VERDICT OF THE JURY--"MAD, MY LORD."
Trevelyan was left alone at Turin when Mr. Glascock went on to
Florence with his fair American friends. It was imperatively
necessary that he should remain at Turin, though he had no business
there of any kind whatever, and did not know a single person in the
city. And of all towns in Italy Turin has perhaps less of attraction
to offer to the solitary visitor than any other. It is new and
parallelogrammatic as an American town, is very cold in cold weather,
very hot in hot weather, and now that it has been robbed of its life
as a capital, is as dull and uninteresting as though it were German
or English. There is the Armoury, and the river Po, and a good hotel.
But what are these things to a man who is forced to live alone in a
place for four days, or perhaps a week? Trevelyan was bound to remain
at Turin till he should hear from Bozzle. No one but Bozzle knew his
address; and he could do nothing till Bozzle should have communicated
to him tidings of what was being done at St. Diddulph's.
There is perhaps no great social question so imperfectly understood
among us at the present day as that which refers to the line which
divides sanity from insanity. That this man is sane and that other
unfortunately mad we do know well enough; and we know also that one
man may be subject to various hallucinations,--may fancy himself to
be a teapot, or what not,--and yet be in such a condition of mind as
to call for no intervention either on behalf of his friends, or of
the law; while another may be in possession of intellectual faculties
capable of lucid exertion for the highest purposes, and yet be so mad
that bodily restraint upon him is indispensable. We know that the
sane man is responsible for what he does, and that the insane man
is irresponsible; but we do not know,--we only guess wildly, at the
state of mind of those, who now and again act like madmen, though no
court or council of experts has declared them to be mad. The bias of
the public mind is to press heavily on such men till the law attempts
to touch them, as though they were thoroughly responsible; and
then, when the law interferes, to screen them as though they were
altogether irresponsible. The same juryman who would find a man mad
who has murdered a young woman, would in private life express a
desire that the same young man should be hung, crucified, or skinned
alive, if he had moodily and without reason broken his faith to the
young woman in lieu of killing her. Now Trevelyan was, in truth, mad
on the subject of his wife's alleged infidelity. He had abandoned
everything that he valued in the world, and had made himself wretched
in every affair of life, because he could not submit to acknowledge
to himself the possibility of error on his own part. For that, in
truth, was the condition of his mind. He had never hitherto believed
that she had been false to her vow, and had sinned against him
irredeemably; but he had thought that in her regard for another man
she had slighted him; and, so thinking, he had subjected her to a
severity of rebuke which no high-spirited woman could have borne. His
wife had not tried to bear it,--in her indignation had not striven to
cure the evil. Then had come his resolution that she should submit,
or part from him; and, having so resolved, nothing could shake him.
Though every friend he possessed was now against him,--including
even Lady Milborough,--he was certain that he was right. Had not his
wife sworn to obey him, and was not her whole conduct one tissue of
disobedience? Would not the man who submitted to this find himself
driven to submit to things worse? Let her own her fault, let her
submit, and then she should come back to him.
He had not considered, when his resolutions to this effect were first
forming themselves, that a separation between a man and his wife once
effected cannot be annulled, and as it were cured, so as to leave no
cicatrice behind. Gradually, as he spent day after day in thinking on
this one subject, he came to feel that even were his wife to submit,
to own her fault humbly, and to come back to him, this very coming
back would in itself be a new wound. Could he go out again with
his wife on his arm to the houses of those who knew that he had
repudiated her because of her friendship with another man? Could
he open again that house in Curzon Street, and let things go on
quietly as they had gone before? He told himself that it was
impossible;--that he and she were ineffably disgraced;--that, if
reunited, they must live buried out of sight in some remote distance.
And he told himself, also, that he could never be with her again
night or day without thinking of the separation. His happiness had
been shipwrecked.
Then he had put himself into the hands of Mr. Bozzle, and Mr. Bozzle
had taught him that women very often do go astray. Mr. Bozzle's idea
of female virtue was not high, and he had opportunities of implanting
his idea on his client's mind. Trevelyan hated the man. He was filled
with disgust by Bozzle's words, and was made miserable by Bozzle's
presence. Yet he came gradually to believe in Bozzle. Bozzle alone
believed in him. There were none but Bozzle who did not bid him to
submit himself to his disobedient wife. And then, as he came to
believe in Bozzle, he grew to be more and more assured that no one
but Bozzle could tell him facts. His chivalry, and love, and sense of
woman's honour, with something of manly pride on his own part,--so
he told himself,--had taught him to believe it to be impossible that
his wife should have sinned. Bozzle, who knew the world, thought
otherwise. Bozzle, who had no interest in the matter, one way or the
other, would find out facts. What if his chivalry, and love, and
manly pride had deceived him? There were women who sinned. Then he
prayed that his wife might not be such a woman; and got up from his
prayers almost convinced that she was a sinner.
His mind was at work upon it always. Could it be that she was so base
as this--so vile a thing, so abject, such dirt, pollution, filth? But
there were such cases. Nay, were they not almost numberless? He found
himself reading in the papers records of such things from day to
day, and thought that in doing so he was simply acquiring experience
necessary for himself. If it were so, he had indeed done well to
separate himself from a thing so infamous. And if it were not so,
how could it be that that man had gone to her in Devonshire? He had
received from his wife's hands a short note addressed to the man, in
which the man was desired by her not to go to her, or to write to
her again, because of her husband's commands. He had shown this to
Bozzle, and Bozzle had smiled. "It's just the sort of thing they
does," Bozzle had said. "Then they writes another by post." He had
consulted Bozzle as to the sending on of that letter, and Bozzle had
been strongly of opinion that it should be forwarded, a copy having
been duly taken and attested by himself. It might be very pretty
evidence by-and-by. If the letter were not forwarded, Bozzle thought
that the omission to do so might be given in evidence against his
employer. Bozzle was very careful, and full of "evidence." The letter
therefore was sent on to Colonel Osborne. "If there's billy-dous
going between 'em we shall nobble 'em," said Bozzle. Trevelyan tore
his hair in despair, but believed that there would be billy-dous.
He came to believe everything; and, though he prayed fervently that
his wife might not be led astray, that she might be saved at any
rate from utter vice, yet he almost came to hope that it might be
otherwise;--not, indeed, with the hope of the sane man, who desires
that which he tells himself to be for his advantage; but with the
hope of the insane man, who loves to feed his grievance, even though
the grief should be his death. They who do not understand that a man
may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous
to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of
the human mind. Trevelyan would have given all that he had to save
his wife; would, even now, have cut his tongue out before he would
have expressed to anyone,--save to Bozzle,--a suspicion that she
could in truth have been guilty; was continually telling himself that
further life would be impossible to him, if he, and she, and that
child of theirs, should be thus disgraced;--and yet he expected it,
believed it, and, after a fashion, he almost hoped it.
He was to wait at Turin till tidings should come from Bozzle, and
after that he would go on to Venice; but he would not move from Turin
till he should have received his first communication from England.
When he had been three days at Turin they came to him, and, among
other letters in Bozzle's packet, there was a letter addressed in his
wife's handwriting. The letter was simply directed to Bozzle's house.
In what possible way could his wife have found out ought of his
dealings with Bozzle,--where Bozzle lived, or could have learned that
letters intended for him should be sent to the man's own residence?
Before, however, we inspect the contents of Mr. Bozzle's dispatch, we
will go back and see how Mrs. Trevelyan had discovered the manner of
forwarding a letter to her husband.
The matter of the address was, indeed, very simple. All letters for
Trevelyan were to be redirected from the house in Curzon Street, and
from the chambers in Lincoln's Inn, to the Acrobats' Club; to the
porter of the Acrobats' Club had been confided the secret, not of
Bozzle's name, but of Bozzle's private address, No. 55, Stony Walk,
Union Street, Borough. Thus all letters reaching the Acrobats' were
duly sent to Mr. Bozzle's house. It may be remembered that Hugh
Stanbury, on the occasion of his last visit to the parsonage of St.
Diddulph's, was informed that Mrs. Trevelyan had a letter from her
father for her husband, and that she knew not whither to send it.
It may well be that, had the matter assumed no other interest in
Stanbury's eyes than that given to it by Mrs. Trevelyan's very
moderate anxiety to have the letter forwarded, he would have thought
nothing about it; but having resolved, as he sat upon the knife-board
of the omnibus,--the reader will, at any rate, remember those
resolutions made on the top of the omnibus while Hugh was smoking his
pipe,--having resolved that a deed should be done at St. Diddulph's,
he resolved also that it should be done at once. He would not allow
the heat of his purpose to be cooled by delay. He would go to St.
Diddulph's at once, with his heart in his hand. But it might, he
thought, be as well that he should have an excuse for his visit.
So he called upon the porter at the Acrobats', and was successful
in learning Mr. Trevelyan's address. "Stony Walk, Union Street,
Borough," he said to himself, wondering; then it occurred to him
that Bozzle, and Bozzle only among Trevelyan's friends, could
live at Stony Walk in the Borough. Thus armed, he set out for St.
Diddulph's;--and, as one of the effects of his visit to the East, Sir
Marmaduke's note was forwarded to Louis Trevelyan at Turin.