MY MOTHER-IN-LAW SURPRISES ME.
I TOOK a chair at a respectful distance from the sofa on which Mrs.
Macallan seated herself. The old lady smiled, and beckoned to me to take
my place by her side. Judging by appearances, she had certainly not come
to see me in the character of an enemy. It remained to be discovered
whether she were really disposed to be my friend.
“I have received a letter from your uncle the vicar,” she began. “He
asks me to visit you, and I am happy--for reasons which you shall
presently hear--to comply with his request. Under other circumstances
I doubt very much, my dear child--strange as the confession may
appear--whether I should have ventured into your presence. My son has
behaved to you so weakly, and (in my opinion) so inexcusably, that I am
really, speaking as his mother, almost ashamed to face you.”
Was she in earnest? I listened to her and looked at her in amazement.
“Your uncle’s letter,” pursued Mrs. Macallan, “tells me how you have
behaved under your hard trial, and what you propose to do now Eustace
has left you. Doctor Starkweather, poor man, seems to be inexpressibly
shocked by what you said to him when he was in London. He begs me to use
my influence to induce you to abandon your present ideas, and to make
you return to your old home at the Vicarage. I don’t in the least agree
with your uncle, my dear. Wild as I believe your plans to be--you have
not the slightest chance of succeeding in carrying them out--I admire
your courage, your fidelity, your unshaken faith in my unhappy son,
after his unpardonable behavior to you. You are a fine creature,
Valeria, and I have come here to tell you so in plain words. Give me a
kiss, child. You deserve to be the wife of a hero, and you have married
one of the weakest of living mortals. God forgive me for speaking so of
my own son; but it’s in my mind, and it must come out!”
This way of speaking of Eustace was more than I could suffer, even from
his mother. I recovered the use of my tongue in my husband’s defense.
“I am sincerely proud of your good opinion, dear Mrs. Macallan,” I said.
“But you distress me--forgive me if I own it plainly--when I hear you
speak so disparagingly of Eustace. I cannot agree with you that my
husband is the weakest of living mortals.”
“Of course not!” retorted the old lady. “You are like all good
women--you make a hero of the man you love,--whether he deserve it or
not. Your husband has hosts of good qualities, child--and perhaps I know
them better than you do. But his whole conduct, from the moment when he
first entered your uncle’s house to the present time, has been, I say
again, the conduct of an essentially weak man. What do you think he has
done now by way of climax? He has joined a charitable brotherhood; and
he is off to the war in Spain with a red cross on his arm, when he ought
to be here on his knees, asking his wife to forgive him. I say that is
the conduct of a weak man. Some people might call it by a harder name.”
This news startled and distressed me. I might be resigned to his leaving
me for a time; but all my instincts as a woman revolted at his placing
himself in a position of danger during his separation from his wife.
He had now deliberately added to my anxieties. I thought it cruel of
him--but I would not confess what I thought to his mother. I affected
to be as cool as she was; and I disputed her conclusions with all the
firmness that I could summon to help me. The terrible old woman only
went on abusing him more vehemently than ever.
“What I complain of in my son,” proceeded Mrs. Macallan, “is that he has
entirely failed to understand you. If he had married a fool, his conduct
would be intelligible enough. He would have done wisely to conceal from
a fool that he had been married already, and that he had suffered the
horrid public exposure of a Trial for the murder of his wife. Then,
again, he would have been quite right, when this same fool had
discovered the truth, to take himself out of her way before she could
suspect him of poisoning he r--for the sake of the peace and quiet of
both parties. But you are not a fool. I can see that, after only a short
experience of you. Why can’t he see it too? Why didn’t he trust you
with his secret from the first, instead of stealing his way into your
affections under an assumed name? Why did he plan (as he confessed to
me) to take you away to the Mediterranean, and to keep you abroad,
for fear of some officious friends at home betraying him to you as the
prisoner of the famous Trial? What is the plain answer to all these
questions? What is the one possible explanation of this otherwise
unaccountable conduct? There is only one answer, and one explanation. My
poor, wretched son--he takes after his father; he isn’t the least like
me!--is weak: weak in his way of judging, weak in his way of acting,
and, like all weak people, headstrong and unreasonable to the last
degree. There is the truth! Don’t get red and angry. I am as fond of
him as you are. I can see his merits too. And one of them is that he has
married a woman of spirit and resolution--so faithful and so fond of
him that she won’t even let his own mother tell her of his faults. Good
child! I like you for hating me!”
“Dear madam, don’t say that I hate you!” I exclaimed (feeling very much
as if I did hate her, though, for all that). “I only presume to think
that you are confusing a delicate-minded man with a weak-minded man. Our
dear unhappy Eustace--”
“Is a delicate-minded man,” said the impenetrable Mrs. Macallan,
finishing my sentence for me. “We will leave it there, my dear, and get
on to another subject. I wonder whether we shall disagree about that
too?”
“What is the subject, madam?”
“I won’t tell you if you call me madam. Call me mother. Say, ‘What is
the subject, mother?’”
“What is the subject, mother?”
“Your notion of turning yourself into a Court of Appeal for a new Trial
of Eustace, and forcing the world to pronounce a just verdict on him. Do
you really mean to try it?”
“I do!”
Mrs. Macallan considered for a moment grimly with herself.
“You know how heartily I admire your courage, and your devotion to my
unfortunate son,” she said. “You know by this time that _I_ don’t cant.
But I cannot see you attempt to perform impossibilities; I cannot let
you uselessly risk your reputation and your happiness without warning
you before it is too late. My child, the thing you have got it in your
head to do is not to be done by you or by anybody. Give it up.”
“I am deeply obliged to you, Mrs. Macallan--”
“‘Mother!’”
“I am deeply obliged to you, mother, for the interest that you take in
me, but I cannot give it up. Right or wrong, risk or no risk, I must and
I will try it!”
Mrs. Macallan looked at me very attentively, and sighed to herself.
“Oh, youth, youth!” she said to herself, sadly. “What a grand thing
it is to be young!” She controlled the rising regret, and turned on me
suddenly, almost fiercely, with these words: “What, in God’s name, do
you mean to do?”
At the instant when she put the question, the idea crossed my mind that
Mrs. Macallan could introduce me, if she pleased, to Miserrimus Dexter.
She must know him, and know him well, as a guest at Gleninch and an old
friend of her son.
“I mean to consult Miserrimus Dexter,” I answered, boldly.
Mrs. Macallan started back from me with a loud exclamation of surprise.
“Are you out of your senses?” she asked.
I told her, as I had told Major Fitz-David, that I had reason to think
Mr. Dexter’s advice might be of real assistance to me at starting.
“And I,” rejoined Mrs. Macallan, “have reason to think that your whole
project is a mad one, and that in asking Dexter’s advice on it you
appropriately consult a madman. You needn’t start, child! There is no
harm in the creature. I don’t mean that he will attack you, or be rude
to you. I only say that the last person whom a young woman, placed in
your painful and delicate position, ought to associate herself with is
Miserrimus Dexter.”
Strange! Here was the Major’s warning repeated by Mrs. Macallan, almost
in the Major’s own words. Well! It shared the fate of most warnings. It
only made me more and more eager to have my own way.
“You surprise me very much,” I said. “Mr. Dexter’s evidence, given at
the Trial, seems as clear and reasonable as evidence can be.”
“Of course it is!” answered Mrs. Macallan. “The shorthand writers and
reporters put his evidence into presentable language before they printed
it. If you had heard what he really said, as I did, you would have
been either very much disgusted with him or very much amused by him,
according to your way of looking at things. He began, fairly enough,
with a modest explanation of his absurd Christian name, which at once
checked the merriment of the audience. But as he went on the mad side
of him showed itself. He mixed up sense and nonsense in the strangest
confusion; he was called to order over and over again; he was even
threatened with fine and imprisonment for contempt of Court. In short,
he was just like himself--a mixture of the strangest and the most
opposite qualities; at one time perfectly clear and reasonable, as
you said just now; at another breaking out into rhapsodies of the most
outrageous kind, like a man in a state of delirium. A more entirely
unfit person to advise anybody, I tell you again, never lived. You don’t
expect Me to introduce you to him, I hope?”
“I did think of such a thing,” I answered. “But after what you have
said, dear Mrs. Macallan, I give up the idea, of course. It is not
a great sacrifice--it only obliges me to wait a week for Major
Fitz-David’s dinner-party. He has promised to ask Miserrimus Dexter to
meet me.”
“There is the Major all over!” cried the old lady. “If you pin your
faith on that man, I pity you. He is as slippery as an eel. I suppose
you asked him to introduce you to Dexter?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly! Dexter despises him, my dear. He knows as well as I do that
Dexter won’t go to his dinner. And he takes that roundabout way of
keeping you apart, instead of saying No to you plainly, like an honest
man.”
This was bad news. But I was, as usual, too obstinate to own myself
defeated.
“If the worst comes to the worst,” I said, “I can but write to Mr.
Dexter, and beg him to grant me an interview.”
“And go to him by yourself, if he does grant it?” inquired Mrs.
Macallan.
“Certainly. By myself.”
“You really mean it?”
“I do, indeed.”
“I won’t allow you to go by yourself.”
“May I venture to ask, ma’am how you propose to prevent me?”
“By going with you, to be sure, you obstinate hussy! Yes, yes--I can be
as headstrong as you are when I like. Mind! I don’t want to know what
your plans are. I don’t want to be mixed up with your plans. My son is
resigned to the Scotch Verdict. I am resigned to the Scotch Verdict.
It is you who won’t let matters rest as they are. You are a vain and
foolhardy young person. But, somehow, I have taken a liking to you,
and I won’t let you go to Miserrimus Dexter by yourself. Put on your
bonnet!”
“Now?” I asked.
“Certainly! My carriage is at the door. And the sooner it’s over the
better I shall be pleased. Get ready--and be quick about it!”
I required no second bidding. In ten minutes more we were on our way to
Miserrimus Dexter.
Such was the result of my mother-in-law’s visit!