WITH such a man as Miserrimus Dexter, and with such a purpose as I had
in view, no half-confidences were possible. I must either risk the most
unreserved acknowledgment of the interests that I really had at stake,
or I must make the best excuse that occurred to me for abandoning my
contemplated experiment at the last moment. In my present critical
situation, no such refuge as a middle course lay before me--even if I
had been inclined to take it. As things were, I ran risks, and plunged
headlong into my own affairs at starting.
“Thus far, you know little or nothing about me, Mr. Dexter,” I said.
“You are, as I believe, quite unaware that my husband and I are not
living together at the present time.”
“Is it necessary to mention your husband?” he asked, coldly, without
looking up from his embroidery, and without pausing in his work.
“It is absolutely necessary,” I answered. “I can explain myself to you
in no other way.”
He bent his head, and sighed resignedly.
“You and your husband are not living together at the present time,” he
resumed. “Does that mean that Eustace has left you?”
“He has left me, and has gone abroad.”
“Without any necessity for it?”
“Without the least necessity.”
“Has he appointed no time for his return to you?”
“If he persevere in his present resolution, Mr. Dexter, Eustace will
never return to me.”
For the first time he raised his head from his embroidery--with a sudden
appearance of interest.
“Is the quarrel so serious as that?” he asked. “Are you free of each
other, pretty Mrs. Valeria, by common consent of both parties?”
The tone in which he put the question was not at all to my liking. The
look he fixed on me was a look which unpleasantly suggested that I had
trusted myself alone with him, and that he might end in taking advantage
of it. I reminded him quietly, by my manner more than by my words, of
the respect which he owed to me.
“You are entirely mistaken,” I said. “There is no anger--there is not
even a misunderstanding between us. Our parting has cost bitter sorrow,
Mr. Dexter, to him and to me.”
He submitted to be set right with ironical resignation. “I am all
attention,” he said, threading his needle. “Pray go on; I won’t
interrupt you again.” Acting on this invitation, I told him the truth
about my husband and myself quite unreservedly, taking care, however,
at the same time, to put Eustace’s motives in the best light that they
would bear. Miserrimus Dexter dropped his embroidery on his lap, and
laughed softly to himself, with an impish enjoyment of my poor little
narrative, which set every nerve in me on edge as I looked at him.
“I see nothing to laugh at,” I said, sharply.
His beautiful blue eyes rested on me with a look of innocent surprise.
“Nothing to laugh at,” he repeated, “in such an exhibition of human
folly as you have just described?” His expression suddenly changed his
face darkened and hardened very strangely. “Stop!” he cried, before I
could answer him. “There can be only one reason for you’re taking it as
seriously as you do. Mrs. Valeria! you are fond of your husband.”
“Fond of him isn’t strong enough to express it,” I retorted. “I love him
with my whole heart.”
Miserrimus Dexter stroked his magnificent beard, and contemplatively
repeated my words. “You love him with your whole heart? Do you know
why?”
“Because I can’t help it,” I answered, doggedly.
He smiled satirically, and went on with his embroidery. “Curious!” he
said to himself; “Eustace’s first wife loved him too. There are some men
whom the women all like, and there are other men whom the women never
care for. Without the least reason for it in either case. The one man is
just as good as the other; just as handsome, as agreeable, as honorable,
and as high in rank as the other. And yet for Number One they will go
through fire and water, and for Number Two they won’t so much as turn
their heads to look at him. Why? They don’t know themselves--as Mrs.
Valeria has just said! Is there a physical reason for it? Is there
some potent magnetic emanation from Number One which Number Two doesn’t
possess? I must investigate this when I have the time, and when I find
myself in the humor.” Having so far settled the question to his own
entire satisfaction, he looked up at me again. “I am still in the dark
about you and your motives,” he said. “I am still as far as ever from
understanding what your interest is in investigating that hideous
tragedy at Gleninch. Clever Mrs. Valeria, please take me by the hand,
and lead me into the light. You’re not offended with me are you? Make it
up; and I will give you this pretty piece of embroidery when I have done
it. I am only a poor, solitary, deformed wretch, with a quaint turn of
mind; I mean no harm. Forgive me! indulge me! enlighten me!”
He resumed his childish ways; he recover, his innocent smile, with the
odd little puckers and wrinkles accompanying it at the corners of his
eyes. I began to doubt whether I might not have been unreasonably
hard on him. I penitently resolved to be more considerate toward his
infirmities of mind and body during the remainder of my visit.
“Let me go back for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at Gleninch,” I
said. “You agree with me in believing Eustace to be absolutely innocent
of the crime for which he was tried. Your evidence at the Trial tells me
that.”
He paused over his work, and looked at me with a grave and stern
attention which presented his face in quite a new light.
“That is _our_ opinion,” I resumed. “But it was not the opinion of the
Jury. Their verdict, you remember, was Not Proven. In plain English, the
Jury who tried my husband declined to express their opinion, positively
and publicly, that he was innocent. Am I right?”
Instead of answering, he suddenly put his embroidery back in the basket,
and moved the machinery of his chair, so as to bring it close by mine.
“Who told you this?” he asked.
“I found it for myself in a book.”
Thus far his face had expressed steady attention--and no more. Now, for
the first time, I thought I saw something darkly passing over him which
betrayed itself to my mind as rising distrust.
“Ladies are not generally in the habit of troubling their heads about
dry questions of law,” he said. “Mrs. Eustace Macallan the Second, you
must have some very powerful motive for turning your studies that way.”
“I have a very powerful motive, Mr. Dexter My husband is resigned to the
Scotch Verdict His mother is resigned to it. His friends (so far as I
know) are resigned to it--”
“Well?”
“Well! I don’t agree with my husband, or his mother, or his friends. I
refuse to submit to the Scotch Verdict.”
The instant I said those words, the madness in him which I had hitherto
denied, seemed to break out. He suddenly stretched himself over his
chair: he pounced on me, with a hand on each of my shoulders; his wild
eyes questioned me fiercely, frantically, within a few inches of my
face.
“What do you mean?” he shouted, at the utmost pitch of his ringing and
resonant voice.
A deadly fear of him shook me. I did my best to hide the outward
betrayal of it. By look and word, I showed him, as firmly as I could,
that I resented the liberty he had taken with me.
“Remove your hands, sir,” I said, “and retire to your proper place.”
He obeyed me mechanically. He apologized to me mechanically. His whole
mind was evidently still filled with the words that I had spoken to him,
and still bent on discovering what those words meant.
“I beg your pardon,” he said; “I humbly beg your pardon. The subject
excites me, frightens me, maddens me. You don’t know what a difficulty
I have in controlling myself. Never mind. Don’t take me seriously. Don’t
be frightened at me. I am so ashamed of myself--I feel so small and so
miserable at having offended you. Make me suffer for it. Take a stick
and beat me. Tie me down in my chair. Call up Ariel, who is as strong
as a horse, and tell her to hold me. Dear Mrs. Valeria! Injured Mrs.
Valeria! I’ll endure anything in the way of punishment, if you will
only tell me what you mean by not submitting to the Scotch Verdict.” He
backed his chair penitently as he made that entreaty. “Am I far enough
away yet?” he asked, with a rueful look. “Do I still frighten you? I’ll
drop out of sight, if you prefer it, in the bottom of the chair.”
He lifted the sea-green coverlet. In another moment he would have
disappeared like a puppet in a show if I had not stopped him.
“Say nothing more, and do nothing more; I accept your apologies,” I
said. “When I tell you that I refuse to submit to the opinion of the
Scotch Jury, I mean exactly what my words express. That verdict has
left a stain on my husband’s character. He feels the stain bitterly. How
bitterly no one knows so well as I do. His sense of his degradation is
the sense that has parted him from me. It is not enough for _him_ that
I am persuaded of his innocence. Nothing will bring him back to
me--nothing will persuade Eustace that I think him worthy to be the
guide and companion of my life--but the proof of his innocence, set
before the Jury which doubts it, and the public which doubts it, to this
day. He and his friends and his lawyers all despair of ever finding that
proof now. But I am his wife; and none of you love him as I love him.
I alone refuse to despair; I alone refuse to listen to reason. If
God spare me, Mr. Dexter, I dedicate my life to the vindication of my
husband’s innocence. You are his old friend--I am here to ask you to
help me.”
It appeared to be now my turn to frighten _him._ The color left his
face. He passed his hand restlessly over his forehead, as if he were
trying to brush some delusion out of his brain.
“Is this one of my dreams?” he asked, faintly. “Are you a Vision of the
night?”
“I am only a friendless woman,” I said, “who has lost all that she loved
and prized, and who is trying to win it back again.”
He began to move his chair nearer to me once more. I lifted my hand.
He stopped the chair directly. There was a moment of silence. We sat
watching one another. I saw his hands tremble as he laid them on the
coverlet; I saw his face grow paler and paler, and his under lip drop.
What dead and buried remembrances had I brought to life in him, in all
their olden horror?
He was the first to speak again.
“So this is your interest,” he said, “in clearing up the mystery of Mrs.
Eustace Macallan’s death?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe that I can help you?”
“I do.”
He slowly lifted one of his hands, and pointed at me with his long
forefinger.
“You suspect somebody,” he said.
The tone in which he spoke was low and threatening; it warned me to be
careful. At the same time, if I now shut him out of my confidence, I
should lose the reward that might yet be to come, for all that I had
suffered and risked at that perilous interview.
“You suspect somebody,” he repeated.
“Perhaps!” was all that I said in return.
“Is the person within your reach?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you know where the person is?”
“No.”
He laid his head languidly on the back of his chair, with a trembling
long-drawn sigh. Was he disappointed? Or was he relieved? Or was he
simply exhausted in mind and body alike? Who could fathom him? Who could
say?
“Will you give me five minutes?” he asked, feebly and wearily, without
raising his head. “You know already how any reference to events at
Gleninch excites and shakes me. I shall be fit for it again, if you
will kindly give me a few minutes to myself. There are books in the next
room. Please excuse me.”
I at once retired to the circular antechamber. He followed me in his
chair, and closed the door between us.