The Law and the Lady

  CHAPTER XLIII. AT LAST!

  MY letter from Mr. Playmore, inclosing the agent's extraordinarytelegram, was not inspired by the sanguine view of our prospects whichhe had expressed to me when we met at Benjamin's house.

  "If the telegram mean anything," he wrote, "it means that the fragmentsof the torn letter have been cast into the housemaid's bucket (alongwith the dust, the ashes, and the rest of the litter in the room), andhave been emptied on the dust-heap at Gleninch. Since this was done,the accumulated refuse collected from the periodical cleansings of thehouse, during a term of nearly three years--including, of course, theashes from the fires kept burning, for the greater part of the year, inthe library and the picture-gallery--have been poured upon the heap, andhave buried the precious morsels of paper deeper and deeper, day by day.Even if we have a fair chance of finding these fragments, what hope canwe feel, at this distance of time, of recovering them with the writingin a state of preservation? I shall be glad to hear, by return of postif possible, how the matter strikes you. If you could make it convenientto consult with me personally in Edinburgh, we should save time,when time may be of serious importance to us. While you are at DoctorStarkweather's you are within easy reach of this place. Please think ofit."

  I thought of it seriously enough. The foremost question which I had toconsider was the question of my husband.

  The departure of the mother and son from Spain had been so long delayed,by the surgeon's orders, that the travelers had only advanced on theirhomeward journey as far as Bordeaux, when I had last heard from Mrs.Macallan three or four days since. Allowing for an interval of repose atBordeaux, and for the slow rate at which they would be compelled tomove afterward, I might still expect them to arrive in England some timebefore a letter from the agent in America could reach Mr. Playmore.How, in this position of affairs, I could contrive to join the lawyer inEdinburgh, after meeting my husband in London, it was not easy to see.The wise and the right way, as I thought, was to tell Mr. Playmorefrankly that I was not mistress of my Own movements, and that he hadbetter address his next letter to me at Benjamin's house.

  Writing to my legal adviser in this sense, I had a word of my own to addon the subject of the torn letter.

  In the last years of my father's life I had traveled with him in Italy,and I had seen in the Museum at Naples the wonderful relics of a bygonetime discovered among the ruins of Pompeii. By way of encouraging Mr.Playmore, I now reminded him that the eruption which had overwhelmed thetown had preserved, for more than sixteen hundred years, such perishablethings as the straw in which pottery had been packed; the paintings onhouse walls; the dresses worn by the inhabitants; and (most noticeableof all, in our case) a piece of ancient paper, still attached to thevolcanic ashes which had fallen over it. If these discoveries had beenmade after a lapse of sixteen centuries, under a layer of dust and asheson a large scale, surely we might hope to meet with similar cases ofpreservation, after a lapse of three or four years only, under a layerof dust and ashes on a small scale. Taking for granted (what was perhapsdoubtful enough) that the fragments of the letter could be recovered, myown conviction was that the writing on them, though it might be faded,would certainly still be legible. The very accumulations which Mr.Playmore deplored would be the means of preserving them from the rainand the damp. With these modest hints I closed my letter; and thus foronce, thanks to my Continental experience, I was able to instruct mylawyer!

  Another day passed; and I heard nothing of the travelers.

  I began to feel anxious. I made my preparations for my journey southwardovernight; and I resolved to start for London the next day--unless Iheard of some change in Mrs. Macallan's traveling arrangements in theinterval.

  The post of the next morning decided my course of action. It brought mea letter from my mother-in-law, which added one more to the memorabledates in my domestic calendar.

  Eustace and his mother had advanced as far as Paris on their homewardjourney, when a cruel disaster had befallen them. The fatigues oftraveling, and the excitement of his anticipated meeting with me, hadproved together to be too much for my husband. He had held out as far asParis with the greatest difficulty; and he was now confined to his bedagain, struck down by a relapse. The doctors, this time, had no fearfor his life, provided that his patience would support him through alengthened period of the most absolute repose.

  "It now rests with you, Valeria," Mrs. Macallan wrote, "to fortify andcomfort Eustace under this new calamity. Do not suppose that he has everblamed or thought of blaming you for leaving him with me in Spain,as soon as he was declared to be out of danger. 'It was _I_ who left_her,_' he said to me, when we first talked about it; 'and it is mywife's right to expect that I should go back to her.' Those were hiswords, my dear; and he has done all he can to abide by them. Helpless inhis bed, he now asks you to take the will for the deed, and to join himin Paris. I think I know you well enough, my child, to be sure that youwill do this; and I need only add one word of caution, before I close myletter. Avoid all reference, not only to the Trial (you will do that ofyour own accord), but even to our house at Gleninch. You will understandhow he feels, in his present state of nervous depression, when I tellyou that I should never have ventured on asking you to join him here,if your letter had not informed me that your visits to Dexter were atan end. Would you believe it?--his horror of anything which recalls ourpast troubles is still so vivid that he has actually asked me to give myconsent to selling Gleninch!"

  So Eustace's mother wrote of him. But she had not trusted entirelyto her own powers of persuasion. A slip of paper was inclosed in herletter, containing these two lines, traced in pencil--oh, so feebly andso wearily!--by my poor darling himself:

  "I am too weak to travel any further, Valeria. Will you come to me andforgive me?" A few pencil-marks followed; but they were illegible. Thewriting of those two short sentences had exhausted him.

  It is not saying much for myself, I know--but, having confessed it whenI was wrong, let me, at least, record it when I did what was right--Idecided instantly on giving up all further connection with the recoveryof the torn letter. If Eustace asked me the question, I was resolved tobe able to answer truly: "I have made the sacrifice that assures yourtranquillity. When resignation was hardest, I have humbled my obstinatespirit, and I have given way for my husband's sake."

  There was half an hour to spare before I left the vicarage for therailway station. In that interval I wrote again to Mr. Playmore, tellinghim plainly what my position was, and withdrawing, at once and forever,from all share in investigating the mystery which lay hidden under thedust-heap at Gleninch.