Tell me how she is, how she looks, what she is doing. I am always thinking of her. Not a day passes but I mourn the loss of her.
Oh, if she had only been contented to let matters rest as they were! Oh, if she had never discovered the miserable truth!
"She spoke of reading the Trial when I saw her last. Has she persisted in doing so? I believe--I say this seriously, mother--Ibelieve the shame and the horror of it would have been the death of me if I had met her face to face when she first knew of the ignominy that I have suffered, of the infamous suspicion of which I have been publicly made the subject. Think of those pure eyes looking at a man who has been accus ed (and never wholly absolved) of the foulest and the vilest of all murders, and then think of what that man must feel if he have any heart and any sense of shame left in him. I sicken as I write of it.
"Does she still meditate that hopeless project--the offspring, poor angel, of her artless, unthinking generosity? Does she still fancy that it is in _her_ power to assert my innocence before the world? Oh, mother (if she do), use your utmost influence to make her give up the idea! Spare her the humiliation, the disappointment, the insult, perhaps, to which she may innocently expose herself. For her sake, for my sake, leave no means untried to attain this righteous, this merciful end.
"I send her no message--I dare not do it. Say nothing, when you see her, which can recall me to her memory. On the contrary, help her to forget me as soon as possible. The kindest thing I can do--the one atonement I can make to her--is to drop out of her life."With those wretched words it ended. I handed his letter back to his mother in silence. She said but little on her side.
"If _this_ doesn't discourage you," she remarked, slowly folding up the letter, "nothing will. Let us leave it there, and say no more."I made no answer--I was crying behind my veil. My domestic prospect looked so dreary! my unfortunate husband was so hopelessly misguided, so pitiably wrong! The one chance for both of us, and the one consolation for poor Me, was to hold to my desperate resolution more firmly than ever. If I had wanted anything to confirm me in this view, and to arm me against the remonstrances of every one of my friends, Eustace's letter would have proved more than sufficient to answer the purpose. At least he had not forgotten me; he thought of me, and he mourned the loss of me every day of his life. That was encouragement enough--for the present. "If Ariel calls for me in the pony-chaise to-morrow," I thought to myself, "with Ariel I go."Mrs. Macallan set me down at Benjamin's door.
I mentioned to her at parting--I stood sufficiently in awe of her to put it off till the last moment--that Miserrimus Dexter had arranged to send his cousin and his pony-chaise to her residence on the next day; and I inquired thereupon whether my mother-in-law would permit me to call at her house to wait for the appearance of the cousin, or whether she would prefer sending the chaise on to Benjamin's cottage. I fully expected an explosion of anger to follow this bold avowal of my plans for the next day. The old lady agreeably surprised me. She proved that she had really taken a liking to me: she kept her temper.
"If you persist in going back to Dexter, you certainly shall not go to him from my door," she said. "But I hope you will _not_persist. I hope you will awake a wiser woman to-morrow morning."The morning came. A little before noon the arrival of the pony-chaise was announced at the door, and a letter was brought in to me from Mrs. Macallan.
"I have no right to control your movements," my mother-in-law wrote. "I send the chaise to Mr. Benjamin's house; and Isincerely trust that you will not take your place in it. I wish Icould persuade you, Valeria, how truly I am your friend. I have been thinking about you anxiously in the wakeful hours of the night. _How_ anxiously, you will understand when I tell you that I now reproach myself for not having done more than I did to prevent your unhappy marriage. And yet, what more I could have done I don't really know. My son admitted to me that he was courting you under an assumed name, but he never told me what the name was. Or who you were, or where your friends lived. Perhaps Iought to have taken measures to find this out. Perhaps, if I had succeeded, I ought to have interfered and enlightened you, even at the sad sacrifice of making an enemy of my own son. I honestly thought I did my duty in expressing my disapproval, and in refusing to be present at the marriage. Was I too easily satisfied? It is too late to ask. Why do I trouble you with an old woman's vain misgivings and regrets? My child, if you come to any harm, I shall feel (indirectly) responsible for it. It is this uneasy state of mind which sets me writing, with nothing to say that can interest you. Don't go to Dexter! The fear has been pursuing me all night that your going to Dexter will end badly.
Write him an excuse. Valeria! I firmly believe you will repent it if you return to that house."Was ever a woman more plainly warned, more carefully advised, than I? And yet warning and advice were both thrown away on me.
Let me say for myself that I was really touched by the kindness of my mother-in-law's letter, though I was not shaken by it in the smallest degree. As long as I lived, moved, and thought, my one purpose now was to make Miserrimus Dexter confide to me his ideas on the subject of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death. To those ideas I looked as my guiding stars along the dark way on which Iwas going. I wrote back to Mrs. Macallan, as I really felt gratefully and penitently. And then I went out to the chaise.
