WE reached London between eight and nine in the evening. Strictly
methodical in all his habits, Benjamin had telegraphed to his
housekeeper, from Edinburgh, to have supper ready or us by ten o’clock,
and to send the cabman whom he always employed to meet us at the
station.
Arriving at the villa, we were obliged to wait for a moment to let a
pony-chaise get by us before we could draw up at Benjamin’s door. The
chaise passed very slowly, driven by a rough-looking man, with a pipe
in his mouth. But for the man, I might have doubted whether the pony was
quite a stranger to me. As things were, I thought no more of the matter.
Benjamin’s respectable old housekeeper opened the garden gate, and
startled me by bursting into a devout ejaculation of gratitude at the
sight of her master. “The Lord be praised, sir!” she cried; “I thought
you would never come back!”
“Anything wrong?” asked Benjamin, in his own impenetrably quiet way.
The housekeeper trembled at the question, and answered in these
enigmatical words:
“My mind’s upset, sir; and whether things are wrong or whether things
are right is more than I can say. Hours ago, a strange man came in and
asked”--she stopped, as if she were completely bewildered--looked for
a moment vacantly at her master--and suddenly addressed herself to me.
“And asked,” she proceeded, “when _you_ was expected back, ma’am. I told
him what my master had telegraphed, and the man says upon that, ‘Wait a
bit,’ he says; ‘I’m coming back.’ He came back in a minute or less; and
he carried a Thing in his arms which curdled my blood--it did!--and set
me shaking from the crown of my head to the sole of my foot. I know I
ought to have stopped it; but I couldn’t stand upon my legs, much less
put the man out of the house. In he went, without ‘_with_ your leave,’
or ‘_by_ your leave,’ Mr. Benjamin, sir--in he went, with the Thing in
his arms, straight through to your library. And there It has been all
these hours. And there It is now. I’ve spoken to the police; but they
wouldn’t interfere; and what to do next is more than my poor head can
tell. Don’t you go in by yourself, ma’am! You’ll be frightened out of
your wits--you will!”
I persisted in entering the house, for all that. Aided by the pony, I
easily solved the mystery of the housekeeper’s otherwise unintelligible
narrative. Passing through the dining-room (where the supper-table was
already laid for us), I looked through the half-opened library door.
Yes, there was Miserrimus Dexter, arrayed in his pink jacket, fast
asleep in Benjamin’s favorite arm-chair! No coverlet hid his horrible
deformity. Nothing was sacrificed to conventional ideas of propriety
in his extraordinary dress. I could hardly wonder that the poor old
housekeeper trembled from head to foot when she spoke of him.
“Valeria,” said Benjamin, pointing to the Portent in the chair. “Which
is it--an Indian idol, or a man?”
I have already described Miserrimus Dexter as possessing the sensitive
ear of a dog: he now allowed that he also slept the light sleep of a
dog. Quietly as Benjamin had spoken, the strange voice aroused him on
the instant. He rubbed his eyes, and smiled as innocently as a waking
child.
“How do you do, Mrs. Valeria?” he said. “I have had a nice little sleep.
You don’t know how happy I am to see you again. Who is this?”
He rubbed his eyes once more! and looked at Benjamin. Not knowing what
else to do in this extraordinary emergency, I presented my visitor to
the master of the house.
“Excuse my getting up, sir,” said Miserrimus Dexter. “I can’t get up--I
have no legs. You look as if you thought I was occupying your chair? If
I am committing an intrusion, be so good as to put your umbrella under
me, and give me a jerk. I shall fall on my hands, and I shan’t be
offended with you. I will submit to a tumble and a scolding--but please
don’t break my heart by sending me away. That beautiful woman there can
be very cruel sometimes, sir, when the fit takes her. She went away when
I stood in the sorest need of a little talk with her--she went away, and
left me to my loneliness and my suspense. I am a poor deformed wretch,
with a warm heart, and, perhaps, an insatiable curiosity as well.
Insatiable curiosity (have you ever felt it?) is a curse. I bore
it until my brains began to boil in my head; and then I sent for my
gardener, and made him drive me here. I like being here. The air of
your library soothes me; the sight of Mrs. Valeria is balm to my wounded
heart. She has something to tell me--something that I am dying to hear.
If she is not too tired after her journey, and if you will let her tell
it, I promise to have myself taken away when she has done. Dear Mr.
Benjamin, you look like the refuge of the afflicted. I am afflicted.
Shake hands like a good Christian, and take me in.”
He held out his hand. His soft blue eyes melted into an expression of
piteous entreaty. Completely stupefied by the amazing harangue of which
he had been made the object, Benjamin took the offered hand, with
the air of a man in a dream. “I hope I see you well, sir,” he said,
mechanically--and then looked around at me, to know what he was to do
next.
“I understand Mr. Dexter,” I whispered. “Leave him to me.”
Benjamin stole a last bewildered look at the object in the chair; bowed
to it, with the instinct of politeness which never failed him; and
(still with the air of a man in a dream) withdrew into the next room.
Left together, we looked at each other, for the first moment, in
silence.
Whether I unconsciously drew on that inexhaustible store of indulgence
which a woman always keeps in reserve for a man who owns that he has
need of her, or whether, resenting as I did Mr. Playmore’s horrible
suspicion of him, my heart was especially accessible to feelings of
compassion in his unhappy case, I cannot tell. I only know that I pitied
Miserrimus Dexter at that moment as I had never pitied him yet; and that
I spared him the reproof which I should certainly have administered
to any other man who had taken the liberty of establishing himself,
uninvited, in Benjamin’s house.
He was the first to speak.
“Lady Clarinda has destroyed your confidence in me!” he began, wildly.
“Lady Clarinda has done nothing of the sort,” I replied. “She has not
attempted to influence my opinion. I was really obliged to leave London,
as I told you.”
He sighed, and closed his eyes contentedly, as if I had relieved him of
a heavy weight of anxiety.
“Be merciful to me,” he said, “and tell me something more. I have been
so miserable in your absence.” He suddenly opened his eyes again, and
looked at me with an appearance of the greatest interest. “Are you very
much fatigued by traveling?” he proceeded. “I am hungry for news of what
happened at the Major’s dinner party. Is it cruel of me to tell you so,
when you have not rested after your journey? Only one question to-night,
and I will leave the rest till to-morrow. What did Lady Clarinda say
about Mrs. Beauly? All that you wanted to hear?”
“All, and more,” I answered.
“What? what? what?” he cried wild with impatience in a moment.
Mr. Playmore’s last prophetic words were vividly present to my mind. He
had declared, in the most positive manner, that Dexter would persist in
misleading me, and would show no signs of astonishment when I repeated
what Lady Clarinda had told me of Mrs. Beauly. I resolved to put
the lawyer’s prophecy--so far as the question of astonishment was
concerned--to the sharpest attainable test. I said not a word to
Miserrimus Dexter in the way of preface or preparation: I burst on him
with my news as abruptly as possible.
“The person you saw in the corridor was not Mrs. Beauly,” I said. “It
was the maid, dressed in her mistress’s cloak and hat. Mrs. Beauly
herself was not in the house at all. Mrs. Beauly herself was dancing at
a masked ball in Edinburgh. There is what the maid told Lady Clarinda;
and there is what Lady Clarinda told _me._”
In the absorbing interest of the moment, I poured out those words one
after another as fast as they would pass my lips. Miserrimus Dexter
completely falsified the lawyer’s prediction. He shuddered under the
shock. His eyes opened wide with amazement. “Say it again!” he cried. “I
can’t take it all in at once. You stun me.”
I was more than contented with this result--I triumphed in my victory.
For once, I had really some reason to feel satisfied with myself. I
had taken the Christian and merciful side in my discussion with Mr.
Playmore; and I had won my reward. I could sit in the same room with
Miserrimus Dexter, and feel the blessed conviction that I was not
breathing the same air with a poisoner. Was it not worth the visit to
Edinburgh to have made sure of that?
In repeating, at his own desire, what I had already said to him, I took
care to add the details which made Lady Clarinda’s narrative coherent
and credible. He listened throughout with breathless attention--here and
there repeating the words after me, to impress them the more surely and
the more deeply on his mind.
“What is to be said? what is to be done?” he asked, with a look of blank
despair. “I can’t disbelieve it. From first to last, strange as it is,
it sounds true.”
(How would Mr. Playmore have felt if he had heard those words? I did
him the justice to believe that he would have felt heartily ashamed of
himself.)
“There is nothing to be said,” I rejoined, “except that Mrs. Beauly is
innocent, and that you and I have done her a grievous wrong. Don’t you
agree with me?”
“I entirely agree with you,” he answered, without an instant’s
hesitation. “Mrs. Beauly is an innocent woman. The defense at the Trial
was the right defense after all.”
He folded his arms complacently; he looked perfectly satisfied to leave
the matter there.
I was not of his mind. To my own amazement, I now found myself the least
reasonable person of the two!
Miserrimus Dexter (to use the popular phrase) had given me more than I
had bargained for. He had not only done all that I had anticipated
in the way of falsifying Mr. Playmore’s prediction--he had actually
advanced beyond my limits. I could go the length of recognizing Mrs.
Beauly’s innocence; but at that point I stopped. If the Defense at
the Trial were the right defense, farewell to all hope of asserting my
husband’s innocence. I held to that hope as I held to my love and my
life.
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “My opinion of the Defense remains
unchanged.”
He started, and knit his brows as if I had disappointed and displeased
him.
“Does that mean that you are determined to go on?”
“It does.”
He was downright angry with me. He cast his customary politeness to the
winds.
“Absurd! impossible!” he cried, contemptuously. “You have yourself
declared that we wronged an innocent woman when we suspected Mrs.
Beauly. Is there any one else whom we can suspect? It is ridiculous to
ask the question. There is no alternative left but to accept the facts
as they are, and to stir no further in the matter of the poisoning at
Gleninch. It is childish to dispute plain conclusions. You must give
up.”
“You may be angry with me if you will, Mr. Dexter. Neither your anger
nor your arguments will make me give up.”
He controlled himself by an effort--he was quiet and polite again when
he next spoke to me.
“Very well. Pardon me for a moment if I absorb myself in my own
thoughts. I want to do something which I have not done yet.”
“What may that be, Mr. Dexter?”
“I am going to put myself into Mrs. Beauly’s skin, and to think with
Mrs. Beauly’s mind. Give me a minute. Thank you.”
What did he mean? what new transformation of him was passing before my
eyes? Was there ever such a puzzle of a man as this? Who that saw him
now, intently pursuing his new train of thought, would have recognized
him as the childish creature who had awoke so innocently, and had
astonished Benjamin by the infantine nonsense which he talked? It
is said, and said truly, that there are many sides to every human
character. Dexter’s many sides were developing themselves at such a
rapid rate of progress that they were already beyond my counting.
He lifted his head, and fixed a look of keen inquiry on me.
“I have come out of Mrs. Beauly’s skin,” he announced. “And I have
arrived at this result: We are two impetuous people; and we have been a
little hasty in rushing at a conclusion.”
He stopped. I said nothing. Was the shadow of a doubt of him beginning
to rise in my mind? I waited, and listened.
“I am as fully satisfied as ever of the truth of what Lady Clarinda told
you,” he proceeded. “But I see, on consideration, what I failed to see at
the time. The story admits of two interpretations--one on the surface,
and another under the surface. I look under the surface, in your
interests; and I say, it is just possible that Mrs. Beauly may have been
cunning enough to forestall suspicion, and to set up an Alibi.”
I am ashamed to own that I did not understand what he meant by the last
word--Alibi. He saw that I was not following him, and spoke out more
plainly.
“Was the maid something more than her mistress’s passive accomplice?”
he said. “Was she the Hand that her mistress used? Was she on her way to
give the first dose of poison when she passed me in this corridor? Did
Mrs. Beauly spend the night in Edinburgh--so as to have her defense
ready, if suspicion fell upon her?”
My shadowy doubt of him became substantial doubt when I heard that. Had
I absolved him a little too readily? Was he really trying to renew my
suspicions of Mrs. Beauly, as Mr. Playmore had foretold? This time I was
obliged to answer him. In doing so, I unconsciously employed one of the
phrases which the lawyer had used to me during my first interview with
him.
“That sounds rather far-fetched, Mr. Dexter,” I said.
To my relief, he made no attempt to defend the new view that he had
advanced.
“It is far-fetched,” he admitted. “When I said it was just
possible--though I didn’t claim much for my idea--I said more for it
perhaps than it deserved. Dismiss my view as ridiculous; what are you to
do next? If Mrs. Beauly is not the poisoner (either by herself or by her
maid), who is? She is innocent, and Eustace is innocent. Where is the
other person whom you can suspect? Have _I_ poisoned her?” he cried,
with his eyes flashing, and his voice rising to its highest notes. “Do
you, does anybody, suspect Me? I loved her; I adored her; I have never
been the same man since her death. Hush! I will trust you with a
secret. (Don’t tell your husband; it might be the destruction of our
friendship.) I would have married her, before she met with Eustace,
if she would have taken me. When the doctors told me she had died
poisoned--ask Doctor Jerome what I suffered; _he_ can tell you! All
through that horrible night I was awake; watching my opportunity until I
found my way to her. I got into the room, and took my last leave of the
cold remains of the angel whom I loved. I cried over her. I kissed her.
for the first and last time. I stole one little lock of her hair. I have
worn it ever since; I have kissed it night and day. Oh, God! the room
comes back to me! the dead face comes back to me! Look! look!”
He tore from its place of concealment in his bosom a little locket,
fastened by a ribbon around his neck. He threw it to me where I sat, and
burst into a passion of tears.
A man in my place might have known what to do. Being only a woman, I
yielded to the compassionate impulse of the moment.
I got up and crossed the room to him. I gave him back his locket, and
put my hand, without knowing what I was about, on the poor wretch’s
shoulder. “I am incapable of suspecting you, Mr. Dexter,” I said,
gently. “No such idea ever entered my head. I pity you from the bottom
of my heart.”
He caught my hand in his, and devoured it with kisses. His lips burned
me like fire. He twisted himself suddenly in the chair, and wound his
arm around my waist. In the terror and indignation of the moment, vainly
struggling with him, I cried out for help.
The door opened, and Benjamin appeared on the threshold.
Dexter let go his hold of me.
I ran to Benjamin, and prevented him from advancing into the room. In
all my long experience of my fatherly old friend I had never seen
him really angry yet. I saw him more than angry now. He was pale--the
patient, gentle old man was pale with rage! I held him at the door with
all my strength.
“You can’t lay your hand on a cripple,” I said. Send for the man outside
to take him a way.
I drew Benjamin out of the room, and closed and locked the library
door. The housekeeper was in the dining-room. I sent her out to call the
driver of the pony-chaise into the house.
The man came in--the rough man whom I had noticed when we were
approaching the garden gate. Benjamin opened the library door in stern
silence. It was perhaps unworthy of me, but I could _not_ resist the
temptation to look in.
Miserrimus Dexter had sunk down in the chair. The rough man lifted his
master with a gentleness that surprised me. “Hide my face,” I heard
Dexter say to him, in broken tones. He opened his coarse pilot-jacket,
and hid his master’s head under it, and so went silently out--with the
deformed creature held to his bosom, like a woman sheltering her child.