"Master!" she cried. "Master! You haven't told me a story for ever so long. Puzzle my thick head. Make my flesh creep. Come on.
A good long story. All blood and crimes."
Had she accidentally hit on the right suggestion to strike his wayward fancy? I knew his high opinion of his own skill in "dramatic narrative." I knew that one of his favorite amusements was to puzzle Ariel by telling her stories that she could not understand. Would he wander away into the regions of wild romance? Or would he remember that my obstinacy still threatened him with reopening the inquiry into the tragedy at Gleninch? and would he set his cunning at work to mislead me by some new stratagem? This latter course was the course which my past experience of him suggested that he would take. But, to my surprise and alarm, I found my past experience at fault. Ariel succeeded in diverting his mind from the subject which had been in full possession of it the moment before she spoke! He showed his face again. It was overspread by a broad smile of gratified self-esteem. He was weak enough now to let even Ariel find her way to his vanity. I saw it with a sense of misgiving, with a doubt whether I had not delayed my visit until too late, which turned me cold from head to foot.
Miserrimus Dexter spoke--to Ariel, not to me.
"Poor devil!" he said, patting her head complacently. "You don't understand a word of my stories, do you? And yet I can make the flesh creep on your great clumsy body--and yet I can hold your muddled mind, and make you like it. Poor devil!" He leaned back serenely in his chair, and looked my way again. Would the sight of me remind him of the words that had passed between us not a minute since? No! There was the pleasantly tickled self-conceit smiling at me exactly as it had smiled at Ariel. "I excel in dramatic narrative, Mrs. Valeria," he said. "And this creature here on the stool is a remarkable proof of it. She is quite a psychological study when I tell her one of my stories. It is really amusing to see the half-witted wretch's desperate efforts to understand me. You shall have a specimen. I have been out of spirits while you were away--I haven't told her a story for weeks past; I will tell her one now. Don't suppose it's any effort to me! My invention is inexhaustible. You are sure to be amused--you are naturally serious--but you are sure to be amused. I am naturally serious too; and I always laugh at her."Ariel clapped her great shapeless hands. "He always laughs at me!" she said, with a proud look of superiority directed straight at me.
I was at a loss, seriously at a loss, what to do.
The outbreak which I had provoked in leading him to speak of the late Mrs. Eustace warned me to be careful, and to wait for my opportunity before I reverted to _that_ subject. How else could Iturn the conversation so as to lead him, little by little, toward the betrayal of the secrets which he was keeping from me? In this uncertainty, one thing only seemed to be plain. To let him tell his story would be simply to let him waste the precious minutes.
With a vivid remembrance of Ariel's "ten claws," I decided, nevertheless on discouraging Dexter's new whim at every possible opportunity and by every means in my power.
"Now, Mrs. Valeria," he began, loudly and loftily, "listen. Now, Ariel, bring your brains to a focus. I improvise poetry; Iimprovise fiction. We will begin with the good old formula of the fairy stories. Once upon a time--"I was waiting for my opportunity to interrupt him when he interrupted himself. He stopped, with a bewildered look. He put his hand to his head, and passed it backward and forward over his forehead. He laughed feebly.
"I seem to want rousing," he said Was his mind gone.? There had been no signs of it until I had unhappily stirred his memory of the dead mistress of Gleninch.
Was the weakness which I had already noticed, was the bewilderment which I now saw, attributable to the influence of a passing disturbance only? In other words, had I witnessed nothing more serious than a first warning to him and to us? Would he soon recover himself, if we were patient, and gave him time? Even Benjamin was interested at last; I saw him trying to look at Dexter around the corner of the chair. Even Ariel was surprised and uneasy. She had no dark glances to cast at me now.
We all waited to see what he would do, to hear what he would say, next.
"My harp!" he cried. "Music will rouse me."
Ariel brought him his harp.
"Master," she said, wonderingly, "what's come to you?"He waved his hand, commanding her to be silent.
"Ode to Invention," he announced, loftily, addressing himself to me. "Poetry and music improvised by Dexter. Silence! Attention!"His fingers wandered feebly over the harpstrings, awakening no melody, suggesting no words. In a little while his hand dropped;his head sank forward gently, and rested on the frame of the harp. I started to my feet, and approached him. Was it a sleep? or was it a swoon?
I touched his arm, and called to him by his name.
Ariel instantly stepped between us, with a threatening look at me. At the same moment Miserrimus Dexter raised his head. My voice had reached him. He looked at me with a curious contemplative quietness in his eyes which I had never seen in them before.
"Take away the harp," he said to Ariel, speaking in languid tones, like a man who was very weary.
The mischievous, half-witted creature--in sheer stupidity or in downright malice, I am not sure which--irritated him once more.
"Why, Master?" she asked, staring at him with the harp hugged in her arms. "What's come to you? where is the story?""We don't want the story," I interposed. "I have many things to say to Mr. Dexter which I have not said yet."Ariel lifted her heavy hand. "You will have it!" she said, and advanced toward me. At the same moment the Master's voice stopped her.