The Law and the Lady

by Wilkie Collins

  CHAPTER IV. ON THE WAY HOME.

  LEFT by ourselves, there was a moment of silence among us. Eustace spokefirst.

  "Are you able to walk back?" he said to me. "Or shall we go on toBroadstairs, and return to Ramsgate by the railway?"

  He put those questions as composedly, so far as his manner wasconcerned, as if nothing remarkable had happened. But his eyes and hislips betrayed him. They told me that he was suffering keenly in secret.The extraordinary scene that had just passed, far from depriving me ofthe last remains of my courage, had strung up my nerves and restoredmy self-possession. I must have been more or less than woman if myself-respect had not been wounded, if my curiosity had not been wroughtto the highest pitch, by the extraordinary conduct of my husband'smother when Eustace presented me to her. What was the secret ofher despising him, and pitying me? Where was the explanation of herincomprehensible apathy when my name was twice pronounced in herhearing? Why had she left us, as if the bare idea of remaining in ourcompany was abhorrent to her? The foremost interest of my life was nowthe interest of penetrating these mysteries. Walk? I was in such a feverof expectation that I felt as if I could have walked to the world's end,if I could only keep my husband by my side, and question him on the way.

  "I am quite recovered," I said. "Let us go back, as we came, on foot."

  Eustace glanced at the landlady. The landlady understood him.

  "I won't intrude my company on you, sir," she said, sharply. "I havesome business to do at Broadstairs, and, now I am so near, I may as wellgo on. Good-morning, Mrs. Woodville."

  She laid a marked emphasis on my name, and she added one significantlook at parting, which (in the preoccupied state of my mind at thatmoment) I entirely failed to comprehend. There was neither timenor opportunity to ask her what she meant. With a stiff little bow,addressed to Eustace, she left us as his mother had left us taking theway to Broadstairs, and walking rapidly.

  At last we were alone.

  I lost no time in beginning my inquiries; I wasted no words in prefatoryphrases. In the plainest terms I put the question to him:

  "What does your mother's conduct mean?"

  Instead of answering, he burst into a fit of laughter--loud, coarse,hard laughter, so utterly unlike any sound I had ever yet heard issuefrom his lips, so strangely and shockingly foreign to his characteras _I_ understood it, that I stood still on the sands and openlyremonstrated with him.

  "Eustace! you are not like yourself," I said. "You almost frighten me."

  He took no notice. He seemed to be pursuing some pleasant train ofthought just started in his mind.

  "So like my mother!" he exclaimed, with the air of a man who feltirresistibly diverted by some humorous idea of his own. "Tell me allabout it, Valeria!"

  "Tell _you_!" I repeated. "After what has happened, surely it is yourduty to enlighten _me_."

  "You don't see the joke," he said.

  "I not only fail to see the joke," I rejoined, "I see something inyour mother's language and your mother's behavior which justifies me inasking you for a serious explanation."

  "My dear Valeria, if you understood my mother as well as I do, a seriousexplanation of her conduct would be the last thing in the world that youwould expect from me. The idea of taking my mother seriously!" He burstout laughing again. "My darling, you don't know how you amuse me."

  It was all forced: it was all unnatural. He, the most delicate, the mostrefined of men--a gentleman in the highest sense of the word--was coarseand loud and vulgar! My heart sank under a sudden sense of misgivingwhich, with all my love for him, it was impossible to resist. Inunutterable distress and alarm I asked myself, "Is my husband beginningto deceive me? is he acting a part, and acting it badly, before we havebeen married a week?" I set myself to win his confidence in a new way.He was evidently determined to force his own point of view on me. Idetermined, on my side, to accept his point of view.

  "You tell me I don't understand your mother," I said, gently. "Will youhelp me to understand her?"

  "It is not easy to help you to understand a woman who doesn't understandherself," he answered. "But I will try. The key to my poor dear mother'scharacter is, in one word--Eccentricity."

  If he had picked out the most inappropriate word in the whole dictionaryto describe the lady whom I had met on the beach, "Eccentricity" wouldhave been that word. A child who had seen what I saw, who had heard whatI heard would have discovered that he was trifling--grossly, recklesslytrifling--with the truth.

  "Bear in mind what I have said," he proceeded; "and if you want tounderstand my mother, do what I asked you to do a minute since--tell meall about it. How came you to speak to her, to begin with?"

  "Your mother told you, Eustace. I was walking just behind her, when shedropped a letter by accident--"

  "No accident," he interposed. "The letter was dropped on purpose."

  "Impossible!" I exclaimed. "Why should your mother drop the letter onpurpose?"

  "Use the key to her character, my dear. Eccentricity! My mother's oddway of making acquaintance with you."

  "Making acquaintance with me? I have just told you that I was walkingbehind her. She could not have known of the existence of such a personas myself until I spoke to her first."

  "So you suppose, Valeria."

  "I am certain of it."

  "Pardon me--you don't know my mother as I do."

  I began to lose all patience with him.

  "Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that your mother was out on the sandsto-day for the express purpose of making acquaintance with Me?"

  "I have not the slightest doubt of it," he answered, coolly.

  "Why, she didn't even recognize my name!" I burst out. "Twice over thelandlady called me Mrs. Woodville in your mother's hearing, and twiceover, I declare to you on my word of honor, it failed to produce theslightest impression on her. She looked and acted as if she had neverheard her own name before in her life."

  "'Acted' is the right word," he said, just as composedly as before."The women on the stage are not the only women who can act. My mother'sobject was to make herself thoroughly acquainted with you, and to throwyou off your guard by speaking in the character of a stranger. It isexactly like her to take that roundabout way of satisfying her curiosityabout a daughter-in-law she disapproves of. If I had not joined you whenI did, you would have been examined and cross-examined about yourselfand about me, and you would innocently have answered under theimpression that you were speaking to a chance acquaintance. There is mymother all over! She is your enemy, remember--not your friend. She isnot in search of your merits, but of your faults. And you wonder whyno impression was produced on her when she heard you addressed by yourname! Poor innocent! I can tell you this--you only discovered mymother in her own character when I put an end to the mystification bypresenting you to each other. You saw how angry she was, and now youknow why."

  I let him go on without saying a word. I listened--oh! with such a heavyheart, with such a crushing sense of disenchantment and despair! Theidol of my worship, the companion, guide, protector of my life--had hefallen so low? could he stoop to such shameless prevarication as this?

  Was there one word of truth in all that he had said to me? Yes! If Ihad not discovered his mother's portrait, it was certainly true that Ishould not have known, not even have vaguely suspected, who she reallywas. Apart from this, the rest was lying, clumsy lying, which said onething at least for him, that he was not accustomed to falsehood anddeceit. Good Heavens! if my husband was to be believed, his mother musthave tracked us to London, tracked us to the church, tracked us to therailway station, tracked us to Ramsgate! To assert that she knew me bysight as the wife of Eustace, and that she had waited on the sands anddropped her letter for the express purpose of making acquaintance withme, was also to assert every one of these monstrous probabilities to befacts that had actually happened!

  I could say no more. I walked by his side in silence, feeling themiserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a f
amilysecret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in the body, wewere separated, after a married life of barely four days.

  "Valeria," he asked, "have you nothing to say to me?"

  "Nothing."

  "Are you not satisfied with my explanation?"

  I detected a slight tremor in his voice as he put that question. Thetone was, for the first time since we had spoken together, a tone thatmy experience associated with him in certain moods of his which I hadalready learned to know well. Among the hundred thousand mysteriousinfluences which a man exercises over a woman who loves him, I doubt ifthere is any more irresistible to her than the influence of his voice. Iam not one of those women who shed tears on the smallest provocation:it is not in my temperament, I suppose. But when I heard that littlenatural change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) to thehappy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out crying.

  He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to look atme.

  I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of myweakness and my want of spirit. I was determined not to look at him.

  In the silence that followed he suddenly dropped on his knees at myfeet, with a cry of despair that cut through me like a knife.

  "Valeria! I am vile--I am false--I am unworthy of you. Don't believea word of what I have been saying--lies, lies, cowardly, contemptiblelies! You don't know what I have gone through; you don't know how I havebeen tortured. Oh, my darling, try not to despise me! I must have beenbeside myself when I spoke to you as I did. You looked hurt; youlooked offended; I didn't know what to do. I wanted to spare you even amoment's pain--I wanted to hush it up, and have done with it. ForGod's sake don't ask me to tell you any more! My love! my angel! it'ssomething between my mother and me; it's nothing that need disturb you;it's nothing to anybody now. I love you, I adore you; my whole heart andsoul are yours. Be satisfied with that. Forget what has happened. Youshall never see my mother again. We will leave this place to-morrow. Wewill go away in the yacht. Does it matter where we live, so long as welive for each other? Forgive and forget! Oh, Valeria, Valeria, forgiveand forget!"

  Unutterable misery was in his face; unutterable misery was in his voice.Remember this. And remember that I loved him.

  "It is easy to forgive," I said, sadly. "For your sake, Eustace, I willtry to forget."

  I raised him gently as I spoke. He kissed my hands with the air of aman who was too humble to venture on any more familiar expression of hisgratitude than that. The sense of embarrassment between us as we slowlywalked on again was so unendurable that I actually cast about in mymind for a subject of conversation, as if I had been in the company of astranger! In mercy to _him_, I asked him to tell me about the yacht.

  He seized on the subject as a drowning man seizes on the hand thatrescues him.

  On that one poor little topic of the yacht he talked, talked, talked,as if his life depended upon his not being silent for an instant onthe rest of the way back. To me it was dreadful to hear him. I couldestimate what he was suffering by the violence which he--ordinarily asilent and thoughtful man--was now doing to his true nature, and tothe prejudices and habits of his life. With the greatest difficulty Ipreserved my self-control until we reached the door of our lodgings.There I was obliged to plead fatigue, and ask him to let me rest for alittle while in the solitude of my own room.

  "Shall we sail to-morrow?" he called after me suddenly, as I ascendedthe stairs.

  Sail with him to the Mediterranean the next day? Pass weeks and weeksabsolutely alone with him, in the narrow limits of a vessel, with hishorrible secret parting us in sympathy further and further from eachother day by day? I shuddered at the thought of it.

  "To-morrow is rather a short notice," I said. "Will you give me a littlelonger time to prepare for the voyage?"

  "Oh yes--take any time you like," he answered, not (as I thought) verywillingly. "While you are resting--there are still one or two littlethings to be settled--I think I will go back to the yacht. Is thereanything I can do for you, Valeria, before I go?"

  "Nothing--thank you, Eustace."

  He hastened away to the harbor. Was he afraid of his own thoughts, if hewere left by himself in the house. Was the company of the sailing-masterand the steward better than no company at all?

  It was useless to ask. What did I know about him or his thoughts? Ilocked myself into my room.