, please take me by the hand and lead me into the light. You're not offended with me, are you? Make it up, and I will give you this pretty piece of embroidery when I have done it. I am only a poor, solitary, deformed wretch, with a quaint turn of mind. I mean no harm. Forgive me, indulge me, enlighten me." He resumed his childish ways. He recovered his innocent smile, with the odd little puckers and wrinkles accompanying it at the corners of his eyes. I began to doubt whether I might not have been unreasonably hard on him. I penitently resolved to be more considerate toward his infirmities of mind and body during the remainder of my visit. Let me go back for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at Glen Inge, I said. You agree with me in believing you starts to be absolutely innocent of the crime for which he was tried. Your evidence at the child tells me that. He paused over his work and looked at me with a grave and stern attention which presented his face in quite a new light. That is our opinion, I resumed. But it was not the opinion of the jury. Their verdict, you remember, was not proven. In plain English the jury who tried my husband declined to express their opinion positively and publicly that he was innocent, am I right? Instead of answering he suddenly put his embroidery back in the basket and moved the machinery of his chair so as to bring it close by mine. Who told you this? He asked. I found it for myself in a book. Thus far his face had expressed steady attention and no more. Now for the first time I thought I saw something darkly passing over him which betrayed itself to my mind as rising distrust. Ladies are not generally in the habit of troubling the hits about dry questions of law, he said. Miss Eustace MacAllan II. You must have some very powerful motive for turning your studies that way. I have a very powerful motive, Mr. Dexter. My husband is resigned to the Scotch verdict. His mother is resigned to it. His friends, so far as I know, are resigned to it. Well? Well, I don't agree with my husband or his mother or his friends. I refuse to submit to the Scotch verdict. The instant I said those words, the madness in him which I had had heard how denied seemed to break out. He suddenly stretched himself over his chair. He pounced on me with a hand on each of my shoulders. His wild eyes questioned me fiercely frantically within a few inches of my face. What do you mean?" he shouted, at the utmost pitch of his ringing and resonant voice. A deadly fear of him shook me. I did my best to hide the outward betrayal of it. By look and word I showed him as firmly as I could that I resented the liberty he had taken with me. "'Remove your hands, sir,' I said, and retire to your proper place." He obeyed me mechanically. He apologised to me mechanically. His whole mind was evidently still filled with the words that I had spoken to him and still bend on discovering what those words meant. "'I beg your pardon,' he said, "'I humbly beg your pardon. The subject excites me, frightens me, maddens me. You don't know what a difficulty I have in controlling myself. Never mind. Don't take me seriously. Don't be frightened at me. I am so ashamed of myself. I feel so small and so miserable at having offended you. Make me suffer for it. Take a stick and beat me. Tie me down in my chair. Call up Ariel, who's as strong as a horse, and tell her to hold me. Dear Mrs. Valeria, injured Mrs. Valeria, I'll endure anything in the way of punishment if you will only tell me what you mean by not submitting to the Scotch verdict.' He backed his chair penitently as he made that entreaty. "'Am I far enough away yet?' he asked, with a rueful look, who I still frighten you. Have sight, if you prefer it, in the bottom of the chair.' He lifted the sea-green coverlet. In another moment he would have disappeared like a puppet in a show if I had not stopped him. "'Say nothing more, and do nothing more, I accept your apologies,' I said. "'When I tell you that I refuse to submit to the opinion of the Scotch Jewry, I mean exactly what my words express. That verdict has left a stain on my husband's character. He feels the stain bitterly. How bitterly no one knows so well as I do. His sense of his degradation is the sense that has parted him from me. It is not enough for him that I am persuaded of his innocence. Nothing will bring him back to me. Nothing will persuade you, stars, that I think him worthy to be the guide and companion of my life, but the proof of his innocence said before the Jewry which doubts it and the public which doubts it to this day. He and his friends and his lawyers all despair of ever finding that proof now. But I am his wife, and none of you love him as I love him. I alone refuse to despair. I alone refuse to listen to reason. If God spare me, Mr. Dexter, I dedicate my life to the vindication of my husband's innocence. You are his old friend. I am here to ask you to help me.' It appeared to be now my turn to frighten him. The colour left his face. He passed his hand restlessly over his forehead as if he were trying to brush some delusion out of his brain. Is this one of my dreams, he asked faintly. Are you a vision of the night? I am only a friendless woman, I said, who has lost all that she loved and prized and who is trying to win it back again. He began to move his chair nearer to me once more. I lifted my hand, he stopped the chair directly. There was a moment of silence. We sat watching one another. I saw his hands tremble as he laid them on the coverlet. I saw his face grow paler and paler and his underlip drop. What dead and buried remembrances had I brought to life in him in all their olden horror. He was the first to speak again. So this is your interest, he said, in clearing up the mystery of Mrs. Ustaz MacAllan's death? Yes. And do you believe that I can help you? I do. He slowly lifted one of his hands and pointed at me with his long forefinger. You suspect somebody, he said. The tone in which he spoke was low in threatening. It warned me to be careful. At the same time, if I now shut him out of my confidence, I should lose the reward that might yet be to come for all that I had suffered and risked at that perilous interview. You suspect somebody, he repeated. Perhaps was all that I said in return. Is the person within your reach? Not yet. Do you know where the person is? No. He laid his head languidly on the back of his chair with a trembling, low-drawn sigh. Was he disappointed, or was he relieved, or was he simply exhausted and mind and body alike? Who could faith him, who could say? Will you give me five minutes, he asked feebly and weary lay, without raising his head. You know already how any reference to events at Glen-Inch excites and shakes me. I shall be fit for it again, if you will kindly give me a few minutes to myself. There are books in the next room. Please excuse me." I at once retired to the circular hand-shamper. He followed me in his chair and closed the door between us. End of CHAPTER XXVIII. CHAPTER XXIX 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 XXIX. IN THE LIGHT. A little interval of solitude was a relief to me as well as to Miserimus Dexter. Startling doubts beset me as I walked restlessly backward and forward now in the androm and now in the corridor outside. It was plain that I had quite innocently disturbed the repose of some formidable secrets in Miserimus Dexter's mind. I confused and wearyed my poor brains and trying to guess what the secrets might be. All my ingenuity, as after events showed me, was wasted on speculations not one of which even approached the truth. I was unsure aground when I arrived at the conclusion that Dexter had really kept every mortal creature out of his confidence. He could never have betrayed such serious signs of disturbance as I had noticed in him if he had publicly acknowledged at the trial or if he had privately communicated to a chosen friend or that he knew of the tragic and terrible drama acted in the bad chamber at Glen Inge. What powerful influence had induced him to close his lips? Had he been silent in mercy to others or in dread of consequences to himself? Impossible to tell. Could I hope that he would confide to me what he had kept secret from justice and friendship alike, when he knew what I really wanted of him, what he armed me out of his own stores of knowledge with a weapon that would win me victory in the struggle to come? The chances were against it. There was no denying that. Still the end was worth trying for. The caprice of the moment might yet stand my friend with such a wayward being as Miserie must dexter. My plans and project were sufficiently strange, sufficiently wide of the ordinary limits of a woman's thought and actions to attract his sympathies. Who knows, I thought of myself. If I may not take his confidence by surprise, by simply telling him the truth. The interval expired, the door was thrown open, the voice of my host summoned me again to the inner room. Welcome back," said Miserie must dexter. Dear Mrs. Villaria, I am quite myself again. How are you? He looked and spoke with the easy cordiality of an old friend. During the period of my absence, short as it was, another change had passed over this most multi-form of living beings. His eyes sparkled with good humour, his cheeks were flushing under a new excitement of some sort. Even his dress had gone alteration, since I had seen it last. He now wore an extemporised cap of white paper, his ruffles were tucked up, a clean apron was thrown over the sea-green coverlet. He hacked his chair before me, bowing and smiling, and waved me to a seat with the grace of a dancing master, chastened by the dignity of a Lord in waiting. I am going to cook," he announced, with the most engaging simplicity. We both stand in need of refreshment before we return to the serious business of our interview. You see me in my cook's dress, forgive it. There is a form in these things. I am a great stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Please sanction that proceedings by taking some wine, too." He filled a goblet of ancient Venetian glass with a purple-red liquor, beautiful to see. The burgundy, he said, the king of wine, and this is the king of burgundies, clouvourous. I drink to your health and happiness." He filled a second goblet for himself, and honoured the toast by draining it to the bottom. I now understood the sparkle in his eye, and the flush in his cheeks. It was my interest not to offend him. I drank a little of his wine, and I quite agreed with him. I thought it delicious. What shall we eat? He asked. It must be something worthy of our clouvourous. Aerial is good at roasting and boiling joints, poor wretch. But I don't insult your taste by offering you Aerial's cooking. Plain joints, he exclaimed, with an expression of refined disgust. Bah! A man who eats a plain joint is only one remove from a cannibal or a butcher. Will you leave it to me to discover something more woo-wee of us? Let us go to the kitchen. He wheeled his chair around, and invited me to componite him with a cauches' wave of his hand. I followed the chair to some closed curtains at one end of the room, which I had not had herto noticed. Drawing aside the curtains, he revealed to view an alcove, in which stood a neat little gas-stuff for cooking. Doors and cupboards, plates, dishes, and saucepins were ranged around the alcove, all on a miniature scale, all scrupulously bright and clean. Welcome to the kitchen, said Miserie Mustexter. He drew out of a recess in the wall a marble slab, which served as a table, and reflected profoundly with his hand to his head. I have it, he cried, and opening one of the cupboards next took from it a black bottle of a form that was new to me. Sounding this bottle with a spike, he pierced and produced to view some little irregularly-formed black objects, which might have been familiar enough to a woman accustomed to the luxurious tables of the rich, but which were a new revelation to a person like myself who had led a simple country life in the house of a clergyman with small means. When I saw my host carefully lay out these occult substances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and then plunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them, my curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say, What are those things, Miserie Mustexter, and are we really going to eat them? He stared at the rash question, and looked at me with hands outspread in irrepressible astonishment. Where is our boasted progress, he cried? What is education but a name? Here is a cultivated person who doesn't know truffles when she sees them. I have heard of truffles, I answered humbly, but I never saw them before. We had no such foreign luxury as those, Mr. Dexter, at home in the North. Miserie Mustexter lifted one of the truffles tenderly on his spike, and held it up to me in a favourable light. Take the most of one of the few first sensations in this life which has no ingredient of disappointment lurking under the surface, he said. Look at it! Meditate over it! You shall eat it! Mrs. Villaria! Stewed in burgundy! He lighted the gas for cooking with the ear of a man who was about to offer me an inestimable proof of his goodwill. Forgive me if I observe the most absolute silence, he said, waiting from the moment when I take this in my hand. He produced a bright little stew-pan from his collection of culinary utensils as he spoke. Properly pursued, the art of cookery allows of no divided attention, he continued gravely. In that observation you will find the reason why no woman ever has reached or ever will reach the highest distinction as a cook. As a rule women are incapable of absolutely concentrating their attention on any one occupation for any given time. Their minds will run on something else, say, typically, for the sake of illustration, their sweetheart or their new bonnet. The one obstacle, Mrs. Villaria, to your rising equal to the men in the various industrial processes of life is not raised, as the women vainly suppose, by the defective instructions of the age they live in. No, the obstacle is in themselves. No institutions that can be devised to encourage them will ever be strong enough to contend successfully with the sweetheart and the new bonnet. A little while ago, for instance, I was instrumental in getting women employed in our local post office here. The other day I took the trouble, a serious business to me, of getting downstairs and wheeling myself away to the office to see how they were getting on. I took a letter with me to register. It had an unusually long address. The registering woman began copying the address on the received form in a business-like manner, cheering and delightful to see. Halfway through, a little child's sister of one of the other women employed trotted into the office and popped under the counter to go and speak to her relative. The registering woman's mind instantly gave way. Her pencil stopped, her eyes wandered off to the child with a charming expression of interest. Well, Lucy, she said, how do you do? Then she remembered business again and returned to the receipt. When I took it across the counter, an important line in the address of my letter was left out in the copy. Thanks to Lucy. Now a man in the same position would not have seen Lucy. He would have been too closely occupied with what he was about at the moment. There is the whole difference between the mental constitution of the sexes, which no legislation will ever alter as long as the world lasts. What does it matter? Women are infinitely superior to men in the moral qualities, which are the true adornments of humanity. Be content! Oh, my mistaken sisters, be content with that! He twisted his chair around toward the stove. It was useless to dispute the question with him, even if I had felt inclined to do so. He absorbed himself in his tupan. I looked about me in the room. The same insatiable relish for horrors exhibited downstairs by the pictures in the hall was displayed again here. The photographs hanging on the wall represented the various forms of madness taken from their life. The plaster casts arranged on the shelf opposite where casts after death, of the heads of famous murderers, a frightful little skeleton of a woman hanging a cupboard behind a glazed door with this cynical inscription placed above the skull, behold the scaffolding on which beauty is built. In a corresponding cupboard, with the door wide open, their hung-in-loose folds are shared as I took it to be of chamois-leather, touching it and finding it to be far softer than any chamois-leather that my fingers had ever felt before, I disarranged the folds and disclosed a ticket, pinned among them, describing the thing in these horrid lines. Skin of a French marquee, tanned in the Revolution of 93, who says the nobility are not good for something, they make good leather. After this last specimen of my host's taste in curiosities, I pursued my investigation no further, I returned to my chair and waited for the truffles. After a brief interval the voice of the poet, painter, composer and cook summoned me back to the alcove. The gas was out, the stew-pan and its accompaniments had vanished. On the marble slab were two plates, two napkins, two rolls of bread and a dish, with another napkin in it, on which reposed two quaint little black bolts. Miseramus Dexter, regarding me with a smile of benevolent interest, put one of the balls on my plate and took the other himself. �Compose yourself, Mrs. Valeria,� he said, �this is an epoch in your life, your first truffle. Don't touch it with the knife, use the fork alone. And pardon me, this is most important. Eat slowly.� I followed my instructions and assumed an enthusiasm which I honestly confess I did not feel. I privately thought the new vegetable a great deal too rich, and in other respects quite unworthy of the fuss that had been made about it. Miseramus Dexter lingered and languished over his truffle, and sipped his wonderful burgundy, and sang his own praises as a cook until I was really almost mad with impatience to return to the real object of my visit. In the reckless state of mind which this feeling produced, I abruptly reminded my host that he wasn't wasting our time by the most dangerous question that I could possibly put to him. �Mr. Dexter,� I said, �have you seen anything lately of Mrs. Bowley?� The easy sense of enjoyment expressed in his face left it at those rash words, and went out like a suddenly extinguished light. That furtive distrust of me which I had already noticed instantly made itself felt again in his manner and in his voice. �Do you know Mrs. Bowley?� he asked. �I only know her,� I answered by what I have read of her in the trial. He was not satisfied with that reply. �You must have an interest of some sort in Mrs. Bowley,� he said, �or you would not have asked me about her. Is it the interest of a friend, or the interest of an enemy?� Rassus, I might be. I was not quite reckless enough yet to meet that plain question with an equally plain reply. I saw enough in his face to warn me to be careful with him before it was too late. �I can only answer you in one way,� I rejoined. I must return to a subject which is very painful to you,� the subject of the trial. �Go on,� he said, with one of his grim outbursts of humour. �Here I am at your mercy, a myrtire at the stake. Poke the fire! Poke the fire!� �I am only an ignorant woman,� I resumed, and I dare say I am quite wrong. But there is one part of my husband's trial which doesn't at all satisfy me. The defence set up for him seems to me to have been a complete mistake. �A complete mistake,� he repeated. Strange language, Mrs. Valeria, to say the least of it. He tried to speak lightly. He took up his goblet of wine, but I could see that I had produced an effect on him. His hand trembled as it carried the wine to his lips. �I don't doubt that Eustace's first wife really asked him to buy the arsonic,� I continued. �I don't doubt that she used it secretly to improve her complexion. But what I do not believe is that she died of an overdose of the poison taken by mistake. He put back the goblet of wine on the table near him so unsteadyly that he spilt the greater part of it. For a moment his eyes met mine, then looked down again. �How do you believe she died?� he inquired, and honed so low that I could be early hear them. �By the hand of a poisoner,� I answered. He made a movement, as if he were about to start up in the chair and sang back again seized apparently with a sudden feignness. �Not my husband,� I hastened to Ed. �You know that I am satisfied of his innocence. I saw him shudder. I saw his hands fasten the hole convulsively on the arms of his chair. �Who poisoned her?� he asked, still lying helplessly back in the chair. At the critical moment my courage failed me. I was afraid to tell him in what direction my suspicions pointed. �Can't you guess?� I said. There was a pause. I supposed him to be secretly following his own train of thought. It was not for long. On a sudden he started up in his chair. The protestation which had possessed him appeared to vanish in an instant. His eyes recovered, their wild light, his hands were steady again, his colour was brighter than ever. Had he been pondering over the secret of my interest in Mrs. Bowley? And had he guessed? He had. �Answer on your word of honour� he cried, �don't attempt to deceive me. Is it a woman?� it is. What is the first letter of her name? Is it one of the first three letters of the alphabet? Yes. B? Yes. Bowley. Bowley. He threw his hands up above his head and burst into a frantic fit of laughter. �I have lived long enough� he broke out wildly. �At last I have discovered one other person in the world who sees it as plainly as I do. Cruel Mrs. Valeria. Why did you torture me? Why didn't you own it before? �What!� I exclaimed, catching the infection of his incitement. �Are your ideas my ideas? Is it possible that you suspect Mrs. Bowley, too?� he made this remarkable reply. �Suspect� he repeated contemptuously. �There isn't the shadow of a doubt about it. Mrs. Bowley poisoned her.� End of chapter 29 Chapter number 30 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 V. G. Muller, The Law and the Lady, by Wilkie Collins. Chapter 30 The Indictment of Mrs. Bowley. I started to my feet and looked at Miserie Mustexter. I was too much agitated to be able to speak to him. My utmost expectations had not prepared me for the tone of absolute conviction in which he had spoken. At the best I had anticipated that he might by the barest chance agree with me in suspecting Mrs. Bowley, and now his own lips had said it, without hesitation or reserve. �There isn't the shadow of a doubt�, Mrs. Bowley poisoned her. �Sit down�, he said quietly, �There is nothing to be afraid of. Nobody can hear us in this room. I sat down again and recovered myself a little. Have you never told anyone else what you have just told me, was the first question that I put to him? Never. No one else suspected her. Not even the lawyers. Not even the lawyers. There is no legal evidence against Mrs. Bowley. There is nothing but moral certainty. Surely you might have found the evidence if you had tried. He laughed at the idea. �Look at me�, he said. How is a man to hunt up evidence who is tied to this chair? Besides there were other difficulties in my way. I am not generally in the habit of needlessly betraying myself. I am a cautious man, though you may not have noticed it. But my immeasurable hatred of Mrs. Bowley was not to be concealed. If eyes can tell secrets, she must have discovered in my eyes that I hungered and thirsted to see her in the hangman's hands. From first to last I tell you Mrs. Borgia Bowley was on her guard against me. Can I describe her cunning? All my resources of language are not equal to the task. Take the degrees of comparison to give you a feigned idea of it. I am positively cunning. The devil is comparatively cunning. Mrs. Bowley is superlatively cunning. No, no, if she is ever discovered at this distance of time, it will not be done by a man. It will be done by a woman, a woman whom she doesn't suspect, a woman who can watch her with the patience of a Tigress in a state of starvation. Say a woman like me, I broke out. I am ready to try. His eyes glittered, his teeth showed themselves viciously under his moustache. He drummed fiercely with both hands on the arm of his chair. Do you really mean it?" He asked. Put me in your position, I answered. Enlighten me with your moral certainty, as you call it, and you shall see. I'll do it," he said. Tell me one thing first. How did an outside stranger like you come to suspect her? I set before him to the best of my ability the various elements of suspicion which I had collected from the evidence of the trial, and I laid a special stress on the effects worn to by the nurse that Mrs. Bowley was missing exactly at the time when Christina Ormsey had left Mrs. Eustace MacAllen alone in her room. You have hit it! cried Nazarema's Dexter. You are a wonderful woman. What was she doing on the morning of the day when Mrs. Eustace MacAllen died poisoned, and where was she during the dark hours of the night? I can tell you where she was not. She was not in her own room. Not in her own room, I repeat it. Are you really sure of that? I am sure of everything that I say when I am speaking of Mrs. Bowley. Mind that, and now listen. This is a drama, and I excel in dramatic narratives. You shall judge for yourself. Date, 20th October. Seen the corridor called the Guests' Corridor, Ed Gleninch. On one side a row of windows looking out into the garden. On the other a row of four bedrooms with dressing rooms attached. First bedroom, beginning from the staircase. Occupied by Mrs. Bowley. Second bedroom, empty. Third bedroom occupied by Nazarema's Dexter. Fourth bedroom, empty. Say much for the scene. The time comes next. The time is eleven at night. Dexter is covered in his bedroom reading. Similar to him, Eustace MacEllen. Eustace speaks. My dear fellow, be particularly careful not to make any noise. Don't bow your jeer up and down the corridor to-night. Dexter inquires, Why? Eustace answers, Mrs. Bowley has been dining with some friends in Edinburgh and has come back terribly fatigued. She has gone up to her room to rest. Dexter makes another inquiry, satirical inquiry this time. How does she look when she is terribly fatigued, as beautiful as ever? Answer, I don't know, I have not seen her. She slipped upstairs without speaking to anybody. Third inquiry by Dexter, logical inquiry on this occasion. If she spoke to nobody, how do you know she is fatigued? Eustace hands Dexter a morsel of paper and answers, Don't be a fool. I found this on the hall table. Remember what I've told you about keeping quiet, good-night. Eustace retires. Dexter looks at the paper and reads these lines in pencil. Just returned, please forgive me for going to bed without saying good-night, I have overexerted myself, I am dreadfully fatigued. Signed Helena. Dexter is by nature suspicious. Dexter suspects, Mrs. Bowley. Never mind his reasons, there is no time to enter into his reasons now. He puts the case to himself thus. A weary woman would never have given herself the trouble to write this. She would have found it much less fatiguing to knock at the drawing-room door as she passed and to make her apologies by word of mouth. I see something here out of the ordinary way. I shall make a night of it in my chair. Very good. Dexter proceeds to make a night of it. He opens his door, wheels himself softly into the corridor, locks the doors of the two empty bedrooms and returns, with the keys in his pocket, to his own room. Now says Dee to himself. If I hear a door softly opened in this part of the house, I shall know for certain it is Mrs. Bowley's door. Upon that he closes his own door, leaving the tiniest little chink to look through, puts out his light, and waits and watches at his tiny little chink. Just a cat at a mouse-hole. The corridor is the only place he wants to see, and a lamp burns there all night. Twelve o'clock strikes. He hears the doors below bolted and locked, and nothing happens. Half past twelve, and nothing, still. The house is as silent as a grave. One o'clock, two o'clock. Same silence. Half past two, and something happens at last. After he hears a sound close by in the corridor, it is the sound of a handle turning very softly in a door. In the only door that can be opened, the door of Mrs. Bowley's room, Dexter drops noiselessly from his chair onto his hands, lies flat on the floor at his chink, and listens. He hears the handle closed again. He sees a dark object flit by him. He pops his head out of his door, down on the floor where nobody would think of looking for him. And what does he see? Mrs. Bowley. There she goes, with the long brown cloak over her shoulders, which she wears when she is driving, floating behind her. In a moment more, she disappears past the fourth bedroom, and turns at a right angle into a second corridor called the South Corridor. What rooms are in the South Corridor? There are three rooms. First room, the little study mentioned in the nurse's evidence. Second room, Mrs. Eustace McGallon's bedroom. Third room, her husband's bedroom. What does Mrs. Bowley, supposed to be worn out by fatigue, want in that part of the house at half past two in the morning? Dexter decides on running the risk of being seen, and sets off on a voyage of discovery. Do you know how he gets from place to place without his chair? Have you seen the poor, deformed creature hop on his hands? Shall he show you how he does it, before he goes on with his story? I hasten to stop the proposed exhibition. I saw your hop last night, I said, go on, pray, go on with your story. Do you like my dramatic style of narrative? He asks. Am I interesting? Indescribably interesting, Mr. Dexter. I am eager to hear more. He smiled, and high approval of his own abilities. I am equally good at autobiographical style, he says. Shall we try that next, by way of variety? Anything you like, I cried, losing all patience with him, if you will only go on. Part two, autobiographical style, he announced, with a wave of his hand. I hopped along the guest's corridor, and turned into the south corridor. I stopped at the little study. Door open, nobody there. I crossed the study to the second door, communicating with Mrs. MacEllen's batchamber. Locked. I looked through the keyhole. Was there anything hanging over it on the other side? I can't say. I only know there was nothing to be seen but blank darkness. I listened. Nothing to be heard. Same blank darkness, same absolute silence, inside the locked second door of Mrs. Eustace's room, opening on the corridor. I went on to her husband's batchamber. I had the worst possible opinion of Mrs. Boley. I should not have been in the least surprised if I had caught her in Eustace's room. I looked through the keyhole. In this case the key was out of it, or was turned the right way for me, I don't know which. Eustace's bed was opposite the door. No discovery. I could see him, all by himself, innocently asleep. I reflected a little. The back staircase was at the end of the corridor, beyond me. I slid down the stairs and looked about to me on the lower floor by the light of the night lamp. Doors all fast locked and keys outside so that I could try them myself. House door barred and bolted. Door leading into the servants' office barred and bolted. I got back to my own room and thought it out quietly. Where could she be? Certainly in the house somewhere. Where? I had made sure of the other rooms, the field of search was exhausted. She could only be in Mrs. MacAllen's room, the one room which had baffled my investigations, the only room which had not lent itself to examination. Add to this that the key of the door in the study communicating with Mrs. MacAllen's room was stated in the nurses' evidence to be missing. And don't forget that the dearest object of Mrs. Bowley's life on the showing of her own letter read at the trial was to be you Starr's MacAllen's happy wife. Put these things together in your own mind and you will know what my thoughts were, as I said waiting for events in my chair without my telling you. To walk four o'clock strong as I am, fatey got the better of me. I fell asleep. Not for long. I awoke with a start and looked at my watch. Twenty-five minutes passed for her. Had she got back to her room while I was asleep? I hopped to her door and listened. Not a sound. I softly opened the door. The room was empty. I went back again to my own room to wait and watch. It was hard work to keep my eyes open. I drew up the window to let the cool air refresh me. I felt hard with exhausted nature and exhausted nature won. I fell asleep again. This time it was eight in the morning when I awoke. I have goodish ears as you may have noticed. I heard women's voices talking under my open window. I peeped out, Mrs. Bowley and her mate in close confabulation. Mrs. Bowley and her mate looking guiltyly about them to make sure that they were neither seen nor heard. Take care, ma'am. I heard the mate say, that horrid deformed monsters are sly as a fox, mindy doesn't discover you. Mrs. Bowley answered, you go first and look out in front. I will follow you and make sure there's nobody behind us." With that they disappeared around the corner of the house. In five minutes more I heard the door of Mrs. Bowley's room softly opened and closed again. Three hours later the nurse met her in the corridor, innocently on her way to make enquiries at Mrs. Eustace MacEllen's door. What do you think of these circumstances? What do you think of Mrs. Bowley and her mate having something to say to each other, which they didn't dare say in the house, for fear of my being behind some door listening to them? What do you think of these discoveries of mine being made on the very morning when Mrs. Eustace was taken ill, on the very day when she died by a poisonous hand? Do you see your way to the guilty person, and has mad Miss Errimus Dexter been of some assistance to you so far? I was too violently excited to answer him, the way to the vindication of my husband's innocence was opened to me at last. Where is she? I cried, and where is that servant who is in her confidence? I can't tell you, he said. I don't know. Where can I enquire? Can you tell me that? He considered a little. There is one man who must know where she is, or who could find it out for you, he said. Who is he? What is his name? He is a friend of Eustace, Major Fitz-David. I know him! I am going to dine with him next week. He has asked you to dine, too." Miss Errimus Dexter laughed contemptuously. Major Fitz-David may do very well for the ladies, he said. The ladies can treat him as a species of elderly human lapdog. I don't dine with lapdogs. I have said no. You go. He or some of his ladies may be of use to you. Who are the guests? Did he tell you? There was a French lady whose name I forget, I said, and Lady Clarinda. That will do. She is a friend of Mrs. Bowley's. She is sure to know where Mrs. Bowley is. Come to me the moment you have got your information. Find out if the maid is with her. She is the easiest to deal with of the two. Only make the maid open her lips, and we've got Mrs. Bowley. We crush her, he cried, bringing his hands down like lightning on the last-langered fly of the season crawling over the arm of his chair. We crush her as I crush this fly. Stop a question, a most important question in dealing with the maid. Have you got any money? Plenty of money. He snapped his fingers joyously. The maid is ours, he cried. It is a matter of pounds, shillings, and pens with the maid. Wait, another question. About your name? If you approach Mrs. Bowley in your own character as he was asked his wife, you approach her as the woman who has taken her place. You make a mortal enemy of her at starting. Beware of that. My jealousy of Mrs. Bowley smoldering in me all through the interview burst into flames at those words. I could resist it no longer. I was obliged to ask him if my husband had ever loved her. Tell me the truth, I said. Did you start really? He burst out laughing maliciously. He penetrated my jealousy, and guessed my question almost before it had passed my lips. Yes, he said, Ustars did really love her, and no mistake about it, she had every reason to believe before the trial that the wife's death would put her in the wife's place. But the trial made another man of Ustars. Mrs. Bowley had been a witness of the public degradation of him, that was enough to prevent his marrying Mrs. Bowley. He broke off with her at once and for ever, for the same reason precisely, which has led him to separate himself from you. Existence with a woman who knew that he had been tried for his life as a murderer was an existence that he was not hero enough to face. You wanted the truth, there it is. You have need to be cautious of Mrs. Bowley. You have no need to be jealous of her. Take the safe course, arrange with a major when you meet Lady Clarinda at his dinner, that you meet her under an assumed name. I can go to the dinner, I said, under the name in which Ustars married me. I can go as Mrs. Woodville. The very thing, he exclaimed, what would I not give to be present when Lady Clarinda introduces you to Mrs. Bowley? Think of the situation, a woman with a hideous secret hidden in her inmost soul, and another woman who knows of it, another woman who is bent by fear means of foul on dragging that secret into the light of day. What a struggle! What a plot for a novel! I am in a fever when I think of it, and beside myself when I look into the future and see Mrs. Bowley brought to her knees at last. Don't be alarmed, he cried, with a wild light flashing once more in his eyes. My brains are beginning to boil again in my head. I must take refuge in physical exercise. I must blow off the steam, or I shall explode in my pink jacket on the spot. The old madness seized on him again. I made for the door to secure my retreat in case of necessity, and then ventured to look around at him. He was off on his furious wheels, half-man, half-chair, flying like a whirlwind to the other end of the room. Even this exercise was not violent enough for him in his present mood. In an instant he was down on the floor, poised on his hands, and looking in the distance like a monstrous frog. Looking down the room he overthrew, one after another, all the smaller and lighter chairs as he passed them. Arrived at the end, he turned, surveyed the prostate chairs, encouraged himself with a scream of triumph, and leaped rapidly over chair after chair on his hands. His limp-less body now thrown back from the shoulders, and now thrown forward to keep the balance, in a manner at once wonderful and horrible to behold. Dexter's leapfrog! he cried cheerfully, perching himself with his bird-like lightness on the last of the prostate chairs when he had reached the further end of the room. I'm pretty active, Mrs. Valerie, considering I'm a cripple. Let us drink the hanging of Mrs. Bowley in another bottle of burgundy. I ceased desperately on the first excuse that occurred to me for getting away from him. To forget, I said, I must go at once to the Major. If I don't warn him in time, he may speak of me to Lady Clarinda by the wrong name. Ideas of hurry and movement were just the ideas to take his fancy in his present state. He blew furiously on the whistle that summoned Ariel from the kitchen regions, and danced up and down on his hands in the full frenzy of his delight. "'Ariel shall get you a cap,' he cried, driving a gallop to the Magus, set the track for her without losing a moment. Oh, what a day of days this has been! Oh, what a relief to get rid of my dreadful secret and share it with you. I am suffocating with happiness. I am like the spirit of the earth and Shelley's poem.' He broke out with the magnificent lines and Prometheus unbound, in which the earth feels the spirit of love and bursts into speech. The joy, the triumph, the delight, the mannace, the boundless, overflowing bursting gladness, the vaporous exultation not to be confined. Ha-ha! The animation of delight which wraps me like an atmosphere of light, and bears me as a cloud is born by its own wind. That's how I feel, Valeria, that's how I feel. I crossed the threshold while he was still speaking. The last I saw of him, he was pouring out that glorious flood of words. His deformed body poised on the overthrown chair. His face lifted in rapture to some fantastic heaven of his own making. He slipped out softly into the amchamber. Even as I crossed the room, he changed once more. I heard his ringing cry. I heard the soft thumb-thumb of his hands on the floor. He was going down the room again in dexter's leapfrog, flying over the prostate chairs. In the hall Aerial was on the watch for me. As I approached her, I happened to be putting on my gloves. She stopped me, and taking my right arm, lifted my hand to some water-face. Was she going to kiss it, or to bite it? Neither. She smelt it like a dog, and dropped it again with a horse-chuckling laugh. You don't smell of his perfumes," she said. You haven't touched his beard. Now I believe you. Want a cab? Thank you. I'll walk till I meet a cab. She was bent on being polite to me, now I had not touched his beard. I say," she burst out in her deepest notes. Yes, I am glad I didn't upset you in the canal. There now." She gave me a friendly smack on the shoulder, which nearly knocked me down, relapsed the instant after into her leaden solidity of look and manner, and led the way out by the front door. I heard the horse-chuckling laugh as she looked the gate behind me. My star was at last in the ascendant. In one and the same day I had found my way into the confidence of Aerial and Aerial's master. CHAPTER 31 The days that elapsed before Major Fitz David's dinner party were precious days to me. My long interview with Miserimus Dexter had disturbed me far more seriously than I suspected at the time. It was not until some hours after I had left him that I really began to feel how my nerves had been tried by all that I had seen and heard during my visit at his house. I started at the slightest noise. I dreamt of dreadful things. I was ready to cry without reason at one moment, and to fly into a passion without reason at another. Absolute rest was what I wanted, and thanks to my good Benjamin was what I got. The dear old man controlled his anxieties on my account, and spared me the questions which his fatherly interest in my welfare made him eager to ask. It was tacitly understood between us that all conversation on the subject of my visit to Miserimus Dexter, of which it is needless to say he strongly disapproved, should be deferred until repose had restored my energies of body and mind. I saw no visitors. Mrs. MacAllan came to the cottage, and Major Fitz David came to the cottage, one of them to hear what had passed between Miserimus Dexter and myself, and the other to amuse me with the latest gossip about the guests at the forthcoming dinner. Benjamin took it on himself to make my apologies, and to spare me the exertion of receiving my visitors. We hired a little open carriage, and took long drives in the pretty country lane still left flourishing within a few miles of the northern suburb of London. At home we sat and talked quietly of old times, or played at my gammon and dominos, and so, for a few happy days, let the peaceful unadventurous life which was good for me. When the day of the dinner arrived, I felt restored to my customary health. I was ready again and eager again for the introduction to Lady Clarinda and the discovery of Mrs. Bowley. Benjamin looked a little sadly at my flushed face as we drove to Major Fitz David's house. Oh, my dear, he said in a simple way, I see you're well again. You have had enough of our quiet life already. My recollection of events and persons in general at the dinner-party is singularly indistinct. I remember that we were very merry, and as easy and familiar with one another as if we had been old friends. I remember that Madame Murley-Fleur was unapproachably superior to the other women present in the perfect beauty of her dress, and in the ample justice which she did to the luxurious dinner set before us. I remember the Major's young prima donna, more round-eyed, more overdressed, more shrill and strident as the coming queen of song than ever. I remember the Major himself always kissing our hands, always luring us to indulge in dainty dishes and drinks, always making love, always detecting resemblances between us, always under the charm and never once out of his character as elderly Don Juan from the beginning of the evening to the end. I remember dear old Benjamin completely bewildered, drinking into the corners blushing when he was personally drawn into the conversation frightened at Madame Murley-Fleur, bashful with Lady Clarinda, submissive to the Major's suffering under the music, and from the bottom of his honest old heart wishing himself home again. In there as to the members of that cheerful little gathering my memory finds its limits, with one exception. The appearance of Lady Clarinda is as present to me as if I had met her yesterday, and of the memorable conversation which we two held together privately toward the close of the evening, it is no exaggeration to say that I can still call to mind absolutely every word. I see her dress, I hear her voice again while I've right. She was a tired, I remember, with an extreme assumption of simplicity which always defeats its own end by irresistibly suggesting art. She wore plain white muslin over white silk, without trimming or ornament of any kind. Her rich brown hair, dressed in defiance of the prevailing fashion, was thrown back from her forehead and gathered into a simple knot behind, without adornment of any sort. A little white ribbon encircled her neck, fastened by the only article of jewellery that she wore, a tiny diamond brooch. She was unquestionably handsome, but her beauty was of the somewhat hard and angular type which is so often seen in English women of her race. The nose and chin too prominent and too firmly shaped. The well-opened grey eyes full of spirit and dignity, but wanting and tenderness and mobility of expression. Her manner had all the charm which fine breeding can confer, exquisitely polite, easily cordial, showing that perfect yet unobtrusive confidence in herself, which in England seems to be the natural outgrowth of pre-eminent social rank. If he had accepted her for what she was on the surface, he would have said, Here is the model of a noblewoman who is perfectly free from pride. And if you had taken a liberty with her on the strength of that conviction, she would have made you remember it to the end of your life. We got on together admirably. I was introduced as Mrs Woodville by previous arrangement with a major effected through Benjamin. Before the dinner was over we had promised to exchange visits. Nothing but the opportunity was wanting to lead Lady Clarinda into talking as I wanted her to talk of Mrs Bowley. Late in the evening the opportunity came. I had taken refuge from the terrible bravurer singing of the major strident primadonna in the back drawing-room, as I had hoped and anticipated after a while Lady Clarinda missing me from the group around the piano came in search of me. She seated herself by my side, out of sight and out of hearing of our friends in the front room, and to my infinite relief and delight touched on the subject of Miserimus' texture of her own accord. Something I had said of him when his name had been accidentally mentioned at dinner remained in her memory, and led us by perfectly natural graduation into speaking of Mrs Bowley. At last I thought to myself, the major's little dinner will bring me my reward. And what a reward it was when it came! My heart sinks in me again, as it sank on that never to be forgotten evening, while I seated my desk thinking of it. So Dexter really spoke to you of Mrs Bowley, exclaimed Lady Clarinda. You have no idea how you surprise me. May I ask why? He hates her. The last time I saw him he wouldn't allow me to mention her name. It is one of his innumerable oddities. If any such feeling or sympathy is a possible feeling in such a nature as his he ought to like Helena Bowley, she is the most completely unconventional person I know. When she does break out, poor dear, she says things and does things which are almost reckless enough to be worthy of Dexter himself. I wonder whether you would like her. You have kindly asked me to visit you, Lady Clarinda. Perhaps I may meet her at your house. I hope you will not wait until that is likely to happen, she said. Helena's last whim, Mr Fencey, that she has got the gout of all the melodies in the world. She is always at some wonderful baths in Hungary or Bohemia, I don't remember which, and where she will go or what she will do next it is perfectly impossible to say. Dear Mrs Woodwell, it's the heat of the fire too much for you. You are looking quite pale. I felt that I was looking pale. The discovery of Mrs Bowley's absence from England was a shock for which I was quite unprepared. For a moment it unnerved me. Shall we go into the other room? asked Lady Clarinda. To go into the other room would be to drop the conversation. I was determined not to let that catastrophe happen. It was just possible that Mrs Bowley's maid might have quitted her service or might have been left behind in England. My information would not be complete until I knew what had become of the maid. I pushed my chair back a little from the fireplace and took a handscreen from a table near me. It might be made useful in hiding my face if any more disappointments were in store for me. Thank you, Lady Clarinda. I was only a little too near the fire. I shall do admirably here. You surprised me about Mrs Bowley. From what Mr Dexter said to me, I had imagined, Oh! You must not believe anything Dexter tells you, interposed Lady Clarinda. He delights in misdefying people, and he purposely misled you, I have no doubt. If all that I hear is true, he ought to know more of Helena Bowley's strange freaks and fancies than most people. He all but discovered her in one of her adventures down in Scotland, which reminds me of the story in Ober's charming opera, Ah! What is it called? I shall forget my own name next. I mean the opera in which the two nuns slip out of the convent and go to the ball. Listen, how very odd, that vulgar girl is singing the customette song in the second act at this moment. Major, what opera is the young lady singing from? The major was scandalised at this interruption. He bustled into the back room, whispered, Hush, hush, my dear lady, the Domino Noir, and bustled back again to the piano. Of course, said Lady Clarinda, how stupid of me, the Domino Noir, and how strange that you should forget it too. I had remembered it perfectly, but I could not trust myself to speak, if as I believe the adventure mentioned by Lady Clarinda was connected in some way with Mrs. Bowley's mysterious proceedings on the morning of the twenty-first of October. I was on the brink of the very discovery which it was the one interest of my life to make. I held the screen so as to hide my face, and sit in the steadiest voice that I could command at the moment. Pray go on, tell me what the adventure was. Lady Clarinda was quite flattered by my eager desire to hear the coming narrative. I hope my story will be worthy of the interest which you are so good as to feel in it, she said, If you only knew Helena, it is so like her. I have it, you must know, from her maid. She has taken a woman who speaks foreign languages with her to Hungary, and she has left the maid with me. A perfect treasure. I should be only too glad if I could keep her in my service. She has but one defect, a name I hate, Phoebe. Well, Phoebe and her mistress were staying at a place near Edinburgh called, I think, Glen Inge. The house belonged to that Mr. MacAllen, who was after, would try to remember it, of course, for poisoning his wife. A dreadful case. But don't be alarmed, my story has nothing to do with it. My story has to do with Helena Bowley. One evening, while she was staying at Glen Inge, she was engaged to dine with some English friends visiting Edinburgh. The same night, also in Edinburgh, there was a masked ball given by somebody whose name I forget. The ball, almost an unparalleled vent in Scotland, was reported to be not at all a reputable affair, all sorts of amusing people were to be there. Police of doubtful virtue, you know, and gentlemen on the outlying limits of society, and so on. Helena's friends had contrived to get cards, and were going, in spite of the objections, in the strictest incognito, of course, trusting to their masks. And Helena herself was bent on going with them, if she could only manage it without being discovered at Glen Inge. Mr. MacAllen was one of the straight-laced people who disapproved of the ball. No lady, he said, could show herself at such an entertainment without compromising her reputation. What stuff! Well, Helena, in one of her wildest moments, hid on a way of going to the ball without discovery, which was really as ingenious as a plot in the French play. She went to the dinner in the carriage from Glen Inge, having sent Phoebe to Edinburgh before her. It was not a grand dinner, a little friendly gathering, no evening dress. When the time came for going back to Glen Inge, what do you think Helena did? She sent her maid back in the carriage instead of herself. Phoebe was dressed in her mistress's cloak and bonnet and veil. She was instructed to run upstairs the moment she got to the house, leaving on the hall table a little note of apology, written by Helena of course, pleading fatigued as an excuse for not saying good night to her host. The mistress and the maid were about the same height, and the servants naturally never discovered the trick. Phoebe got up to her mistress's room safely enough. There her instructions were to wait until the house was quiet for the night, and then to steal up to her own room. While she was waiting, the girl fell asleep. She only awoke at two in the morning or later. It didn't much matter, as she thought. She stole out on tiptoe and closed the door behind her. Before she was at the end of the corridor, she fenced it, she heard something. She waited until she was safe on the upper story, and then she looked over the banister. There was Dexter, so like him, hopping about on his hands. Did you ever see it? The most grotesquely horrible exhibition you can imagine. There was Dexter hopping about and looking through keyholes, evidently in search of the person who had left the room at two in the morning, and no doubt taking Phoebe for her mistress, seeing that she had forgotten to take her mistress's cloak off her shoulders. The next morning early, Helena came back in a hired carriage from Edinburgh, with a heartened mantel borrowed from her English friends. She leapt the carriage in the road and got into the house by way of the garden, without being discovered this time by Dexter or by anybody. Clever and daring, wasn't it? And as I said just now, quite a new version of the Domino Noir. You will wonder, as I do, how it was that Dexter didn't make mischief in the morning. He would have done it, no doubt. But even he was silenced, as Phoebe told me, by the dreadful event that happened in the house on the same day. My dear Mrs. Woodwill, the heat of this room is certainly too much for you. Take my smelling-bottle. Let me open the window." I was just able to answer. Praise ain't nothing. Let me slip out into the open air. I made my way unobserved to the landing, and sat down on the stairs to compose myself where nobody could see me. In a moment more, I felt a hand lay gently on my shoulder, and discovered good Benjamin looking at me and his may. Lady Clarinda had considerably spoken to him, and had assisted him in quiet deeply making his retreat from the room, while his house's attention was still absorbed by the music. My dear child he whispered, What is the matter? Take me home, and I will tell you, was all that I could say. CHAPTER NUMBER 32 OF THE LAWENTHER 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 scene must follow my erratic movements. The scene must close on London for a while, and open in Edinburgh. Two days had passed since Major Fitz David's dinner party. I was able to breathe again freely, after the utter destruction of all my plans for the future, and of all the hopes that I had found it on them. I could now see that I had been trebly in the wrong—wrong in hastily and cruelly suspecting an innocent woman—wrong in communicating my suspicions, without an attempt to verify them previously to another person, wrong in accepting the flighty interferences and conclusions of Missouri must exist as if they had been solid truths. I was so ashamed of my folly when I thought of the past so completely discouraged, so rudely shaken in my confidence in myself when I thought of the future, that for once in a way I accepted sensible advice when it was offered to me. My dear," said good old Benjamin, after we had thoroughly talked over my discomforture on our return from the dinner party, judging by what you tell me of him, I don't fancy Mr. Dexter. Promise me that you will not go back to him until you have first consulted some person who is fitter to guide you through this dangerous business than I am. I gave him my promise on one condition. If I fail to find the person, I said, will you undertake to help me? Benjamin pledged himself to help me, cheerfully. The next morning, when I was brushing my hair and thinking over my affairs, I called to mind the forgotten resolution of mine at the time I first read the report of my husband's trial. I mean the resolution, if Missouri must exist, to fail to me, to apply to one of the two agents or solicitors, as we should term them, who had prepared youstall's defence, namely Mr. Playmore. This gentleman, it may be remembered, had especially recommended himself to my confidence by his friendly interference when the sheriff's offices were in search of my husband's papers. Referring back to the evidence of Isiah's Killcraft, I found that Mr. Playmore had been called into assistant advice youstall's by Missouri must Dexter. He was therefore not only a friend on whom I might rely, but a friend who was personally acquainted with Dexter as well. Could there be a fitter man to apply to for enlightenment in the darkness that had now gathered around me? Benjamin, when I put the question to him, acknowledged that I had made a sensible choice on this occasion, and at once exerted himself to help me. He discovered, through his own lawyer, the address of Mr. Playmore's London agents, and from these gentlemen he obtained for me a letter of introduction to Mr. Playmore himself. I had nothing to conceal from my new adviser, and I was properly described in the letter as youstall's McAllen's second wife. The same evening we two sat forth, Benjamin refused to let me travel alone by the night-mail for Edinburgh. I had previously written to Missouri must Dexter by my old friend's advice, merely saying that I had been unexpectedly called away from London for a few days, and that I would report to him the result of my interview with Lady Clarinda on my return. A characteristic answer was brought back to the cottage by Ariel. Mrs. Villaria, I happen to be a man of quick perceptions, and I can read the unwritten part of your letter. Lady Clarinda has shaken your confidence on me. Very good. I pledge myself to shake your confidence in Lady Clarinda. In the meantime I am not offended. In serene composure I await the honour and the happiness of your visit. Send me word by telegraph, whether you would like truffles again, or whether you would prefer something simpler and lighter. Say that incomparable French dish, pig, xylids and tamarins, believe me always you ally and admirer, your poet and cook— Dexter. Arrived in Edinburgh, Benjamin and I had a little discussion. The question and dispute between us was whether I should go with him, or go alone, to Mr. Playmore. I was all for going alone. My experience of the world is not a very large one, I said, but I have observed that in nine cases out of ten a man will make concessions to a woman if she approaches him by herself, which he would hesitate even to consider if another man was within hearing. I don't know how it is, I only know that it is so. If I find that I get on badly with Mr. Playmore, I will ask him for a second appointment, and in that case you shall accompany me. Don't think me self-willed. Let me try my luck alone, and let us see what comes of it. Benjamin yielded with his customary consideration for me. I sent my letter of introduction to Mr. Playmore's office, his private house being in the neighbourhood of Gleninch. My messenger brought back a polite answer, inviting me to visit him at an early hour in the afternoon. At the appointed time, to the moment, I rang the bell at the office door. End of CHAPTER XXXXII CHAPTER XXXXIII 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 XXXIII A SPACIMEN OF MY FOLLY The incomprehensible submission of Scotchman to the ecclesiastical tyranny of their established church has produced, not unnaturally as I think, a very mistaken impression of the national character of the popular mind. Public opinion looks at the institution of The Sabbath in Scotland, finds it unparalleled in Christendom for its senseless and savage austerity, sees a nation content to be deprived by its priesthood of every social privilege on one day and every week, forbidden to travel, forbidden to telegraph, forbidden to eat a hot dinner, forbidden to read a newspaper, in short, allowed the use of two liberties only, the liberty of exhibiting oneself at the church, and the liberty of secluding oneself over the bottle. Public opinion sees this and arrives at the not unreasonable conclusion that the people who submit to such social laws as these are the most stolid, stern and joyless people on the face of the earth. Such are Scotchmen supposed to be when viewed at a distance. But how do Scotchmen appear when they are seen under a closer light and judged by the test of personal experience? There are no people more cheerful, more companionable, more hospitable, more liberal in their ideas, to be found on the face of the civilised globe than the very people who submit to the Scotch Sunday. On the six days of the week there is an atmosphere of quiet humour, a radiation of genial common sense about Scotchmen in general, which is simply delightful to feel. But on the seventh day the same men will hear one of their ministers seriously tell them that he views taking a walk on the Sabbath in the light of an act of profanity, and will be the only people in existence who can let a man talk downright nonsense without laughing at him. I am not clever enough to be able to account for this anomaly in the national character. I can only notice it by way of necessary preparation for the appearance in my little narrative of a personage not frequently seen in writing. A cheerful Scotchman. In all other respects I found Mr. Playmore only negatively remarkable. He was neither old nor young, neither handsome nor ugly. He was personally not in the least like the popular idea of a lawyer, and he spoke perfectly good English, touched with only the slightest possible flavour of a Scotch accent. I have the honour to be an old friend of Mr. McAllen, he said, cordially shaking hands with me, and I am honestly happy to become acquainted with Mr. McAllen's wife. Where will you sit, near the light? You are young enough not to be afraid of the daylight just yet. Is this your first visit to Edinburgh? Pray let me make it as pleasant to you as you can. I shall be delighted to present Mrs. Playmore to you. We are staying in Edinburgh for a little while. The Italian opera is here, and we have a box for tonight. Will you kindly wave all ceremony and dine with us and go to the music afterward? You are very kind, I answered, but I have some anxieties just now which will make me a very poor companion for Mrs. Playmore at the opera. My letter to you mentions, I think, that I have to ask your advice on matters which are of very serious importance to me. Does it, he rejoined? To tell you the truth I've not read the letter through. I saw your name in it, and I gathered from your message that you wish to see me here. I sent my note to your hotel, and then went on with something else. Pray pardon me. Is this a professional consultation? For your own sake, I sincerely hope not. It is hardly a professional consultation, Mr. Playmore. I find myself in a very painful position, and I come to you to advise me under very unusual circumstances. I shall surprise you very much when you hear what I have to say, and I am afraid I shall occupy more than my fair share of your time. I and my time are entirely at your disposal," he said. Tell me what I can do for you, and tell it in your own way. The kindness of this language must more than matched by the kindness of his manner. I spoke to him freely and fully. I told him my strange story without the slightest reserve. He showed the varying impressions that I produced on his mind without the slightest concealment. My separation from you starts to stress him. My resolution to dispute the Scott verdict and my unjust suspicions of Mrs. Bowley first amused and surprised him. It was not, however, until I had described my extraordinary interview with Missouri Mustexter and my hardly less remarkable conversation with Lady Clarinda that I produced my greatest effect on the lawyer's mind. I saw him change colour for the first time. He started, and muttered to himself as if he had completely forgotten me. Good-goat! I heard him say. Can it be possible? Does the truth lie that way after all? I took the liberty of interrupting him. I had no idea of allowing him to keep his thoughts to himself. I seemed to have surprised you, I said. He started at the sound of my voice. I beg ten thousand pardons, he exclaimed. You have not only surprised me, you have opened an entirely new view to my mind. I see a possibility—a really startling possibility in connection with the poisoning at Glen Inge, which never occurred to me until the present moment. This is a nice state of things, he added, falling back again into his ordinary humour. Here is the client leading the lawyer. My dear Mrs. Ustaz, which is it? Do you want my advice, or do I want yours? May I hear the new idea? I asked. Not just yet, if you will excuse me, he answered. Make allowances for my professional caution. I don't want to be professional with you. My great anxiety is to avoid it. But the lawyer gets the better of the man and refuses to be suppressed. I really hesitate to realise what is passing in my own mind without some further inquiry. Do me a great favour. Let us go over a part of the ground again, and let me ask you some questions as we proceed. Do you feel any objection to obliging me in this matter? Certainly not, Mr. Playmore. How far shall we go back? To your visitor Dexter with your mother-in-law. When you first asked him if he had any ideas of his own on the subject of Mrs. Ustaz MacAllan's death, did I understand you to say that he looked at you suspiciously? Very suspiciously. And his face cleared up again when you told him that your question was only suggested by what you had read in the report of the trial. Yes. He drew a slip of paper out of the drawer in his desk, dipped his pen in the ink, considered a little, and placed a chair for me close at his side. The lawyer disappears, he said, and the man resumes his proper place. There shall be no professional mysteries between you and me. As your husband's old friend, Mrs. Ustaz, I feel no common interest in you. I see a serious necessity for warning you before it is too late, and I can only do so to any good purpose by running a risk on which few men in my place would venture. Personally and professionally I am going to trust you, though I am a Scotchman and a lawyer. Sit here and look over my shoulder while I make my notes. You will see what is passing in my mind if you see what I've right. I sat down by him and looked over his shoulder without the smallest pretence of hesitation. He began to write as follows. The poisoning at Gleninch. Queries. In what position does Miserimus Dexter stand to walk the poisoning, and what does he, presumably, know about that matter? He has ideas which are secrets. He suspects that he has betrayed them, or that they have been discovered in some way inconceivable to himself. He is palpably relieved when he finds that this is not the case. The pen stopped, and the questions went on. Let us advance to your second visit, said Mr. Playmore. When you saw Dexter alone, tell me again what he did, and how he looked, when you informed him that you were not satisfied with a scotch verdict. I repeated what I have already written in these pages. The pen went back to the paper again, and added these lines. He hears nothing more remarkable than that a person visiting him, who is interested in the case, refuses to accept the verdict at the McAllen trial as a final verdict, and proposes to reopen the inquiry. What does he do upon that? He exhibits all the symptoms of a panic or terror. He sees himself in some incomprehensible danger. He is frantic at one moment, and survive at the next. He must and will know what this disturbing person really means, and when he is informed on that point he first turns pale and doubts the evidence of his own senses, and next, with nothing said to justify it, gratuitously accuses his visitor of suspecting somebody. Query here, when a small sum of money is missing in a household, and the servants in general are called together to be informed of the circumstance, what do we think of the one servant in particular who speaks first, and who says, do you suspect me? He laid down the pen again. Is that right? he asked. I began to see the end to which the notes were drifting. Instead of answering his question, I entreated him to enter into the explanations that were still wanting to convince my own mind. He held up a warning forefinger, and stopped me. Not yet, he said. Once again am I right so far? Quite right. Very well. Now tell me what happened next. Don't mind repeating yourself. Give me all the details one after another to the end. I mentioned all the details exactly as I remembered them. Mr. Playmore returned to his writing for the third and last time. First the notes ended. He is indirectly assured that he at least is not the person suspected. He sinks back in his chair. He draws a long breath. He asks to be left a while by himself under the pretence that the subject excites him. When the visitor returns, Dexter has been drinking in the interval. The visitor resumes the subject, not Dexter. The visitor is convinced that Mrs. Eustace MacAllen died by the hand of a poisoner, and openly says so. Dexter sinks back in his chair like a man fainting. What is the horror that has got possession of him? It is easy to understand if we call it guilty horror. It is beyond all understanding if we call it anything else. And how does it leave him? He flies from one extreme to another. He is indescribably delighted when he discovers that the visitor's suspicions are all fixed on an absent person. And then, and then only, he takes refuge in the declaration that he has been of one mind with his visitor in the matter of suspicion from the first. These are facts. To what plain conclusion do they point? He shut up his notes, and steadily watching my face waited for me to speak first. I understand you, Mr. Playmore. I began impetuously. You believe that Mr. Dexter— His warning forefinger stopped me there. Tell me," he interposed, what Dexter said to you when he was so good as to confirm your opinion of poor Mrs. Bowley. He said, there isn't a doubt about it. Mrs. Bowley poisoned her. I can't do better than follow so good an example with one trifling difference. I say, too, there isn't a doubt about it. Dexter poisoned her. Are you joking, Mr. Playmore? I never was more unearnest in my life. Your rash visit to Dexter and your extraordinary imprudence in taking him into your confidence have led to astonishing results. The light which the whole machinery of the law was unable to throw on the poisoning case at Glen Inge has been accidentally let in on it by a lady who refuses to listen to reason and who insists on having her own way—quite incredible, and nevertheless quite true. Impossible! I exclaimed. What is impossible! he asked, coolly. The Dexter poisoned my husband's first wife. And why is that impossible, if you please? I began to be almost enraged with Mr. Playmore. Can you ask the question? I replied indignantly. I have told you that I heard him speak of her in terms of respect and affection, of which any woman might be proud. He lives in the memory of her. I owe his friendly reception of me to some resemblance, which he fancies, he sees between my figure and hers. I have seen tears in his eyes. I have heard his voice falter and fail him when he spoke of her. He may be the falsest of men in all besides, but he is true to her. He has not misled me in that one thing. There are signs that never deceive a woman when a man is talking to her of what is really near his heart. I saw those signs. It is as true that I poisoned her as that he did. I am ashamed to set my opinion against yours, Mr. Playmore, but I really cannot help it. I declare I am almost angry with you. He seemed to be pleased, instead of offended by the bold manner in which I expressed myself. My dear Mrs. Eustace, you have no reason to be angry with me. In one respect I entirely share your view with this difference that I go a little further than you do. I don't understand you. You describe Dexter's feeling for the late Mrs. Eustace as a happy mixture of respect and affection. I can tell you it was a much warmer feeling toward her than that. I have my information from the poor lady herself, who honoured me with her confidence and friendship for the best part of her life. Before she married Mr. MacAllan, she kept it a secret from him, and you had better keep it a secret, too. Ms. Erin Mustexter was in love with her. Ms. Erin Mustexter asked her, deformed as he was, seriously asked her to be his wife. And in the face of that, I cried, you say that he poisoned her? I do. I see no other conclusion possible after what happened during your visit to him. You all but frightened him into a fainting fit. What? Was he afraid of? I tried hard to find an answer to that. I even embarked on an answer without quite knowing where my own words might bleed me. Mr. Dexter is an old and true friend of my husband. I began. When he heard me say I was not satisfied with the verdict, he might have felt alarmed. He might have felt alarmed at the possible consequences to your husband of reopening the inquiry, said Mr. Plainmore, ironically finishing the sentence for me. Rather far fetched, Mrs. Eustace, and not very consistent with your faith in your husband's innocence. Clear your mind of one mistake, he continued seriously, which may fatally mislead you if you persist in pursuing your present course. Ms. Erin Mustexter, you may take my word for it, keys to be your husband's friend on the day when your husband married his first wife. Dexter has kept up appearances, I grant you, both in public and in private, his evidence and his friend's favour at the trial was given with a deep feeling which everybody expected from him. Nevertheless, I firmly believe, looking under the surface, that Mr. MacAllen has no bitterer enemy living than Ms. Erin Mustexter. He turned me cold. I felt that here, at least, he was right. My husband had wooed and warned the woman where to refuse Dexter's offer of marriage. Was Dexter the man to forgive that? My own experience answered me and said, No. Bear in mind what I have told you, Mr. Plainmore preceded, and now let us get on to your own position in this matter and to the interests that you have at stake. Try to adopt my point of view for the moment and let us inquire what chance we have of making any further advance toward a discovery of the truth. It is one thing to be morally convinced, as I am, that Ms. Erin Mustexter is the man who ought to have been tried for the murder at Gninch, and it is another thing, at this distance of time, to lay our hands on the plain evidence which can alone justify anything like a public assertion of this guilt. There, as I see it, is the insuperable difficulty in the case. Unless I am completely mistaken, the question is now narrow to this plain issue. The public assertion of your husband's innocence depends entirely on the public assertion of Dexter's guilt. How are you to arrive at that result? There is not a particle of evidence against him. You can only convict Dexter on Dexter's own confession. Are you listening to me? I was listening, most unwillingly. If you were right, things had indeed come to that terrible pass. But I could not, with all my respect for his superior knowledge and experience, I could not persuade myself that he was right, and I owned it with the humility which I really felt. He smiled good-humidly. At any rate, he said, you will admit that Dexter has not freely opened his mind to you thus far. He is still keeping something from your knowledge which you are interested in discovering. Yes, I admit that. Very good. What applies to your view of the case applies to mine. I say he is keeping from you the confession of his guilt. You say he is keeping from you information which may fasten the guilt on some other person. Let's start from that point. Confession or information? How are you to get at what he is now withholding from you? What influence can you bring to bear on him when you see him again? Surely I might persuate him. Certainly. And if persuasion fail, what then? Do you think you can entrap him into speaking out or terrify him into speaking out? If you will look at your notes, Mr. Playmore, you will see that I have already succeeded in terrifying him, though I am not only a woman and though I didn't mean to do it. Very well answered. You mark the trick. What you have done once, you think you can do again. Well, as you are determined to try the experiment, it can do you no harm to know a little more of Dexter's character and temperament than you know now. Suppose we apply for information to somebody who can help us? I started, and looked round the room. He made me do it. He spoke as if the person who was to help us was close at our elbows. Don't be alarmed, he said. The oracle is silent and the oracle is here. He unlocked one of the drawers of his desk, produced a bundle of letters, and picked out one. When we were arranging your husband's defence, he said, We felt some difficulty about including Miserimus Dexter among our witnesses. We had not the slightest suspicion of him, I need hardly tell you, but we were all afraid of his eccentricity, and some among us even feared that the excitement of appearing at the trial might drive him completely out of his mind. In this emergency we applied to a doctor to help us. Under some pretext, which I forget now, we introduced him to Dexter, and in due course of time we received his report. Here it is. He opened the letter, and marking a certain passage in it with a pencil handed it to me. Read the lines which I have marked, he said, They will be quite sufficient for our purpose. I read these words. Summing up the result of my observation, I may give it as my opinion that there is undoubtedly latent insanity in this case, but that no active symptoms of madness have presented themselves as yet. You may, I think, produce him at the trial without fear of consequences. He may say and do all sorts of odd things, but he has his mind under the control of his will, and you may trust his self-esteem to exhibit him in the character of a substantially intelligent witness. As to the future, I am of course not able to speak positively. I can only state my views. That he will end in madness if he live I entertain little or no doubt. The question of when the madness will show itself depends entirely on the state of his health. His nervous system is highly sensitive, and there are signs that his way of life has already damaged it. If he conquered the bad habits to which I have alluded in an earlier part of my report, and if he has many hours of every day quietly in the open air, he may last as a sane man for years to come. If he persists in his present way of life, or in other words, if further mischief occurred to that sensitive nervous system, his laps into insanity must infallibly take place when the mischief has reached his culminating point. Without warning to himself or to others, the whole mental structure will give way, and at a moment's notice, while he is acting as quietly or speaking as intelligently as at his best time, the man will drop, if I may use the expression into madness or idiocy. In either case, when the catastrophe has happened, it is only due to his friends to add that they can, as I believe, entertain no hope of his cure. The balance once lost will be lost for life. There it ended. Mr. Playmore put the letter back in his drawer. You have just read the opinion of one of our highest living authorities, he said. Does Dexter strike you as a likely man to give his nervous system a chance of recovery? Do you see no obstacles and no perils in your way? My silence answered him. Suppose you go back to Dexter. He proceeded, and suppose that the doctor's opinion exaggerates the peril in his case. What are you to do? The last time you saw him, you had the immense advantage of taking him by surprise. Their sensitive nerves of his gave way, and he betrayed the fear that you aroused in him. Can you take him by surprise again? Not you. He is prepared for you now, and he will be on his guard. If you encounter nothing worse, you will have his cunning to deal with next. Are you his match at that? But for Lady Clarinda he would have hopelessly misled you on the subject of Mrs. Bowley. There was no answering this, either. I was foolish enough to try to answer it for all that. He told me the truth so far he knew it. I rejoined. He really saw what he said he saw in the corridor at Gleninch. He told you the truth, returned Mr. Playmore, because he was cunning enough to see that the truth would help him in irritating your suspicions. You don't really believe that he shared your suspicions. Why not? I said. He was as ignorant of what Mrs. Bowley was really doing on that night as I was, until I met Lady Clarinda. It remains to be seen whether he will not be as much astonished as I was when I tell him what Lady Clarinda told me. This smart reply produced an effect which I had not anticipated. To my surprise Mr. Playmore abruptly dropped all further discussion on his side. He appeared to despair of convincing me, and he owned it indirectly in his next words. Well, nothing that I can say to you, he asked, induce you to think as I think in this matter. I have not your ability or your experience, I answered. I am sorry to say I can't think as you think. And are you really determined to see Miss Erie-Mos Dexter again? I have engaged myself to see him again. He waited a little and thought over it. You have honoured me by asking for my advice, he said. I earnestly advise you, Mrs. Ustals, to break your engagement. I go even further than that. I entreat you not to see Dexter again. Just what my mother-in-law had said. Just what Benjamin and Major Fitz-David had said. They were all against me. And still I held out. I wonder when I look back at it at my own obstinacy. I am almost ashamed to relate that I made Mr. Playmore no reply. He waited still looking at me. I felt irritated by that fixed look. I arose and stood before him with my eyes on the floor. He arose in his turn. He understood that the conference was over. Well, well, he said, with a kind of sad good humour. I suppose it is unreasonable of me to expect that a young woman like you should share any opinion with an old lawyer like me. Let me only remind you that our conversation must remain strictly confidential for the present, and then let us change the subject. Is there anything that I can do for you? Are you alone in Edinburgh? No, I am travelling with an old friend of mine who has known me from childhood. And do you stay here to-morrow? I think so. Will you do me one favour? Will you think over what has passed between us, and will you come back to me in the morning? Willingly, Mr. Playmore, if it is only to thank you again for your kindness. On that understanding we parted. He sighed, the cheerful man sighed as he opened the door for me. Women are contradictory creatures. That sigh affected me more than all his arguments. I felt myself blush for my own head-strong resistance to him as I took my leave and turned away into the street.