The Law and the Lady

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER XI. THE RETURN TO LIFE.

  My first remembrance when I began to recover my senses was theremembrance of Pain--agonizing pain, as if every nerve in my body werebeing twisted and torn out of me. My whole being writhed and quiveredunder the dumb and dreadful protest of Nature against the effort torecall me to life. I would have given worlds to be able to cry out--toentreat the unseen creatures about me to give me back to death. How longthat speechless agony held me I never knew. In a longer or shorter timethere stole over me slowly a sleepy sense of relief. I heard my ownlabored breathing. I felt my hands moving feebly and mechanically, likethe hands of a baby. I faintly opened my eyes and looked round me--as ifI had passed through the ordeal of death, and had awakened to new sensesin a new world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "If you please," the Major answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Long after I was taken ill?"

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

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

  "Yes. He returned earlier than he had anticipated, and he felt uneasy atnot finding you at the hotel."

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

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

  This brief explanation was quite enough for me--I understood what hadhappened. Eustace would easily frighten simple old Benjamin about myabsence from the hotel; and, once alarmed, Benjamin would be persuadedwithout difficulty to repeat the few words which had passed between uson the subject of Major Fitz-David. My husband's presence in the Major'shouse was perfectly explained. But his extraordinary conduct in leavingthe room at the very time when I was just recovering my senses stillremained to be accounted for. Major Fitz-David looked seriouslyembar
rassed when I put the question to him.

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

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

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

  "Oh no!"

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

  "Certainly. My young vocalist (Miss Hoighty) told the doctor exactlywhat had happened; and the doctor in her presence repeated the statementto your husband."

  "Did the doctor see the Trial?"

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

  I rose from the sofa in horror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The Major looked surprised at the question.

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

  "Never."

  "I thought it strange," he went on, "when you told me you had found outyour husband's true name, that the discovery appeared to have suggestedno painful association to your mind. It is not more than three yearssince all England was talking of your husband. One can hardly wonder athis taking refuge, poor fellow, in an assumed name. Where could you havebeen at the time?"

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

  "Yes."

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

  Major Fitz-David shook his head sadly.

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

  "Was that the Verdict when Eustace was tried?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "The jury were not quite satisfied that my husband was guilty? and notquite satisfied that my husband was innocent? Is that what the ScotchVerdict means?"

  "That is what the Scotch Verdict means. For three years that doubt abouthim in the minds of the jury who tried him has stood on public record."

  Oh, my poor darling! my innocent martyr! I understood it at last. Thefalse name in which he had married me; the terrible words he had spokenwhen he had warned me to respect his secret; the still more terribledoubt that he felt of me at that moment--it was all intelligible to mysympathies, it was all clear to my understanding, now. I got up againfrom the sofa, strong in a daring resolution which the Scotch Verdicthad suddenly kindled in me--a resolution at once too sacred and toodesperate to be confided, in the first instance, to any other than myhusband's ear.

  "Take me to Eustace!" I cried. "I am strong enough to bear anythingnow."

  After one searching look at me, the Major silently offered me his arm,and led me out of the room.