The Law and the Lady Part 16

"Certainly. My young vocalist (Miss Hoighty) told the doctor exactly what had happened; and the doctor in her presence repeated the statement to your husband."

"Did the doctor see the Trial?"

"Neither the doctor nor Mr. Benjamin has seen the Trial. I have locked it up; and I have carefully kept the terrible story of your connection with the prisoner a secret from all of them. Mr. Benjamin evidently has his suspicions. But the doctor has no idea, and Miss Hoighty has no idea, of the true cause of your fainting fit. They both believe that you are subject to serious nervous attacks, and that your husband's name is really Woodville. All that the truest friend could do to spare Eustace I have done. He persists, nevertheless, in blaming me for letting you enter my house. And worse, far worse than this, he persists in declaring the event of to-day has fatally estranged you from him. 'There is an end of our married life,' he said to me, 'now she knows that I am the man who was tried at Edinburgh for poisoning my wife!"'

I rose from the sofa in horror.

"Good G.o.d!" I cried, "does Eustace suppose that I doubt his innocence?"

"He denies that it is possible for you or for anybody to believe in his innocence," the Major replied.

"Help me to the door," I said. "Where is he? I must and will see him!"

I dropped back exhausted on the sofa as I said the words. Major Fitz-David poured out a gla.s.s of wine from the bottle on the table, and insisted on my drinking it.

"You shall see him," said the Major. "I promise you that. The doctor has forbidden him to leave the house until you have seen him. Only wait a little! My poor, dear lady, wait, if it is only for a few minutes, until you are stronger."

I had no choice but to obey him. Oh, those miserable, helpless minutes on the sofa! I cannot write of them without shuddering at the recollection--even at this distance of time.

"Bring him here!" I said. "Pray, pray bring him here!"

"Who is to persuade him to come back?" asked the Major, sadly. "How can I, how can anybody, prevail with a man--a madman I had almost said!--who could leave you at the moment when you first opened your eyes on him? I saw Eustace alone in the next room while the doctor was in attendance on you. I tried to shake his obstinate distrust of your belief in his innocence and of my belief in his innocence by every argument and every appeal that an old friend could address to him. He had but one answer to give me. Reason as I might, and plead as I might, he still persisted in referring me to the Scotch Verdict."

"The Scotch Verdict?" I repeated. "What is that?"

The Major looked surprised at the question.

"Have you really never heard of the Trial?" he said.

"Never."

"I thought it strange," he went on, "when you told me you had found out your husband's true name, that the discovery appeared to have suggested no painful a.s.sociation to your mind. It is not more than three years since all England was talking of your husband. One can hardly wonder at his taking refuge, poor fellow, in an a.s.sumed name. Where could you have been at the time?"

"Did you say it was three years ago?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I think I can explain my strange ignorance of what was so well known to every one else. Three years since my father was alive. I was living with him in a country-house in Italy--up in the mountains, near Sienna. We never saw an English newspaper or met with an English traveler for weeks and weeks together. It is just possible that there might have been some reference made to the Trial in my father's letters from England. If there were, he never told me of it. Or, if he did mention the case, I felt no interest in it, and forgot it again directly. Tell me--what has the Verdict to do with my husband's horrible doubt of us? Eustace is a free man. The Verdict was Not Guilty, of course?"

Major Fitz-David shook his head sadly.

"Eustace was tried in Scotland," he said. "There is a verdict allowed by the Scotch law, which (so far as I know) is not permitted by the laws of any other civilized country on the face of the earth. When the jury are in doubt whether to condemn or acquit the prisoner brought before them, they are permitted, in Scotland, to express that doubt by a form of compromise. If there is not evidence enough, on the one hand, to justify them in finding a prisoner guilty, and not evidence enough, on the other hand, to thoroughly convince them that a prisoner is innocent, they extricate themselves from the difficulty by finding a verdict of Not Proven."

"Was that the Verdict when Eustace was tried?" I asked.

"Yes."

"The jury were not quite satisfied that my husband was guilty? and not quite satisfied that my husband was innocent? Is that what the Scotch Verdict means?"

"That is what the Scotch Verdict means. For three years that doubt about him in the minds of the jury who tried him has stood on public record."

Oh, my poor darling! my innocent martyr! I understood it at last. The false name in which he had married me; the terrible words he had spoken when he had warned me to respect his secret; the still more terrible doubt that he felt of me at that moment--it was all intelligible to my sympathies, it was all clear to my understanding, now. I got up again from the sofa, strong in a daring resolution which the Scotch Verdict had suddenly kindled in me--a resolution at once too sacred and too desperate to be confided, in the first instance, to any other than my husband's ear.

"Take me to Eustace!" I cried. "I am strong enough to bear anything now."

After one searching look at me, the Major silently offered me his arm, and led me out of the room.

CHAPTER XII. THE SCOTCH VERDICT.

We walked to the far end of the hall. Major Fitz-David opened the door of a long, narrow room built out at the back of the house as a smoking-room, and extending along one side of the courtyard as far as the stable wall.

My husband was alone in the room, seated at the further end of it, near the fire-place. He started to his feet and faced me in silence as I entered. The Major softly closed the door on us and retired. Eustace never stirred a step to meet me. I ran to him, and threw my arms round his neck and kissed him. The embrace was not returned; the kiss was not returned. He pa.s.sively submitted--nothing more.

"Eustace!" I said, "I never loved you more dearly than I love you at this moment! I never felt for you as I feel for you now!"

He released himself deliberately from my arms. He signed to me with the mechanical courtesy of a stranger to take a chair.

"Thank you, Valeria," he answered, in cold, measured tones. "You could say no less to me, after what has happened; and you could say no more.

Thank you."

We were standing before the fire-place. He left me, and walked away slowly with his head down, apparently intending to leave the room.

I followed him--I got before him--I placed myself between him and the door.

"Why do you leave me?" I said. "Why do you speak to me in this cruel way? Are you angry, Eustace? My darling, if you _are_ angry, I ask you to forgive me."

"It is I who ought to ask _your_ pardon," he replied. "I beg you to forgive me, Valeria, for having made you my wife."

He p.r.o.nounced those words with a hopeless, heart-broken humility dreadful to see. I laid my hand on his bosom. I said, "Eustace, look at me."

He slowly lifted his eyes to my face--eyes cold and clear and tearless--looking at me in steady resignation, in immovable despair. In the utter wretchedness of that moment, I was like him; I was as quiet and as cold as my husband. He chilled, he froze me.

"Is it possible," I said, "that you doubt my belief in your innocence?"

He left the question unanswered. He sighed bitterly to himself. "Poor woman!" he said, as a stranger might have said, pitying me. "Poor woman!"

My heart swelled in me as if it would burst. I lifted my hand from his bosom, and laid it on his shoulder to support myself.

"I don't ask you to pity me, Eustace; I ask you to do me justice. You are not doing me justice. If you had trusted me with the truth in the days when we first knew that we loved each other--if you had told me all, and more than all that I know now--as G.o.d is my witness I would still have married you! _Now_ do you doubt that I believe you are an innocent man!"

"I don't doubt it," he said. "All your impulses are generous, Valeria.

You are speaking generously and feeling generously. Don't blame me, my poor child, if I look on further than you do: if I see what is to come--too surely to come--in the cruel future."

"The cruel future!" I repeated. "What do you mean?"

"You believe in my innocence, Valeria. The jury who tried me doubted it--and have left that doubt on record. What reason have _you_ for believing, in the face of the Verdict, that I am an innocent man?"