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 toMiserrimus Dexter.

  Startling doubts beset me as I walked restlessly backward and forward,now in the anteroom, and now in the corridor outside. It was plain thatI had (quite innocently) disturbed the repose of some formidable secretsin Miserrimus Dexter's mind. I confused and wearied my poor brainsin trying to guess what the secrets might be. All my ingenuity--asafter-events showed me--was wasted on speculations not one of whicheven approached the truth. I was on surer ground when I arrived at theconclusion that Dexter had really kept every mortal creature out ofhis confidence. He could never have betrayed such serious signs ofdisturbance as I had noticed in him, if he had publicly acknowledged atthe Trial, or if he had privately communicated to any chosen friend, allthat he knew of the tragic and terrible drama acted in the bedchamber atGleninch. What powerful influence had induced him to close his lips?Had he been silent in mercy to others? or in dread of consequences tohimself? Impossible to tell! Could I hope that he would confide to Mewhat he had kept secret from Justice and Friendship alike? When he knewwhat I really wanted of him, would he arm me, out of his own stores ofknowledge, with the weapon that would win me victory in the struggle tocome? The chances were against it--there was no denying that. Still theend was worth trying for. The caprice of the moment might yet stand myfriend, with such a wayward being as Miserrimus Dexter. My plans andprojects were sufficiently strange, sufficiently wide of the ordinarylimits of a woman's thoughts and actions, to attract his sympathies."Who knows," I thought to myself, "if I may not take his confidence bysurprise, by simply telling him the truth?"

  The interval expired; the door was thrown open; the voice of my hostsummoned me again to the inner room.

  "Welcome back!" said Miserrimus Dexter.

  "Dear Mrs. Valeria, I am quite myself again. How are you?"

  He looked and spoke with the easy cordiality of an old friend. Duringthe period of my absence, short as it was, another change had passedover this most multiform of living beings. His eyes sparkled withgood-humor; his cheeks were flushing under a new excitement of somesort. Even his dress had undergone alteration since I had seen it last.He now wore an extemporized cap of white paper; his ruffles were tuckedup; a clean apron was thrown over the sea-green coverlet. He hacked hischair before me, bowing and smiling, and waved me to a seat withthe grace of a dancing master, chastened by the dignity of a lord inwaiting.

  "I am going to cook," he announced, with the most engaging simplicity."We both stand in need of refreshment before we return to the seriousbusiness 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 havebeen taking some wine. Please sanction that proceeding by taking somewine too."

  He filled a goblet of ancient Venetian glass with a purple-red liquor,beautiful to see.

  "Burgundy!" he said--"the king of wine: And this is the king ofBurgundies--Clos Vougeot. I drink to your health and happiness!"

  He filled a second goblet for himself, and honored the toast by drainingit to the bottom. I now understood the sparkle in his eyes and the flushin his cheeks. It was my interest not to offend him. I drank a little ofhis wine, and I quite agreed with him. I thought it delicious.

  "What shall we eat?" he asked. "It must be something worthy of our ClosVougeot. Ariel is good at roasting and boiling joints, poor wretch!but I don't insult your taste by offering you Ariel's cookery. Plainjoints!" he exclaimed, with an expression of refined disgust. "Bah!A man who eats a plain joint is only one remove from a cannibal or abutcher. Will you leave it to me to discover something more worthy ofus? Let us go to the kitchen."

  He wheeled his chair around, and invited me to accompany him with acourteous wave of his hand.

  I followed the chair to some closed curtains at one end of the room,which I had not hitherto noticed. Drawing aside the curtains, herevealed to view an alcove, in which stood a neat little gas-stove forcooking. Drawers and cupboards, plates, dishes, and saucepans, wereranged around the alcove--all on a miniature scale, all scrupulouslybright and clean. "Welcome to the kitchen!" said Miserrimus Dexter. Hedrew 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!" hecried, and opening one of the cupboards next, took from it a blackbottle of a form that was new to me. Sounding this bottle with a spike,he pierced and produced to view some little irregularly formed blackobjects, which might have been familiar enough to a woman accustomed tothe luxurious tables of the rich, but which were a new revelation to aperson like myself, who had led a simple country life in the house of aclergyman with small means. When I saw my host carefully lay out theseoccult substances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and thenplunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them, mycuriosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say, "What arethose things, Mr. Dexter, and are we really going to eat them?"

  He started at the rash question, and looked at me with hands outspreadin 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 seesthem!"

  "I have heard of truffles," I answered, humbly, "but I never saw thembefore. We had no such foreign luxuries as those, Mr. Dexter, at home inthe North."

  Miserrimus Dexter lifted one of the truffles tenderly on his spike, andheld it up to me in a favorable light.

  "Make the most of one of the few first sensations in this life whichhas no ingredient of disappointment lurking under the surface," he said."Look at it; meditate over it. You shall eat it, Mrs. Valeria, stewed inBurgundy!"

  He lighted the gas for cooking with the air of a man who was about tooffer me an inestimable proof of his good-will.

  "Forgive me if I observe the most absolute silence," he said, "datingfrom the moment when I take this in my hand." He produced a brightlittle 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 whyno woman ever has reached, or ever will reach, the highest distinctionas a cook. As a rule, women are incapable of absolutely concentratingtheir attention on any one occupation for any given time. Theirminds will run on something else--say; typically, for the sake ofillustration, their sweetheart or their new bonnet. The one obstacle,Mrs. Valeria, to your rising equal to the men in the various industrialprocesses of life is not raised, as the women vainly suppose, by thedefective institutions of the age they live in. No! the obstacle is inthemselves. No institutions that can be devised to encourage them willever be strong enough to contend successfully with the sweetheart andthe new bonnet. A little while ago, for instance, I was instrumental ingetting women employed in our local post-office here. The other day Itook the trouble--a serious business to me--of getting downstairs, andwheeling myself away to the office to see how they were getting on. Itook a letter with me to register. It had an unusually long address. Theregistering woman began copying the address on the receipt form, in abusiness-like manner cheering and delightful to see. Half way through, alittle child-sister of one of the other women employed trotted into theoffice, and popped under the counter to go and speak to her relative.The registering woman's mind instantly gave way. Her pencil stopped; hereyes wandered off to the child with a charming expression of interest.'Well, Lucy,' she said, 'how d'ye do?' Then she remembered businessagain, and returned to her 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 seenLucy--he would have been too closely occupied with what he was aboutat the moment. There is the whole difference between the mentalconstitution of the sexes, which no legislation will ever alter as longas the world lasts! What does it matter? Women are infinitely superiorto 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 disputethe question with him, even if I had felt inclined to do so. He absorbedhimself in his stew-pan.

  I looked about me in the room.

  The same insatiable relish for horrors exhibited downstairs by thepictures in the hall was displayed again here. The photographs hangingon the wall represented the various forms of madness taken from thelife. The plaster casts ranged on the shelf opposite were casts (afterdeath) of the heads of famous murderers. A frightful little skeletonof a woman hung in a cupboard, behind a glazed door, with this cynicalinscription placed above the skull: "Behold the scaffolding on whichbeauty is built!" In a corresponding cupboard, with the door wideopen, there hung in loose folds a shirt (as I took it to be) of chamoisleather. Touching it (and finding it to be far softer than any chamoisleather that my fingers had ever felt before), I disarranged the folds,and disclosed a ticket pinned among them, describing the thing in thesehorrid lines: "Skin of a French Marquis, tanned in the Revolution ofNinety-three. Who says the nobility are not good for something? Theymake good leather."

  After this last specimen of my host's taste in curiosities, I pursuedmy investigation no further. I returned to my chair, and waited for thetruffles.

  After a brief interval, the voice of the poet-painter-composer-and-cooksummoned me back to the alcove.

  The gas was out. The stew-pan and its accompaniments had vanished. Onthe marble slab were two plates, two napkins, two rolls of bread, anda dish, with another napkin in it, on which reposed two quaint littleblack balls. Miserrimus Dexter, regarding me with a smile of benevolentinterest, put one of the balls on my plate, and took the other himself."Compose yourself, Mrs. Valeria," he said. "This is an epoch in yourlife. Your first Truffle! Don't touch it with the knife. Use the forkalone. And--pardon me; this is most important--eat slowly."

  I followed my instructions, and assumed an enthusiasm which I honestlyconfess I did not feel. I privately thought the new vegetable a greatdeal too rich, and in other respects quite unworthy of the fuss that hadbeen made about it. Miserrimus Dexter lingered and languished over histruffles, and sipped his wonderful Burgundy, and sang his own praisesas a cook until I was really almost mad with impatience to return tothe real object of my visit. In the reckless state of mind which thisfeeling produced, I abruptly reminded my host that he was wasting ourtime, by the most dangerous question that I could possibly put to him.

  "Mr. Dexter," I said, "have you seen anything lately of Mrs. Beauly?"

  The easy sense of enjoyment expressed in his face left it at those rashwords, and went out like a suddenly extinguished light. That furtivedistrust of me which I had already noticed instantly made itself feltagain in his manner and in his voice.

  "Do you know Mrs. Beauly?" he asked.

  "I only know her," I answered, "by what I have read of her in theTrial."

  He was not satisfied with that reply.

  "You must have an interest of some sort in Mrs. Beauly," he said, "oryou would not have asked me about her. Is it the interest of a friend,or the interest of an enemy?"

  Rash as I might be, I was not quite reckless enough yet to meet thatplain question by an equally plain reply. I saw enough in his face towarn 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 asubject which is very painful to you--the subject of the Trial."

  "Go on," he said, with one of his grim outbursts of humor. "Here I am atyour mercy--a martyr at the stake. Poke the fire! poke the fire!"

  "I am only an ignorant woman," I resumed, "and I dare say I am quitewrong; but there is one part of my husband's trial which doesn't atall satisfy me. The defense set up for him seems to me to have been acomplete mistake."

  "A complete mistake?" he repeated. "Strange language, Mrs. Valeria, tosay the least of it!" He tried to speak lightly; he took up his gobletof wine; but I could see that I had produced an effect on him. His handtrembled as it carried the wine to his lips.

  "I don't doubt that Eustace's first wife really asked him to buy thearsenic," I continued. "I don't doubt that she used it secretly toimprove her complexion. But w hat I do _not_ believe is that she died ofan overdose of the poison, taken by mistake."

  He put back the goblet of wine on the table near him so unsteadily thathe spilled the greater part of it. For a moment his eyes met mine, thenlooked down again.

  "How do you believe she died?" he inquired, in tones so low that I couldbarely 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, andsank back again, seized, apparently, with a sudden faintness.

  "Not my husband!" I hastened to add. "You know that I am satisfied of_his_ innocence."

  I saw him shudder. I saw his hands fasten their hold convulsively on thearms 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 inwhat direction my suspicions pointed.

  "Can't you guess?" I said.

  There was a pause. I supposed him to be secretly following his owntrain of thought. It was not for long. On a sudden he started up in hischair. The prostration which had possessed him appeared to vanish inan instant. His eyes recovered their wild light; his hands were steadyagain; his color was brighter than ever. Had he been pondering over thesecret of my interest in Mrs. Beauly? and had he guessed? He had!

  "Answer on your word of honor!" 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 threeletters of the alphabet?"

  "Yes."

  "B?"

  "Yes."

  "Beauly?"

  "Beauly."

  He threw his hands up above his head, and burst into a frantic fit oflaughter.

  "I have lived long enough!" he broke out, wildly. "At last I havediscovered one other person in the world who sees it as plainly as Ido. Cruel Mrs. Valeria! why did you torture me? Why didn't you own itbefore?"

  "What!" I exclaimed, catching the infection of his excitement. "Are_your_ ideas _my_ ideas? Is it possible that _you_ suspect Mrs. Beaulytoo?"

  He made this remarkable reply:

  "Suspect?" he repeated, contemptuously. "There isn't the shadow of adoubt about it. Mrs. Beauly poisoned her."