excited her frightfully, and has not made her light-headed, as I expected it would do. She insists upon talking, and the irritation into which she is thrown by being desired to be silent is perhaps more dangerous than the permitting her to speak. If she is left alone, she at once rings the bell so violently that the whole house is alarmed, and I dare not tie the rope up out of her way, or, feeble as she is, I believe that she would crawl out of her room, and do herself some fearful mischief. If it were not for this state of things, I should have refused to hear anything from her upon the terrible subject; but what can I do? And it is better that she should pour out her incoherent confidences to me than to any one else. I write in her room, interrupted by her incessantly, and therefore you must do your best to make out my meaning, and I write as fast as I can at the risk of saying the same thing over again; but you are used to that in me.
My dearest Charles, I know not how—and the more I consider it the less I know how—to separate the truth from the idle talk which flows from Bertha’s lips hour after hour. Such a mixture of the most solemn and the most frivolous things I never heard, and it is very difficult to believe her in the full possession of her senses. Yet she is so minutely accurate about small matters, and recollects the tiniest point about dress, or ornament, or any sight she has seen, or any stranger she has met, that it is a hard struggle to believe that when she breaks out into revelations that I cannot even hint at, she is inventing or wandering. Is there any form of mental disease in which the sufferer’s mind cannot grasp anything beyond trifles? While I write the words, they recal a curious speech you yourself once made, in which you said that perhaps when we get into the next world we should discover that we had never had the resolution really to open our eyes at all in this, and so had never seen the angels and ghosts all round us, but only felt our way along. Bertha seems never to have looked out firmly upon life, but to have contented herself with what was quite close to her, just as baby, when you sat her down for the first time by the sea, and you expected her to be astonished and delighted with the waves, pulled her little hat over her eyes and filled her lap with the stones, and you were disappointed. My dear Charles, bear with my scribbling. I feel that I try to keep away from a painful theme.
I cannot arrive at a decision. But you know this already, because you know my ways, and that you would have had it in the very first line of my letter if I had been certain. I have gone over and over everything that Bertha has said and keeps on saying, and have put it in all shapes and forms, and yet I cannot weave it all into one connected story. That E. A. is the most fearfully wicked man who ever lived there cannot be a shadow of a doubt, and that poor Bertha is all that we have been forced to believe, I wish I could say was in the least degree made doubtful. I cannot write about this, and I need not. But I cannot, from all that she has said, and from all that I can bring out of it when she allows me time to think for myself—I cannot make out the true character of R. U. No one could esteem him so highly as you did, and I am sure that I was always ready to accept your estimate of him, and to suppose that you understood him better than a woman could do. And do not think that any representations of Bertha’s would have weight with me against your judgment, or that I am unconsciously allowing an erring wife to make me listen to any extenuations which she may try to find in the character of her husband. It is not from anything that she says against him (and it is very little indeed that I ever permit her to say upon the subject), that a strange impression is fixing itself into my mind. If I am to believe what she says—I mean, dear, the actual facts which she tells—I must say, and please forgive me if I put the case too abruptly against your friend, that—I scarcely like to write it—but if R. had desired to make known all about E. A. very much sooner, the proofs were within his reach.
Reading over these last lines, and having broken off to attend to my patient, I am not satisfied with them; and you must let me put what I mean in plainer words. Did not R. know of all that had taken place long before he chose to make others aware that it had come to his knowledge? You told me what he had said to poor Arthur when sending him home. Charles, if R. were not then in the dark as to his own household misery!
You will reject this thought at the first reading; but do you think that I would have put it on paper if I could have justified to myself the not writing it to you? Because it is a very shocking thought, and because it is far more terrible when we come to connect it with what has happened since. Please to think over all this as calmly as you would do, if you were sitting by my side, which I wish more than I can tell you that you were, at such a time. I know your faith in R. U. and God knows that I would be the last to try to shake it; but if he is your friend, remember that Laura is my sister, and let me speak as freely for her as you would do for him.
You have thought over it, dearest, and in spite of my assurance that Bertha, ill as she is now, and childish as she is at the best of times, is perfectly capable of bearing witness to facts, you have come to the conclusion that a woman has allowed herself to be talked into a confused belief by another woman who has a confused mind, and who is not to be trusted. No, dear Charles, you have not. You have, man-like, taken that view first, and then you have thought of me as not quite like all the easy and credulous women whom you have known, and you have come round to the conclusion that your wife would not write as she has done unless she had something to say which was worth your serious attention. I know that you are giving me fair play, dearest—what a word? but I write as fast as I could speak, and I have picked no words at all. You are shocked and grieved, and grieved too, dear one, am I that I cannot throw my arms round you while I am wounding you, as I feel I am doing. But it is the truth, Charles. I am convinced that it is the truth.
