CHAPTER XV.

THE LAWYER’S STORY.

Italy had made up her mind by the next day, and a brief note to Lawyer Gardner brought him quickly to her side. He had not heard of his former client for years, and it was a great surprise to him to receive a letter from her daughter stating that she had lost her mother, and, having come to Boston on a matter of business, desired his advice.

He was a fine-looking man, between fifty and sixty, with a kind, shrewd, yet benevolent face that drew the girl’s heart to him at once.

As for him, he looked at her in pity and admiration, she was so beautiful, yet her lot was so sad.

“You were my mother’s friend and lawyer,” she said; “I want you to be both to me.”

She held out her little hand to him, and he pressed it warmly.

“I will do all that I can for you in both qualities,” he replied, and then she poured out to him her sorrows, the story of her mother’s tortured life, and her own vow to bring the real murderer to justice and clear her memory from all stain.

“I will confess to you that I at first suspected the man who succeeded my father in the Vale fortune, but he was lost at sea some time since, and is believed to be dead,” she added.

“You were wrong, Miss Vale. Francis Murray was one of nature’s noblemen, incapable of an ignoble action. I knew him well, and esteemed him highly as a gentleman, and admired his talents as an author.”

“But, Mr. Gardner, appearances are often deceitful. Remember _Arthur Dimmesdale_, in the ‘Scarlet Letter,’” she said.

Mr. Gardner answered decisively:

“Francis Murray was no criminal. Put that idea out of your head at once and forever, Miss Vale.”

His words were like sweet music to her ears. She decided not to tell him yet of what Percy Seabright had asserted.

“I want you to help me trace the murderer,” she said pleadingly.

“Miss Vale, I cannot take the case,” he replied, so abruptly that she flushed with anger, and retorted:

“I will go to another lawyer.”

“You must not--you shall not!” he cried out agitatedly, and caught her hand. “In mercy let this matter rest. You can do nothing but ill by reviving the case.”

“What _can_ you mean?” she cried, startled by the similarity of his words with the advice of Francis Murray.

He looked at her doubtfully a moment, then said resolutely:

“God knows I hate to wound you, Miss Vale, but unless I tell you the truth you will go on with this Quixotic thing, and perhaps bring out hidden facts that your friends would be glad to shield from public knowledge.”

“Explain!” she cried out haughtily. And then he said:

“Listen, then, my poor child. After I succeeded in clearing your mother from the charge of murder, there came to me from a private source some evidence that was so black and conclusive that it would most surely have convicted her if given to the jury. But this evidence had been withheld by friends who loved Ronald Vale so dearly that they shielded the guilty woman, to save his child from the black disgrace that would have been her portion had the truth been known.”

Her bosom heaved, her eyes blazed, she cried out imperiously:

“I demand to know the nature of this hidden evidence, although even before I hear it I stamp it as an infamous lie!”

“Would to God it might be proved so, for your sake, my poor girl,” Lawyer Gardner answered sadly. “But, alas! it carries such conviction with it that even I, who had all along believed in your poor mother, was forced to accept it as conclusive. But for your own dear sake, I beg you not to insist upon hearing the story!”

Italy Vale caught her breath with a great strangling gasp at those words from the lawyer, and sat staring at him for a moment in appalled silence.

He on his part looked at her in sympathy and pity mixed with admiration. She was the most dazzlingly beautiful creature he had ever beheld, and as he noted the exquisite face and form, the white-rose skin, the magnificent eyes, the scarlet lips, the shining hair with its rich waves, he thought what a pity it was that this exquisite creature should have had so weak and wicked a mother, should have had the fair promise of her life darkened and blighted by the stain of a mother’s sin.

He saw the slender white hands writhing in and out of each other upon the dark crimson of her rich morning-dress, saw the fair face change from horror and shame into swift anger and incredulity. Then she spoke resolutely:

“It is good of you to try to spare me, but I am not afraid to hear the story you have to tell, for no evidence can make me believe ill of my mother.”

“You have a loyal heart,” the lawyer exclaimed admiringly.

“I worshiped my beautiful mother,” she answered, with pearly tears starting out upon her lashes. “Ah, Mr. Gardner, if you had known her as I did, her love, her sorrow for her dead husband, the ineffable sadness of her whole life, you could not doubt she was an angel.”

“I hope you will always keep this noble faith in her,” he replied, with a sigh from the bottom of his kindly heart.

“I shall, Mr. Gardner, but I must make the world believe in her, too, I must prove her innocence to all.”

“My dear Miss Vale, she was acquitted by the law. I beg that you will rest satisfied with the verdict of the jury.”

She crested her proud head impatiently.

“Listen,” she said, and he wondered that one so young could cling so tenaciously to a purpose.

“The world was not satisfied with the verdict,” she said. “Oh, I know it all, how she was hissed by the populace when she left the court-room, how popular clamor branded her, how friends fell away from her, and left her alone in the world with her little child.

“Ah,” she cried, with clasped hands and streaming tears, “it is the most pathetic story ever known, the sufferings of my martyred mother! But she shall be cleared, the truth shall be known, the world shall do her justice!”

Her face was holy in its pure purpose, but the listener shuddered.

“Will nothing dissuade you from this Quixotic purpose?” he cried imploringly.

“No,” she answered, with upraised hand and gleaming eyes, “I have sworn to unmask the fiend who murdered my father, and whose malignity has hounded my mother through the world all these wretched years. They are one and the same person, I am sure, and no entreaties can turn me from my purpose. Although I am groping blindly in the dark now, I feel a presentiment that Heaven will send light at last to guide me.”

“You are mad, you are blind!” cried Lawyer Gardner impressively; and he added:

“If your mother were alive she would be the first person to forbid your raking open the ashes of the past, for the smoldering coals when blown into flame would only throw light upon that which has been hidden in darkness--the motive for her sin!”

“How dare you? How dare you?” she cried, in a white heat of passionate resentment.

“I beg your pardon for wounding you, Miss Vale, but I am only trying to prove my friendship to you in all that I say. Leave the past alone, I implore you.”

“I will not,” she flashed angrily.

And with deepest pain and pity he replied:

“Then I must do you the cruel kindness of telling you the truth. That verdict of the jury is the greatest blessing her child could have. Beneath its merciful veil she finds her surest refuge; for, alas! Italy Vale, your mother was a--_guilty woman_!”

“It is false!” quavered over her ashy lips.

“It is true; and should that old case be reopened the truth might accidentally come to light, and blast you with its horror.”

His voice was full of unspeakable pain and pity.

“I do not credit your assertion yet--I demand to know all the truth,” came in a low, imperious voice from her white lips.

“It is not fit for the pure ears of a young girl,” Mr. Gardner answered sadly; and, looking up at her angry face, he quoted: “‘Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise.’”

“I covet no such poor bliss as ignorance,” she cried, with a curling lip. “Speak! I demand it in the name of my injured mother! Let me know the worst that the infamous slanderer has done, then I shall know better how to strike a blow in her defense. Tell me all. I am waiting.”

It seemed to him that she was blind and mad as he had called her, but there was no retreat from betraying all that he knew. It was cruel, but perhaps it would deter her from her insane purpose of vindicating her mother’s name. It would rankle like a thorn in her heart, but perhaps it would teach her the worldly wisdom of saving the Vale name from further obloquy. With a heart-wrung sigh of the most honest sympathy, he bent forward and whispered low and rapidly in her ear for several minutes.

She sat and listened, her slight form rigid, her face pallid, her somber eyes gleaming strangely, and heard the saddest story ever breathed in a young girl’s ears against an idolized mother. And yet one with which the world is too sadly familiar!

It was that old story of a girl’s ambition, and then a woman’s frailty and sin. And this was what he said:

“Although Ronald Vale was a prince among men, and worthy of all honor and love, your mother gave him the hand without the heart. She was young and beautiful, the last descendant of a famous old Puritan family, but, alas! poor in everything but her own charms, and for ambition’s sake she married Ronald Vale.

“She became a social queen in New England society, and her husband worshiped her and believed in her love and purity as he believed in the angels. When your baby eyes first opened to the light your advent was hailed like that of a little princess. The father and mother both idolized you. A few years passed with seemingly fair skies, then the bolt of lightning fell--your father was found dead in his library, and the servants proved that your mother had been seen to leave the room stealthily just five minutes before he was found by the butler, murdered.”

“Yes, yes, I know all that,” Italy breathed eagerly. “My mother told me, and then I read it in the papers she had kept for me. Papa was sitting up late that night to look over some papers his lawyer had sent him that day. Mama had been compelled to attend a reception without him. She remained but a short time, and went, on returning, to the library to bid papa good night before retiring. He told her not to sit up for him, as he would be detained an hour yet, and had ordered the butler to bring him some warm coffee presently. As she kissed him an affectionate good night she noticed his diary lying close to his elbow on the desk, as though he had been writing in it. Then she went out softly and came to the nursery to me, where, five minutes later, she was startled by the outcries of the butler, who, on taking in the coffee to his master, had found him lying dead, stabbed to the heart.”

“Those are the precise acts that were submitted to the jury,” Mr. Gardner answered. “But though circumstantial evidence pointed to your mother as the guilty party, still the absence of a motive so influenced the jury that they leaned strongly to a theory of suicide, and acquitted Mrs. Vale on that doubt.”

He paused and looked at her gravely, but she looked back at him fixedly without reply, and he added sadly enough:

“Alas! the motive was known to one who loved your mother--her secret lover, the partner in her frailty--but who, though doubting not her guilt, because she had hinted to him a desire for her husband’s death, was too loyal to betray her, and so by his silence saved her life and her honor. For no one had suspected the secret liaison that prompted her to the commission of murder.”

He paused, expecting and dreading a terrible outburst, but for a moment she did not speak, only stared before her like one in a trance of horror, her face dead-white, her eyes wild.

“Miss Vale!” he cried out, in alarm at her strange looks.

She started, shivered, and looked at him, gasping out:

“Oh, this is infamous! infamous!”

“I am grieved that I had to reveal it to you and destroy your loyal faith in your mother’s goodness,” he replied very sadly.

Instantly her eyes flashed with keen displeasure.

“Do not think that you have destroyed my faith in her; no, no, you could never do that,” she exclaimed proudly. “No, Mr. Gardner, you have but added another score to the long list of wrongs I have to avenge in my mother’s sacred name. But this man who pretended to be her lover--his name?”

“I cannot tell you, Miss Vale.”

“Do you know it?”

“I do not.”

“Then who can tell the traitor’s name?”

“No living person, Miss Vale, for the only man who knew the name and the story is believed to be dead.”

“Francis Murray?”

“Yes.”

There came back to her mind the hints Francis Murray had dropped that day in the garden when they had talked of this subject. This was what he had meant. A sudden flush rose over her face, bathing it in a burning tide of shame.

So _he_ had believed this horrible slander of her angel mother? She buried her face in her hands for a moment, and he thought it was a mute acknowledgement of her terrible defeat. He began to murmur some words of heartfelt sympathy. She dropped her hands and looked up at him.

“You think I have pulled down my colors, that I own myself defeated,” she said curtly. “No, you are mistaken. Mr. Murray believed what he told you, of course, but--where is that man whose silence saved my mother? Why has he never been near her all these years?”

“Her crime inspired him with such horror that he refused her plea that he would marry her, and left her to her fate.”

Oh, the exquisite scorn of those curled lips, those flashing eyes!

“The dastard!” she hissed bitterly, and cried:

“He lied, basely lied, and I will yet bring home to him all the infamous slanders that have tracked my mother’s pathway since the hour my father died. Why, it is he, and no other, who murdered my father and followed my mother’s life with such hellish malignity. Oh, God! but to stand at the foot of the gallows-tree and see him swing!”

She choked with emotion, and hot tears sprang from her eyes, blinding their fierce glitter.

“Calm yourself, Miss Vale,” implored the lawyer.

She clashed the tears from her eyes, looked at him half-defiantly, and answered, in a steely voice:

“Nothing in what you have told me shows any cause for me to give up the search for new evidence to prove my mother’s innocence of all that with which she is charged.”

“You will only bring down irretrievable ruin upon your head,” he protested, growing alarmed at what seemed to him her stubborn hardihood.

“No,” she answered; “I shall triumph by the help of God, and then you will applaud me for my courage and my loyalty. Ah! I understand you, Mr. Gardner; you believe that might is right. You believe my mother was guilty because she could not defend herself, because she could not ward off the blows struck at her in the dark by a cowardly dastard. But wait, wait, and you shall yet see me avenge the wrongs of my parents. All is not lost while there is courage in one brave heart.

“You see how I feel. I cannot take your advice not to reopen the case. I shall bend every energy to the purpose I am sworn to. As for you, you shall help me or not, as you choose. I give you two days, Mr. Gardner, to decide what you will do. No, do not refuse without consideration. Think of it, weigh it well, and remember that a young girl’s prayers go up every hour to Heaven for your consent.”

He was about to speak, but she silenced him again with a queenly gesture.

“I will not take your answer for two days, sir. Come to me then with the words of consent on your lips. If you refuse me, I shall only go to another lawyer; I have money to push the investigation, and I shall not falter in my purpose, believe me.”

“So I have told you that dark story all in vain!” he exclaimed unhappily.

“No, not in vain, sir, for it has given me another important clue to work on. Oh, that Francis Murray were alive to-day that I might wrest from his unwilling lips the name of my mother’s traducer, whom I believe to be my father’s murderer!”

With a deep sigh, he took her hand to say good-by.

“God help you and bless you, you brave, noble girl!” he exclaimed, with irrepressible admiration of her courage in the face of such black despair, and he went away with a keen pain in his heart at the thought of her ultimate failure.