I was too violently excited to answer him. The way to the vindication of my husband's innocence was opened to me at last!
"Where is she?" I cried. "And where is that servant who is in her confidence?"
"I can't tell you," he said. "I don't know."
"Where can I inquire? Can you tell me that?"
He considered a little. "There is one man who must know where she is—or who could find it out for you," he said.
"Who is he? What is his name?"
"He is a friend of Eustace's. Major Fitz-David."
"I know him! I am going to dine with him next week. He has asked you to dine too."
Miserrimus Dexter laughed contemptuously.
"Major Fitz-David may do very well for the ladies," he said. "The ladies can treat him as a species of elderly human lap-dog. I don't dine with lap-dogs; I have said, No. You go. He or some of his ladies may be of use to you. Who are the guests? Did he tell you?"
"There was a French lady whose name I forget," I said, "and Lady Clarinda—"
"That will do! She is a friend of Mrs. Beauly's. She is sure to know where Mrs. Beauly is. Come to me the moment you have got your information. Find out if the maid is with her: she is the easiest to deal with of the two. Only make the maid open her lips, and we have got Mrs. Beauly. We crush her," he cried, bringing his hand down like lightning on the last languid fly of the season, crawling over the arm of his chair—"we crush her as I crush this fly. Stop! A question—a most important question in dealing with the maid. Have you got any money?"
"Plenty of money."
He snapped his fingers joyously.
"The maid is ours!" he cried. "It's a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence with the maid. Wait! Another question. About your name? If you approach Mrs. Beauly in your own character as Eustace's wife, you approach her as the woman who has taken her place—you make a mortal enemy of her at starting. Beware of that!"
My jealousy of Mrs. Beauly, smoldering in me all through the interview, burst into flames at those words. I could resist it no longer—I was obliged to ask him if my husband had ever loved her.
"Tell me the truth," I said. "Did Eustace really—?"
He burst out laughing maliciously, he penetrated my jealousy, and guessed my question almost before it had passed my lips.
"Yes," he said, "Eustace did really love her—and no mistake about it. She had every reason to believe (before the Trial) that the wife's death would put her in the wife's place. But the Trial made another man of Eustace. Mrs. Beauly had been a witness of the public degradation of him. That was enough to prevent his marrying Mrs. Beauly. He broke off with her at once and forever—for the same reason precisely which has led him to separate himself from you. Existence with a woman who knew that he had been tried for his life as a murderer was an existence that he was not hero enough to face. You wanted the truth. There it is! You have need to be cautious of Mrs. Beauly—you have no need to be jealous of her. Take the safe course. Arrange with the Major, when you meet Lady Clarinda at his dinner, that you meet her under an assumed name."
"I can go to the dinner," I said, "under the name in which Eustace married me. I can go as 'Mrs. Woodville.'"
"The very thing!" he exclaimed. "What would I not give to be present when Lady Clarinda introduces you to Mrs. Beauly! Think of the situation. A woman with a hideous secret hidden in her inmost souclass="underline" and another woman who knows of it—another woman who is bent, by fair means or foul, on dragging that secret into the light of day. What a struggle! What a plot for a novel! I am in a fever when I think of it. I am beside myself when I look into the future, and see Mrs. Borgia-Beauly brought to her knees at last. Don't be alarmed!" he cried, with the wild light flashing once more in his eyes. "My brains are beginning to boil again in my head. I must take refuge in physical exercise. I must blow off the steam, or I shall explode in my pink jacket on the spot!"
The old madness seized on him again. I made for the door, to secure my retreat in case of necessity—and then ventured to look around at him.
He was off on his furious wheels—half man, half chair—flying like a whirlwind to the other end of the room. Even this exercise was not violent enough for him in his present mood. In an instant he was down on the floor, poised on his hands, and looking in the distance like a monstrous frog. Hopping down the room, he overthrew, one after another, all the smaller and lighter chairs as he passed them; arrived at the end, he turned, surveyed the prostrate chairs, encouraged himself with a scream of triumph, and leaped rapidly over chair after chair on his hands—his limbless body now thrown back from the shoulders, and now thrown forward to keep the balance—in a manner at once wonderful and horrible to behold. "Dexter's Leap-frog!" he cried, cheerfully, perching himself with his birdlike lightness on the last of the prostrate chairs when he had reached the further end of the room. "I'm pretty active, Mrs. Valeria, considering I'm a cripple. Let us drink to the hanging of Mrs. Beauly in another bottle of Burgundy!"
I seized desperately on the first excuse that occurred to me for getting away from him.
"You forget," I said—"I must go at once to the Major. If I don't warn him in time, he may speak of me to Lady Clarinda by the wrong name."
Ideas of hurry and movement were just the ideas to take his fancy in his present state. He blew furiously on the whistle that summoned Ariel from the kitchen regions, and danced up and down on his hands in the full frenzy of his delight.
"Ariel shall get you a cab!" he cried. "Drive at a gallop to the Major's. Set the trap for her without losing a moment. Oh, what a day of days this has been! Oh, what a relief to get rid of my dreadful secret, and share it with You! I am suffocating with happiness—I am like the Spirit of the Earth in Shelley's poem." He broke out with the magnificent lines in "Prometheus Unbound," in which the Earth feels the Spirit of Love, and bursts into speech. "'The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness! the boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness! the vaporous exultation not to be confined! Ha! ha! the animation of delight, which wraps me like an atmosphere of light, and bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.' That's how I feel, Valeria!—that's how I feel!"
I crossed the threshold while he was still speaking. The last I saw of him he was pouring out that glorious flood of words—his deformed body, poised on the overthrown chair, his face lifted in rapture to some fantastic heaven of his own making. I slipped out softly into the antechamber. Even as I crossed the room, he changed once more. I heard his ringing cry; I heard the soft thump-thump of his hands on the floor. He was going down the room again, in "Dexter's Leap-frog," flying over the prostrate chairs.
In the hall, Ariel was on the watch for me.
As I approached her, I happened to be putting on my gloves. She stopped me; and, taking my right arm, lifted my hand toward her face. Was she going to kiss it? or to bite it? Neither. She smelt it like a dog—and dropped it again with a hoarse chuckling laugh.