In two hours more we were on the railway again. Ah, what a contrast that second journey presented to the first! On our way to Ramsgate everybody could see that we were a newly wedded couple. On our way to London nobody noticed us; nobody would have doubted that we had been married for years.
We went to a private hotel in the neighborhood of Portland Place.
After breakfast the next morning Eustace announced that he must leave me to attend to his business. I had previously mentioned to him that I had some purchases to make in London. He was quite willing to let me go out alone, on the condition that I should take a carriage provided by the hotel.
My heart was heavy that morning: I felt the unacknowledged estrangement that had grown up between us very keenly. My husband opened the door to go out, and came back to kiss me before he left me by myself. That little after-thought of tenderness touched me. Acting on the impulse of the moment, I put my arm round his neck, and held him to me gently.
"My darling," I said, "give me all your confidence. I know that you love me. Show that you can trust me too."He sighed bitterly, and drew back from me--in sorrow, not in anger.
"I thought we had agreed, Valeria, not to return to that subject again," he said. "You only distress yourself and distress me."He left the room abruptly, as if he dare not trust himself to say more. It is better not to dwell on what I felt after this last repulse. I ordered the carriage at once. I was eager to find a refuge from my own thoughts in movement and change.
I drove to the shops first, and made the purchases which I had mentioned to Eustace by way of giving a reason for going out.
Then I devoted myself to the object which I really had at heart.
I went to old Benjamin's little villa, in the by-ways of St.
John's Wood.
As soon as he had got over the first surprise of seeing me, he noticed that I looked pale and care-worn. I confessed at once that I was in trouble. We sat down together by the bright fireside in his little library (Benjamin, as far as his means would allow, was a great collector of books), and there I told my old friend, frankly and truly, all that I have told here.
He was too distressed to say much. He fervently pressed my hand;he fervently thanked God that my father had not lived to hear what he had heard. Then, after a pause, he repeated my mother-in-law's name to himself in a doubting, questioning tone.
"Macallan?" he said. "Macallan? Where have I heard that name? Why does it sound as if it wasn't strange to me?"He gave up pursuing the lost recollection, and asked, very earnestly, what he could do for me. I answered that he could help me, in the first place, to put an end to the doubt--an unendurable doubt to _me_--whether I were lawfully married or not. His energy of the old days when he had conducted my father's business showed itself again the moment I said those words.
"Your carriage is at the door, my dear," he answered. "Come with me to my own lawyer, without wasting another moment."We drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
At my request Benjamin put my case to the lawyer as the case of a friend in whom I was interested. The answer was given without hesitation. I had married, honestly believing my husband's name to be the name under which I had known him. The witnesses to my marriage--my uncle, my aunt, and Benjamin--had acted, as I had acted, in perfect good faith. Under those circumstances, there was no doubt about the law. I was legally married. Macallan or Woodville, I was his wife.
This decisive answer relieved me of a heavy anxiety. I accepted my old friend's invitation to return with him to St. John's Wood, and to make my luncheon at his early dinner.
On our way back I reverted to the one other subject which was now uppermost in my mind. I reiterated my resolution to discover why Eustace had not married me under the name that was really his own.
