Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (955 page)

He seemed to be pleased, instead of offended by the bold manner in which I expressed myself.

“My dear Mrs. Eustace, you have no reason to be angry with me. In one respect, I entirely share your view — with this difference, that I go a little further than you do.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You will understand me directly. You describe Dexter’s feeling for the late Mrs. Eustace as a happy mixture of respect and affection. I can tell you it was a much warmer feeling toward her than that. I have my information from the poor lady herself — who honoured me with her confidence and friendship for the best part of her life. Before she married Mr. Macallan — she kept it a secret from him, and you had better keep it a secret too — Miserrimus Dexter was in love with her. Miserrimus Dexter asked her — deformed as he was, seriously asked her — to be his wife.”

“And in the face of that,” I cried, “you say that he poisoned her!”

“I do. I see no other conclusion possible, after what happened during your visit to him. You all but frightened him into a fainting fit. What was he afraid of?”

I tried hard to find an answer to that. I even embarked on an answer without quite knowing where my own words might lead me.

Mr. Dexter is an old and true friend of my husband, I began. “When he heard me say I was not satisfied with the Verdict, he might have felt alarmed — ”

“He might have felt alarmed at the possible consequences to your husband of reopening the inquiry,” said Mr. Playmore, ironically finishing the sentence for me. “Rather far-fetched, Mrs. Eustace; and not very consistent with your faith in your husband’s innocence. Clear your mind of one mistake,” he continued, seriously, “which may fatally mislead you if you persist in pursuing your present course. Miserrimus Dexter, you may take my word for it, ceased to be your husband’s friend on the day when your husband married his first wife. Dexter has kept up appearances, I grant you, both in public and in private. His evidence in his friend’s favor at the Trial was given with the deep feeling which everybody expected from him. Nevertheless, I firmly believe, looking under the surface, that Mr. Macallan has no bitterer enemy living than Miserrimus Dexter.”

He turned me cold. I felt that here, at least, he was right. My husband had wooed and won the woman who had refused Dexter’s offer of marriage. Was Dexter the man to forgive that? My own experience answered me, and said, No. “Bear in mind what I have told you,” Mr. Playmore proceeded. “And now let us get on to your own position in this matter, and to the interests that you have at stake. Try to adopt my point of view for the moment; and let us inquire what chance we have of making any further advance toward a discovery of the truth. It is one thing to be morally convinced (as I am) that Miserrimus Dexter is the man who ought to have been tried for the murder at Gleninch; and it is another thing, at this distance of time, to lay our hands on the plain evidence which can alone justify anything like a public assertion of his guilt. There, as I see it, is the insuperable difficulty in the case. Unless I am completely mistaken, the question is now narrowed to this plain issue: The public assertion of your husband’s innocence depends entirely on the public assertion of Dexter’s guilt. How are you to arrive at that result? There is not a particle of evidence against him. You can only convict Dexter on Dexter’s own confession. Are you listening to me?”

I was listening, most unwillingly. If he were right, things had indeed come to that terrible pass. But I could not — with all my respect for his superior knowledge and experience — I could not persuade myself that he
was
right. And I owned it, with the humility which I really felt.

He smiled good-humoredly.

“At any rate,” he said, “you will admit that Dexter has not freely opened his mind to you thus far? He is still keeping something from your knowledge which you are interested in discovering?”

“Yes. I admit that.”

“Very good. What applies to your view of the case applies to mine. I say, he is keeping from you the confession of his guilt. You say, he is keeping from you information which may fasten the guilt on some other person. Let us start from that point. Confession, or information, how are you to get at what he is now withholding from you? What influence can you bring to bear on him when you see him again?”

“Surely I might persuade him?”

“Certainly. And if persuasion fail — what then? Do you think you can entrap him into speaking out? or terrify him into speaking out?”

“If you will look at your notes, Mr. Playmore, you will see that I have already succeeded in terrifying him — though I am only a woman and though I didn’t mean to do it.”

“Very well answered. You mark the trick. What you have done once you think you can do again. Well, as you are determined to try the experiment, it can do you no harm to know a little more of Dexter’s character and temperament than you know now. Suppose we apply for information to somebody who can help us?”

I started, and looked round the room. He made me do it — he spoke as if the person who was to help us was close at our elbows.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “The oracle is silent; and the oracle is here.”

He unlocked one of the drawers of his desk; produced a bundle of letters, and picked out one.

“When we were arranging your husband’s defense,” he said, “we felt some difficulty about including Miserrimus Dexter among our witnesses. We had not the slightest suspicion of him, I need hardly tell you. But we were all afraid of his eccentricity; and some among us even feared that the excitement of appearing at the Trial might drive him completely out of his mind. In this emergency we applied to a doctor to help us. Under some pretext, which I forget now, we introduced him to Dexter. And in due course of time we received his report. Here it is.”

He opened the letter, and marking a certain passage in it with a pencil, handed it to me.

“Read the lines which I have marked,” he said; “they will be quite sufficient for our purpose.”

I read these words:

“Summing up the results of my observation, I may give it as my opinion that there is undoubtedly latent insanity in this case, but that no active symptoms of madness have presented themselves as yet. You may, I think, produce him at the Trial, without fear of consequences. He may say and do all sorts of odd things; but he has his mind under the control of his will, and you may trust his self-esteem to exhibit him in the character of a substantially intelligent witness.

“As to the future, I am, of course, not able to speak positively. I can only state my views.

“That he will end in madness (if he live), I entertain little or no doubt. The question of
when
the madness will show itself depends entirely on the state of his health. His nervous system is highly sensitive, and there are signs that his way of life has already damaged it. If he conquer the bad habits to which I have alluded in an earlier part of my report, and if he pass many hours of every day quietly in the open air, he may last as a sane man for years to come. If he persist in his present way of life — or, in other words, if further mischief occur to that sensitive nervous system — his lapse into insanity must infallibly take place when the mischief has reached its culminating point. Without warning to himself or to others, the whole mental structure will give way; and, at a moment’s notice, while he is acting as quietly or speaking as intelligently as at his best time, the man will drop (if I may use the expression) into madness or idiocy. In either case, when the catastrophe has happened, it is only due to his friends to add that they can (as I believe) entertain no hope of his cure. The balance once lost, will be lost for life.”

There it ended. Mr. Playmore put the letter back in his drawer.

“You have just read the opinion of one of our highest living authorities,” he said. “Does Dexter strike you as a likely man to give his nervous system a chance of recovery? Do you see no obstacles and no perils in your way?”

My silence answered him.

“Suppose you go back to Dexter,” he proceeded. “And suppose that the doctor’s opinion exaggerates the peril in his case. What are you to do? The last time you saw him, you had the immense advantage of taking him by surprise. Those sensitive nerves of his gave way, and he betrayed the fear that you aroused in him. Can you take him by surprise again? Not you! He is prepared for you now; and he will be on his guard. If you encounter nothing worse, you will have his cunning to deal with next. Are you his match at that? But for Lady Clarinda he would have hopelessly misled you on the subject of Mrs. Beauly.”

There was no answering this, either. I was foolish enough to try to answer it, for all that.

“He told me the truth so far as he knew it,” I rejoined. “He really saw what he said he saw in the corridor at Gleninch.”

“He told you the truth,” returned Mr. Playmore, “because he was cunning enough to see that the truth would help him in irritating your suspicions. You don’t really believe that he shared your suspicions?”

“Why not?” I said. “He was as ignorant of what Mrs. Beauly was really doing on that night as I was — until I met Lady Clarinda. It remains to be seen whether he will not be as much astonished as I was when I tell him what Lady Clarinda told me.”

This smart reply produced an effect which I had not anticipated.

To my surprise, Mr. Playmore abruptly dropped all further discussion on his side. He appeared to despair of convincing me, and he owned it indirectly in his next words.

“Will nothing that I can say to you,” he asked, “induce you to think as I think in this matter?”

“I have not your ability or your experience,” I answered. “I am sorry to say I can’t think as you think.”

“And you are really determined to see Miserrimus Dexter again?”

“I have engaged myself to see him again.”

He waited a little, and thought over it.

“You have honoured me by asking for my advice,” he said. “I earnestly advise you, Mrs. Eustace, to break your engagement. I go even further than that — I
entreat
you not to see Dexter again.”

Just what my mother-in-law had said! just what Benjamin and Major Fitz-David had said! They were all against me. And still I held out.

I wonder, when I look back at it, at my own obstinacy. I am almost ashamed to relate that I made Mr. Playmore no reply. He waited, still looking at me. I felt irritated by that fixed look. I arose, and stood before him with my eyes on the floor.

He arose in his turn. He understood that the conference was over.

“Well, well,” he said, with a kind of sad good-humor, “I suppose it is unreasonable of me to expect that a young woman like you should share any opinion with an old lawyer like me. Let me only remind you that our conversation must remain strictly confidential for the present; and then let us change the subject. Is there anything that I can do for you? Are you alone in Edinburgh?”

“No. I am traveling with an old friend of mine, who has known me from childhood.”

“And do you stay here to-morrow?”

“I think so.”

“Will you do me one favor? Will you think over what has passed between us, and will you come back to me in the morning?”

“Willingly, Mr. Playmore, if it is only to thank you again for your kindness.”

On that understanding we parted. He sighed — the cheerful man sighed, as he opened the door for me. Women are contradictory creatures. That sigh affected me more than all his arguments. I felt myself blush for my own head-strong resistance to him as I took my leave and turned away into the street.

CHAPTER XXXIV. GLENINCH.

“AHA!” said Benjamin, complacently. “So the lawyer thinks, as I do, that you will be highly imprudent if you go back to Mr. Dexter? A hard-headed, sensible man the lawyer, no doubt. You will listen to Mr. Playmore, won’t you, though you wouldn’t listen to me?”

(I had of course respected Mr. Playmore’s confidence in me when Benjamin and I met on my return to the hotel. Not a word relating to the lawyer’s horrible suspicion of Miserrimus Dexter had passed my lips.)