"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 glass 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 association 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 assumed 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. Iwas 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.