"Do you think me hard and cruel? Wait a little, and time will change that way of thinking. As the years go on you will say to yourself, 'Basely as he deceived me, there was some generosity in him. He was man enough to release me of his own free will.'
"Yes, Valeria, I fully, freely release you. If it be possible to annul our marriage, let it be done. Recover your liberty by any means that you may be advised to employ; and be assured beforehand of my entire and implicit submission. My lawyers have the necessary instructions on this subject. Your uncle has only to communicate with them, and I think he will be satisfied of my resolution to do you justice. The one interest that I have now left in life is my interest in your welfare and your happiness in the time to come. Your welfare and your happiness are no longer to be found in your union with Me.
"I can write no more. This letter will wait for you at the hotel. It will be useless to attempt to trace me. I know my own weakness. My heart is all yours: I might yield to you if I let you see me again.
"Show these lines to your uncle, and to any friends whose opinions you may value. I have only to sign my dishonored name, and every one will understand and applaud my motive for writing as I do. The name justifies—amply justifies—the letter. Forgive and forget me. Farewell.
"EUSTACE MACALLAN."
In those words he took his leave of me. We had then been married—six days.
CHAPTER XIV. THE WOMAN'S ANSWER.
THUS far I have written of myself with perfect frankness, and, I think I may fairly add, with some courage as well. My frankness fails me and my courage fails me when I look back to my husband's farewell letter, and try to recall the storm of contending passions that it roused in my mind. No! I cannot tell the truth about myself—I dare not tell the truth about myself—at that terrible time. Men! consult your observation of women, and imagine what I felt; women! look into your own hearts, and see what I felt, for yourselves.
What I did, when my mind was quiet again, is an easier matter to deal with. I answered my husband's letter. My reply to him shall appear in these pages. It will show, in some degree, what effect (of the lasting sort) his desertion of me produced on my mind. It will also reveal the motives that sustained me, the hopes that animated me, in the new and strange life which my next chapters must describe.
I was removed from the hotel in the care of my fatherly old friend, Benjamin. A bedroom was prepared for me in his little villa. There I passed the first night of my separation from my husband. Toward the morning my weary brain got some rest—I slept.
At breakfast-time Major Fitz-David called to inquire about me. He had kindly volunteered to go and speak for me to my husband's lawyers on the preceding day. They had admitted that they knew where Eustace had gone, but they declared at the same time that they were positively forbidden to communicate his address to any one. In other respects their "instructions" in relation to the wife of their client were (as they were pleased to express it) "generous to a fault." I had only to write to them, and they would furnish me with a copy by return of post.
This was the Major's news. He refrained, with the tact that distinguished him, from putting any questions to me beyond questions relating to the state of my health. These answered, he took his leave of me for that day. He and Benjamin had a long talk together afterward in the garden of the villa.
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.