University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

The perfect verisimilitude of this story could
leave no doubt on the minds of any person. Even
the judge seemed to have had his attention awakened;

and having smoked out the cigar he was
puffing at when the witness began, forgot to light
another. He now asked if there were any more
witnesses, and being told there were none, requested
the circuit attorney to go on.

“I have nothing to say, sir,” replied that gentleman,
“but what, perhaps, were better deferred
till the jury have rendered their verdict. You, I
presume, sir,” addressing Balcombe with great
respect, “do not feel it necessary to say anything.”

“Nothing at all, sir,” was the quiet reply of
Balcombe.

“Gentlemen,” said the attorney, “you may retire.”

“There can be no occasion, sir,” said the foreman,
glancing on the rest, who all nodded assent.

“How say you, gentlemen?” said the attorney.
“Are the defendants guilty, or not guilty?”

“Not guilty,” was the answer uttered, with acclamation,
by every voice.

“Before the accused are discharged,” said the
attorney, “I beg leave to say what I just now expressed
a wish to say—that the testimony has left
not a shadow of doubt on my mind of the perfect
innocence of all these gentlemen.”

They were now discharged, and Balcombe, advancing
to Whitehead, said, “I owe you many
thanks, sir, for the generous and delicate manner
in which you came to my aid to-day. You will
add to the favour if you will show me how otherwise
than by words I shall express them.”

“You owe me nothing, sir,” said Whitehead,
with the same reckless, heartless air I had first remarked
in him. “Not even thanks. What I did,
sir, was done to please myself.”

Balcombe looked mortified and amazed, and said,
“The debt is the more onerous, sir, that I am only
allowed to discharge it by thanks, and that they
are not valued.”

“You mistake me, sir,” said Whitehead, “if you
suppose I should not value them if they were due.
But I neither served you nor wished to serve you.
I said what I did, because my admiration of you,
and my indignation at that stupid beast, disposed
me to say it, but I did you no service, and you
needed no aid from me;” saying this, he turned
away.

The foreman of the jury now approached. “Mr.
Balcombe,” said he, “you have had an opportunity
to-day of doing me justice, and you have done
it nobly. Had not the appearance of the last
witness deprived me of the opportunity, I beg
leave to say that I was prepared to requite it by
giving my recorded opinion, that testimony, however
strong, which should charge you with a dishonourable
and cowardly act, must be false, as
proving too much. Let me hope, sir, that hereafter
we may meet as friends.”

“I shall rejoice at it,” said Balcombe, extending
his hand; “and I beg you to believe that it has
never been by my wish or by my fault that we
have met otherwise.”

“I will believe anything you can say, sir,” replied
the other.

It was now nearly dark. We hurried out, and
at the door met the good old colonel, who had
left the house as soon as he had heard enough to
see that the danger was past. He advanced to
Balcombe with an extended hand, and without
speaking walked with us to our horses. He at
length mastered his emotion, and we began to converse
on the events of the day. A brisk ride
brought us to Colonel Robinson's before midnight.
I saw a light at the window of Balcombe's chamber,
and a female figure leaned out of it.

“All well!” he exclaimed, leaping from his
horse. The window was closed, and he ran up
stairs.

The next morning Balcombe appeared at brealfast,
no otherwise changed in his deportment than
that he now conversed freely on indifferent subjects,
though not exactly with as much gayety as
formerly. Indeed, the wide discursive range of
his thoughts seemed more restricted, and his whole
manner was more sobered than at any time before
the death of Ramsay. The countenance of his
wife still glowed with a sense of indignant honour
and insulted pride, which, perhaps, shone out
more conspicuously, because whatever of gloom
had overshadowed it was entirely dissipated. The
fire of her eye was less lurid, but brighter; the
flush of her cheek was no longer the deep crimson
of choked excitement, but the healthy glow which

rises from a heart that beats freely. She was relieved,
but not satisfied; and still incensed, though
the fierceness of her resentment was much appeased.
As she was about to leave the room
after breakfast, she turned, and said to her father,

“My dear father, my husband will never tell me
all about himself, except when he thinks he has
done something wrong or foolish. You and Mr.
Napier must tell me all about what passed yesterday.”

“I can tell you no more at this moment, my dear
child,” said the old gentleman, kissing her tenderly,
and holding her in his arms, with her face turned up
to his as he spoke, “I can tell you no more than that
hereafter you may be as proud of your husband as
you will, and I will never laugh at you about it.”

“And I, my dear madam,” said I, “can only
say, that had you been there yesterday, you would
have been a thousand times prouder of him than
you ever were before, and none present would
have thought you as proud of him as he deserved.”

As I spoke, she quietly disengaged herself from
her father's arms, and looked at her husband with
more emotion than I had ever seen her display.
At length all a woman's softness rose to her eyes;
her features worked, her whole frame shook, and
stretching her hands to heaven, she exclaimed,
“Oh, thank God! thank God!” and fell upon his
neck. There she hung, as if unconscious of our
presence, shedding, during the whole time, a continued
flood of tears. In that torrent the fire that

had burned her heart was quenched. She withdrew
herself from his embrace an altered woman.
From that time forth she was the same reserved,
silent, modest, though dignified lady that I had first
seen her. The sun of her husband's honour (to
use Balcombe's figure) once more shone clear and
bright above the horizon, and she modestly paled
her beams in his presence.

I need not say how we were all affected.
Even Balcombe's nerves, which seemed formed to
endure the rack without shrinking, were shaken
like a child's. But he recovered himself before
she did, and as she was about to withdraw he said,

“You must take your share of praise, my dear
Elizabeth. If there be any justice in what my
partial friends have just said, I owe all the honour
to you. I committed myself, dearest, to be guided
by what Napier would call `the confident, unerring
instinct of woman's love,' and it pointed the path
that led to victory over my enemies. Had not
you been my wife I should have been safe, but not
triumphant.”

She again clung to him, and hid her blushing
and beaming countenance in his bosom. She was
about to leave us, but he detained her, and added,

“You must stay and hear me tell all. I was
not unapprized,” continued he, addressing us, “of
the nature of my situation. I knew the professional
character of Mr. Shaler, and was prepared
for all that took place, except the exclusion of Napier's
account of his conversation with Montague.

But even with that testimony, had it been admitted,
my main dependence was on my character;
and to act out that character fully, so as to give
the lie to any testimony which should charge me
with dishonourable and cowardly assassination,
was the part, not of magnanimity, as you, William,
would say, but of true policy. I said nothing
of these things to you, but with my wife I had no
reserve. The part I acted was rather the suggestion
of my own mind than hers, but it was her
noble confidence that inspired me to possess my
soul in patience, and to look calmly on my danger,
when it was most appalling. If you remember
what was said by Mr. Roberts, the foreman of the
jury, you will see that I was not mistaken.”

“Good God!” said Mrs. Balcombe, “was Mr.
Roberts on your jury? The bitterest enemy you
have in the world.”

“Yes, dear, he was, and by my choice; for
though my enemy, he is brave and honourable, and
knew me to be so too.”

“Oh my husband!” exclaimed she, looking at
him with tender admiration, “that choice was
doubtless wise, but I could never have advised
it.”

“I know that,” said he; “it is not the part of
woman to meet danger in person, but to buckle on
the armour of her husband's heart, and fortify it
for the encounter. Go now, dear. You will see
Mr. Roberts in a few days. Yesterday's work
has made him my fast friend.”

Saying this he kissed her, and she left the room,
the proudest and happiest woman upon earth.
She presently returned, leading her little girl.

“You have not seen your child,” said she; “she
was dressed and at play before you awoke.”

He stooped down and held out his arms; the
little thing ran into them; and for a few moments
he forgot everything else in her caresses and artless
prattle. Her mother then took her away, and
turning to me he said,

“How say you, William? I wish to train up
that child to be the wife of a great and good man.
What model would you propose to me?”

“Her own mother, assuredly,” said I.

“I am afraid, then,” said he, “we must educate
her ourselves; lest, at a boarding-school, she might
choose another model.”

“But if she is endowed by nature with the same
primitive qualities which I most admire in her
mother, then, learn what she may, she cannot help
adopting and acting on her generous sentiments
and noble principles.”

“I shall expect her mind to bear the same fruit
if the same seed is planted.”

“What is that?”

“An habitual subordination of the heart and
mind, not to the authority, but to the wisdom, real
or fancied, of her parents.”

“And how will that have such an effect?”

“It will prepare and dispose her to enthrone, as
the master feeling of her heart, a cherished sense

of her husband's superiority, from which will spring
an assurance of his virtue, a reliance on his wisdom,
a zeal for his honour, a pride in his distinction,
and an undoubting confidence in his fortunes
and his prowess, which will make her to her husband
what her mother is to me. What else she is
to be let it depend on him. If he is her superior
at first, as he should be, he will raise her to his own
level, or as near it as comports with the happiness
of both. Even should her faculties be superior to
his, he cannot raise her so high but that she will
still feel herself the creature of his hands. His
confidence will result back to her, and she will be
his best adviser, because she will always encourage
him to put his trust in himself and in God. This
last is a necessary effect of a woman's natural confidence
in her husband's fortunes. The master of
her heart and person is, in her eyes, the master of
her destiny and his own. This connects her confidence
in him with her confidence in the great Disposer
of events, whose favour she would never
have him forfeit. Did ever woman's love incite to
a vicious act? Did ever the chance of war, to a
loving woman, seem equal between her husband
and another? If so, what peace of mind to one
whose husband is abroad in a campaign in which
it is foreseen that one half will perish? With an
equal chance that she may never see him again,
how could she endure his absence? Yet she
sleeps soundly and feeds kindly. She prays, indeed,
fervently; but her prayer is full of hope, for
she is his alter ego. She fears for him only as a
brave man confident in himself fears for himself.

“I know the authority of Shakspeare is against
me here. But I must read human nature for myself.
It is the wife, and not the mother of Coriolanus
who should have been made to say,

Had I been the friend, the brother, the son of Elizabeth,
she would have trembled for me. For her
husband she had no fears. This comfortable condition
of woman's mind, which reason cannot justify,
reason can yet trace to its causes. I may err
in my judgment of these; but I must be very sure
that I am wrong, before I will consent to peril this
invaluable quality in woman, for the sake of experimenting
on the intellectual capabilities of a being
who, after all, must, and of choice will spend more
than half her life in nursing children.”

I have already said that Balcombe was the hardest
man to talk with that I had ever seen. I made
no reply; but I was still unconvinced. With all
the advantage of a striking example at hand, I saw
that he rested his case, after all, on a beautiful but
romantic theory, which might be fallacious. Indeed,
I was rather more inclined to adhere to my
former opinions, because I was satisfied I had
heard all that could be urged against them, and
still saw no sufficient reason to reject the arguments,

with which all are familiar, in favour of
that system of education which would place the
mind of woman fully on a level with that of the
companion of her life.