The Law and the Lady

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER XII. THE SCOTCH VERDICT.

  We walked to the far end of the hall. Major Fitz-David opened thedoor of a long, narrow room built out at the back of the house as asmoking-room, and extending along one side of the courtyard as far asthe stable wall.

  My husband was alone in the room, seated at the further end of it, nearthe fire-place. He started to his feet and faced me in silence as Ientered. The Major softly closed the door on us and retired. Eustacenever stirred a step to meet me. I ran to him, and threw my arms roundhis neck and kissed him. The embrace was not returned; the kiss was notreturned. He passively submitted--nothing more.

  "Eustace!" I said, "I never loved you more dearly than I love you atthis moment! I never felt for you as I feel for you now!"

  He released himself deliberately from my arms. He signed to me with themechanical courtesy of a stranger to take a chair.

  "Thank you, Valeria," he answered, in cold, measured tones. "You couldsay no less to me, after what has happened; and you could say no more.Thank you."

  We were standing before the fire-place. He left me, and walked awayslowly with his head down, apparently intending to leave the room.

  I followed him--I got before him--I placed myself between him and thedoor.

  "Why do you leave me?" I said. "Why do you speak to me in this cruelway? Are you angry, Eustace? My darling, if you _are_ angry, I ask youto forgive me."

  "It is I who ought to ask _your_ pardon," he replied. "I beg you toforgive me, Valeria, for having made you my wife."

  He pronounced those words with a hopeless, heart-broken humilitydreadful to see. I laid my hand on his bosom. I said, "Eustace, look atme."

  He slowly lifted his eyes to my face--eyes cold and clear andtearless--looking at me in steady resignation, in immovable despair. Inthe utter wretchedness of that moment, I was like him; I was as quietand as cold as my husband. He chilled, he froze me.

  "Is it possible," I said, "that you doubt my belief in your innocence?"

  He left the question unanswered. He sighed bitterly to himself. "Poorwoman!" he said, as a stranger might have said, pitying me. "Poorwoman!"

  My heart swelled in me as if it would burst. I lifted my hand from hisbosom, and laid it on his shoulder to support myself.

  "I don't ask you to pity me, Eustace; I ask you to do me justice. Youare not doing me justice. If you had trusted me with the truth in thedays when we first knew that we loved each other--if you had told meall, and more than all that I know now--as God is my witness I wouldstill have married you! _Now_ do you doubt that I believe you are aninnocent man!"

  "I don't doubt it," he said. "All your impulses are generous, Valeria.You are speaking generously and feeling generously. Don't blame me,my poor child, if I look on further than you do: if I see what is tocome--too surely to come--in the cruel future."

  "The cruel future!" I repeated. "What do you mean?"

  "You believe in my innocence, Valeria. The jury who tried me doubtedit--and have left that doubt on record. What reason have _you_ forbelieving, in the face of the Verdict, that I am an innocent man?"

  "I want no reason! I believe in spite of the jury--in spite of theVerdict."

  "Will your friends agree with you? When your uncle and aunt know whathas happened--and sooner or later they must know it--what will they say?They will say, 'He began badly; he concealed from our niece that he hadbeen wedded to a first wife; he married our niece under a false name.He may say he is innocent; but we have only his word for it. When he wasput on his Trial, the Verdict was Not Proven. Not Proven won't do forus. If the jury have done him an injustice--if he _is_ innocent--let himprove it.' That is what the world thinks and says of me. That is whatyour friends will think and say of me. The time is coming, Valeria, whenyou--even You--will feel that your friends have reason to appeal to ontheir side, and that you have no reason on yours."

  "That time will never come!" I answered, warmly. "You wrong me, youinsult me, in thinking it possible!"

  He put down my hand from him, and drew back a step, with a bitter smile.

  "We have only been married a few days, Valeria. Your love for me is newand young. Time, which wears away all things, will wear away the firstfervor of that love."

  "Never! never!"

  He drew back from me a little further still.

  "Look at the world around you," he said. "The happiest husbands andwives have their occasional misunderstandings and disagreements; thebrightest married life has its passing clouds. When those days come for_us,_ the doubts and fears that you don't feel now will find their wayto you then. When the clouds rise in _our_ married life--when I say myfirst harsh word, when you make your first hasty reply--then, in thesolitude of your own room, in the stillness of the wakeful night, youwill think of my first wife's miserable death. You will remember that Iwas held responsible for it, and that my innocence was never proved. Youwill say to yourself, 'Did it begin, in _her_ time, with a harsh wordfrom him and with a hasty reply from her? Will it one day end with meas the jury half feared that it ended with her?' Hideous questions fora wife to ask herself! You will stifle them; you will recoil from them,like a good woman, with horror. But when we meet the next morning youwill be on your guard, and I shall see it, and know in my heart ofhearts what it means. Imbittered by that knowledge, my next harsh wordmay be harsher still. Your next thoughts of me may remind you morevividly and more boldly that your husband was once tried as a poisoner,and that the question of his first wife's death was never properlycleared up. Do you see what materials for a domestic hell are minglingfor us here? Was it for nothing that I warned you, solemnly warned you,to draw back, when I found you bent on discovering the truth? Can I everbe at your bedside now, when you are ill, and not remind you, in themost innocent things I do, of what happened at that other bedside, inthe time of that other woman whom I married first? If I pour out yourmedicine, I commit a suspicious action--they say I poisoned _her_ inher medicine. If I bring you a cup of tea, I revive the remembrance of ahorrid doubt--they said I put the arsenic in _her_ cup of tea. If I kissyou when I leave the room, I remind you that the prosecution accusedme of kissing _her,_ to save appearances and produce an effect on thenurse. Can we live together on such terms as these? No mortal creaturescould support the misery of it. This very day I said to you, 'If youstir a step further in this matter, there is an end of your happinessfor the rest of your life.' You have taken that step and the end hascome to your happiness and to mine. The blight that cankers and kills ison you and on me for the rest of our lives!"

  So far I had forced myself to listen to him. At those last words thepicture of the future that he was placing before me became too hideousto be endured. I refused to hear more.

  "You are talking horribly," I said. "At your age and at mine, have wedone with love and done with hope? It is blasphemy to Love and Hope tosay it!"

  "Wait till you have read the Trial," he answered. "You mean to read it,I suppose?"

  "Every word of it! With a motive, Eustace, which you have yet to know."

  "No motive of yours, Valeria, no love and hope of yours, can alter theinexorable facts. My first wife died poisoned; and the verdict of thejury has not absolutely acquitted me of the guilt of causing her death.As long as you were ignorant of that the possibilities of happiness werealways within our reach. Now you know it, I say again--our married lifeis at an end."

  "No," I said. "Now I know it, our married life has begun--begun with anew object for your wife's devotion, with a new reason for your wife'slove!"

  "What do you mean?"

  I went near to him again, and took his hand.

  "What did you tell me the world has said of you?" I asked. "What did youtell me my friends would say of you? 'Not Proven won't do for us. If thejury have done him an injustice--if he _is_ innocent--let him prove it.'Those were the words you put into the mouths of my friends. I adopt themfor mine! I say Not Proven won't do for _me._ Prove your right, Eustace,to a verdict of Not Guilty. Why have you let three years pass witho
utdoing it? Shall I guess why? You have waited for your wife to help you.Here she is, my darling, ready to help you with all her heart and soul.Here she is, with one object in life--to show the world and to show theScotch Jury that her husband is an innocent man!"

  I had roused myself; my pulses were throbbing, my voice rang through theroom. Had I roused _him_? What was his answer?

  "Read the Trial." That was his answer.

  I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair I shook himwith all my strength. God forgive me, I could almost have struck him forthe tone in which he had spoken and the look that he had cast on me!

  "I have told you that I mean to read the Trial," I said. "I mean toread it, line by line, with you. Some inexcusable mistake has been made.Evidence in your favor that might have been found has not been found.Suspicious circumstances have not been investigated. Crafty people havenot been watched. Eustace! the conviction of some dreadful oversight,committed by you or by the persons who helped you, is firmly settledin my mind. The resolution to set that vile Verdict right was the firstresolution that came to me when I first heard of it in the next room. We_will_ set it right! We _must_ set it right--for your sake, for my sake,for the sake of our children if we are blessed with children. Oh, my ownlove, don't look at me with those cold eyes! Don't answer me in thosehard tones! Don't treat me as if I were talking ignorantly and madly ofsomething that can never be!"

  Still I never roused him. His next words were spoken compassionatelyrather than coldly--that was all.

  "My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land," hesaid. "After such men have done their utmost, and have failed--my poorValeria, what can you, what can I, do? We can only submit."

  "Never!" I cried. "The greatest lawyers are mortal men; the greatestlawyers have made mistakes before now. You can't deny that."

  "Read the Trial." For the third time he said those cruel words, and saidno more.

  In utter despair of moving him---feeling keenly, bitterly (if I mustown it), his merciless superiority to all that I had said to him in thehonest fervor of my devotion and my love--I thought of Major Fitz-Davidas a last resort. In the dis ordered state of my mind at that moment, itmade no difference to me that the Major had already tried to reason withhim, and had failed. In the face of the facts I had a blind beliefin the influence of his old friend, if his old friend could only beprevailed upon to support my view.

  "Wait for me one moment," I said. "I want you to hear another opinionbesides mine."

  I left him, and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was not there. Iknocked at the door of communication with the front room. It was openedinstantly by the Major himself. The doctor had gone away. Benjamin stillremained in the room.

  "Will you come and speak to Eustace?" I began. "If you will only saywhat I want you to say--"

  Before I could add a word more I heard the house door opened and closed.Major Fitz-David and Benjamin heard it too. They looked at each other insilence.

  I ran back, before the Major could stop me, to the room in which I hadseen Eustace. It was empty. My husband had left the house.