Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (931 page)

I retired to my room and wrote to my uncle Starkweather, telling him exactly what had happened, and inclosing him a copy of my husband’s letter. This done, I went out for a little while to breathe the fresh air and to think. I was soon weary, and went back again to my room to rest. My kind old Benjamin left me at perfect liberty to be alone as long as I pleased. Toward the afternoon I began to feel a little more like my old self again. I mean by this that I could think of Eustace without bursting out crying, and could speak to Benjamin without distressing and frightening the dear old man.

That night I had a little more sleep. The next morning I was strong enough to confront the first and foremost duty that I now owed to myself — the duty of answering my husband’s letter.

I wrote to him in these words:

“I am still too weak and weary, Eustace, to write to you at any length. But my mind is clear. I have formed my own opinion of you and your letter; and I know what I mean to do now you have left me. Some women, in my situation, might think that you had forfeited all right to their confidence. I don’t think that. So I write and tell you what is in my mind in the plainest and fewest words that I can use.

“You say you love me — and you leave me. I don’t understand loving a woman and leaving her. For my part, in spite of the hard things you have said and written to me, and in spite of the cruel manner in which you have left me, I love you — and I won’t give you up. No! As long as I live I mean to live your wife.

“Does this surprise you? It surprises
me.
If another woman wrote in this manner to a man who had behaved to her as you have behaved, I should be quite at a loss to account for her conduct. I am quite at a loss to account for my own conduct. I ought to hate you, and yet I can’t help loving you. I am ashamed of myself; but so it is.

“You need feel no fear of my attempting to find out where you are, and of my trying to persuade you to return to me. I am not quite foolish enough to do that. You are not in a fit state of mind to return to me. You are all wrong, all over, from head to foot. When you get right again, I am vain enough to think that you will return to me of your own accord. And shall I be weak enough to forgive you? Yes! I shall certainly be weak enough to forgive you.

“But how are you to get right again?

“I have puzzled my brains over this question by night and by day, and my opinion is that you will never get right again unless I help you.

“How am I to help you?

“That question is easily answered. What the Law has failed to do for you, your Wife must do for you. Do you remember what I said when we were together in the back room at Major Fitz-David’s house? I told you that the first thought that came to me, when I heard what the Scotch jury had done, was the thought of setting their vile Verdict right. Well! Your letter has fixed this idea more firmly in my mind than ever. The only chance that I can see of winning you back to me, in the character of a penitent and loving husband, is to change that underhand Scotch Verdict of Not Proven into an honest English Verdict of Not Guilty.

“Are you surprised at the knowledge of the law which this way of writing betrays in an ignorant woman? I have been learning, my dear: the Law and the Lady have begun by understanding one another. In plain English, I have looked into Ogilvie’s ‘Imperial Dictionary,’ and Ogilvie tells me, ‘A verdict of Not Proven only indicates that, in the opinion of the jury, there is a deficiency in the evidence to convict the prisoner. A verdict of Not Guilty imports the jury’s opinion that the prisoner is innocent.’ Eustace, that shall be the opinion of the world in general, and of the Scotch jury in particular, in your case. To that one object I dedicate my life to come, if God spare me!

“Who will help me, when I need help, is more than I yet know. There was a time when I had hoped that we should go hand in hand together in doing this good work. That hope is at an end. I no longer expect you, or ask you, to help me. A man who thinks as you think can give no help to anybody — it is his miserable condition to have no hope. So be it! I will hope for two, and will work for two; and I shall find some one to help me — never fear — if I deserve it.

“I will say nothing about my plans — I have not read the Trial yet. It is quite enough for me that I know you are innocent. When a man is innocent, there
must
be a way of proving it: the one thing needful is to find the way. Sooner or later, with or without assistance, I shall find it. Yes! before I know any single particular of the Case, I tell you positively — I shall find it!

“You may laugh over this blind confidence on my part, or you may cry over it. I don’t pretend to know whether I am an object for ridicule or an object for pity. Of one thing only I am certain: I mean to win you back, a man vindicated before the world, without a stain on his character or his name — thanks to his wife.

“Write to me, sometimes, Eustace; and believe me, through all the bitterness of this bitter business, your faithful and loving

“VALERIA.”

There was my reply! Poor enough as a composition (I could write a much better letter now), it had, if I may presume to say so, one merit. It was the honest expression of what I really meant and felt.

I read it to Benjamin. He held up his hands with his customary gesture when he was thoroughly bewildered and dismayed. “It seems the rashest letter that ever was written,” said the dear old man. “I never heard, Valeria, of a woman doing what you propose to do. Lord help us! the new generation is beyond my fathoming. I wish your uncle Starkweather was here: I wonder what he would say? Oh, dear me, what a letter from a wife to a husband! Do you really mean to send it to him?”

I added immeasurably to my old friend’s surprise by not even employing the post-office. I wished to see the “instructions” which my husband had left behind him. So I took the letter to his lawyers myself.

The firm consisted of two partners. They both received me together. One was a soft, lean man, with a sour smile. The other was a hard, fat man, with ill-tempered eyebrows. I took a great dislike to both of them. On their side, they appeared to feel a strong distrust of me. We began by disagreeing. They showed me my husband’s “instructions,” providing, among other things, for the payment of one clear half of his income as long as he lived to his wife. I positively refused to touch a farthing of his money.

The lawyers were unaffectedly shocked and astonished at this decision. Nothing of the sort had ever happened before in the whole course of their experience. They argued and remonstrated with me. The partner with the ill-tempered eyebrows wanted to know what my reasons were. The partner with the sour smile reminded his colleague satirically that I was a lady, and had therefore no reasons to give. I only answered, “Be so good as to forward my letter, gentlemen,” and left them.

I have no wish to claim any credit to myself in these pages which I do not honestly deserve. The truth is that my pride forbade me to accept help from Eustace, now that he had left me. My own little fortune (eight hundred a year) had been settled on myself when I married. It had been more than I wanted as a single woman, and I was resolved that it should be enough for me now. Benjamin had insisted on my considering his cottage as my home. Under these circumstances, the expenses in which my determination to clear my husband’s character might involve me were the only expenses for which I had to provide. I could afford to be independent, and independent I resolved that I would be.

While I am occupied in confessing my weakness and my errors, it is only right to add that, dearly as I still loved my unhappy, misguided husband, there was one little fault of his which I found it not easy to forgive.

Pardoning other things, I could not quite pardon his concealing from me that he had been married to a first wife. Why I should have felt this so bitterly as I did, at certain times and seasons, I am not able to explain. Jealousy was at the bottom of it, I suppose. And yet I was not conscious of being jealous — especially when I thought of the poor creature’s miserable death. Still, Eustace ought not to have kept
that
secret from me, I used to think to myself, at odd times when I was discouraged and out of temper. What would
he
have said if I had been a widow, and had never told him of it?

It was getting on toward evening when I returned to the cottage. Benjamin appeared to have been on the lookout for me. Before I could ring at the bell he opened the garden gate.

“Prepare yourself for a surprise, my dear,” he said. “Your uncle, the Reverend Doctor Starkweather, has arrived from the North, and is waiting to see you. He received your letter this morning, and he took the first train to London as soon as he had read it.”

In another minute my uncle’s strong arms were round me. In my forlorn position, I felt the good vicar’s kindness, in traveling all the way to London to see me, very gratefully. It brought the tears into my eyes — tears, without bitterness, that did me good.

“I have come, my dear child, to take you back to your old home,” he said. “No words can tell how fervently I wish you had never left your aunt and me. Well! well! we won’t talk about it. The mischief is done, and the next thing is to mend it as well as we can. If I could only get within arm’s-length of that husband of yours, Valeria — There! there! God forgive me, I am forgetting that I am a clergyman. What shall I forget next, I wonder? By-the-by, your aunt sends you her dearest love. She is more superstitious than ever. This miserable business doesn’t surprise her a bit. She says it all began with your making that mistake about your name in signing the church register. You remember? Was there ever such stuff? Ah, she’s a foolish woman, that wife of mine! But she means well — a good soul at bottom. She would have traveled all the way here along with me if I would have let her. I said, ‘No; you stop at home, and look after the house and the parish, and I’ll bring the child back.’ You shall have your old bedroom, Valeria, with the white curtains, you know, looped up with blue! We will return to the Vicarage (if you can get up in time) by the nine-forty train to-morrow morning.”

Return to the Vicarage! How could I do that? How could I hope to gain what was now the one object of my existence if I buried myself in a remote north-country village? It was simply impossible for me to accompany Doctor Starkweather on his return to his own house.

“I thank you, uncle, with all my heart,” I said. “But I am afraid I can’t leave London for the present.”

“You can’t leave London for the present?” he repeated. “What does the girl mean, Mr. Benjamin?” Benjamin evaded a direct reply.

“She is kindly welcome here, Doctor Starkweather,” he said, “as long as she chooses to stay with me.”

“That’s no answer,” retorted my uncle, in his rough-and-ready way. He turned to me. “What is there to keep you in London?” he asked. “You used to hate London. I suppose there is some reason?”

It was only due to my good guardian and friend that I should take him into my confidence sooner or later. There was no help for it but to rouse my courage, and tell him frankly what I had it in my mind to do. The vicar listened in breathless dismay. He turned to Benjamin, with distress as well as surprise in his face, when I had done.

“God help her!” cried the worthy man. “The poor thing’s troubles have turned her brain!”

“I thought you would disapprove of it, sir,” said Benjamin, in his mild and moderate way. “I confess I disapprove of it myself.”

“‘Disapprove of it’ isn’t the word,” retorted the vicar. “Don’t put it in that feeble way, if you please. An act of madness — that’s what it is, if she really means what she says.” He turned my way, and looked as he used to look at the afternoon service when he was catechising an obstinate child. “You don’t mean it,” he said, “do you?”

“I am sorry to forfeit your good opinion, uncle,” I replied. “But I must own that I do certainly mean it.”

“In plain English,” retorted the vicar, “you are conceited enough to think that you can succeed where the greatest lawyers in Scotland have failed.
They
couldn’t prove this man’s innocence, all working together. And
you
are going to prove it single-handed? Upon my word, you are a wonderful woman,” cried my uncle, suddenly descending from indignation to irony. “May a plain country parson, who isn’t used to lawyers in petticoats, be permitted to ask how you mean to do it?”

“I mean to begin by reading the Trial, uncle.”

“Nice reading for a young woman! You will be wanting a batch of nasty French novels next. Well, and when you have read the Trial — what then? Have you thought of that?”