Imbittered by that knowledge, my next harsh word may be harsher still. Your next thoughts of me may remind you more vividly and more boldly that your husband was once tried as a poisoner, and that the question of his first wife's death was never properly cleared up. Do you see what materials for a domestic hell are mingling for us here? Was it for nothing that I warned you, solemnly warned you, to draw back, when I found you bent on discovering the truth? Can I ever be at your bedside now, when you are ill, and not remind you, in the most innocent things Ido, of what happened at that other bedside, in the time of that other woman whom I married first? If I pour out your medicine, Icommit a suspicious action--they say I poisoned _her_ in her medicine. If I bring you a cup of tea, I revive the remembrance of a horrid doubt--they said I put the arsenic in _her_ cup of tea. If I kiss you when I leave the room, I remind you that the prosecution accused me of kissing _her,_ to save appearances and produce an effect on the nurse. Can we live together on such terms as these? No mortal creatures could support the misery of it. This very day I said to you, 'If you stir a step further in this matter, there is an end of your happiness for the rest of your life.' You have taken that step and the end has come to your happiness and to mine. The blight that cankers and kills is on you and on me for the rest of our lives!"So far I had forced myself to listen to him. At those last words the picture of the future that he was placing before me became too hideous to be endured. I refused to hear more.
"You are talking horribly," I said. "At your age and at mine, have we done with love and done with hope? It is blasphemy to Love and Hope to say it!""Wait till you have read the Trial," he answered. "You mean to read it, I suppose?""Every word of it! With a motive, Eustace, which you have yet to know.""No motive of yours, Valeria, no love and hope of yours, can alter the inexorable facts. My first wife died poisoned; and the verdict of the jury has not absolutely acquitted me of the guilt of causing her death. As long as you were ignorant of that the possibilities of happiness were always within our reach. Now you know it, I say again--our married life is at an end.""No," I said. "Now I know it, our married life has begun--begun with a new object for your wife's devotion, with a new reason for your wife's love!""What do you mean?"
I went near to him again, and took his hand.
"What did you tell me the world has said of you?" I asked. "What did you tell me my friends would say of you? 'Not Proven won't do for us. If the jury have done him an injustice--if he _is_innocent--let him prove it.' Those were the words you put into the mouths of my friends. I adopt them for mine! I say Not Proven won't do for _me._ Prove your right, Eustace, to a verdict of Not Guilty. Why have you let three years pass without doing it? Shall I guess why? You have waited for your wife to help you. Here she is, my darling, ready to help you with all her heart and soul.
Here she is, with one object in life--to show the world and to show the Scotch Jury that her husband is an innocent man!"I had roused myself; my pulses were throbbing, my voice rang through the room. Had I roused _him_? What was his answer?
"Read the Trial." That was his answer.
I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair I shook him with all my strength. God forgive me, I could almost have struck him for the tone in which he had spoken and the look that he had cast on me!
"I have told you that I mean to read the Trial," I said. "I mean to read it, line by line, with you. Some inexcusable mistake has been made. Evidence in your favor that might have been found has not been found. Suspicious circumstances have not been investigated. Crafty people have not been watched. Eustace! the conviction of some dreadful oversight, committed by you or by the persons who helped you, is firmly settled in my mind. The resolution to set that vile Verdict right was the first resolution that came to me when I first heard of it in the next room. We _will_ set it right! We _must_ set it right--for your sake, for my sake, for the sake of our children if we are blessed with children. Oh, my own love, don't look at me with those cold eyes! Don't answer me in those hard tones! Don't treat me as if Iwere talking ignorantly and madly of something that can never be!"Still I never roused him. His next words were spoken compassionately rather than coldly--that was all.
"My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land,"he said. "After such men have done their utmost, and have failed--my poor Valeria, what can you, what can I, do? We can only submit.""Never!" I cried. "The greatest lawyers are mortal men; the greatest lawyers have made mistakes before now. You can't deny that.""Read the Trial." For the third time he said those cruel words, and said no more.
In utter despair of moving him---feeling keenly, bitterly (if Imust own it), his merciless superiority to all that I had said to him in the honest fervor of my devotion and my love--I thought of Major Fitz-David as a last resort. In the dis ordered state of my mind at that moment, it made no difference to me that the Major had already tried to reason with him, and had failed. In the face of the facts I had a blind belief in the influence of his old friend, if his old friend could only be prevailed upon to support my view.
"Wait for me one moment," I said. "I want you to hear another opinion besides mine."I left him, and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was not there. I knocked at the door of communication with the front room. It was opened instantly by the Major himself. The doctor had gone away. Benjamin still remained in the room.
"Will you come and speak to Eustace?" I began. "If you will only say what I want you to say--"Before I could add a word more I heard the house door opened and closed. Major Fitz-David and Benjamin heard it too. They looked at each other in silence.
I ran back, before the Major could stop me, to the room in which I had seen Eustace. It was empty. My husband had left the house.