Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (963 page)

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 I turn 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; I improvise 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.

“Put away the harp, you fool!” he repeated, sternly. “And wait for the story until I choose to tell it.”

She took the harp submissively back to its place at the end of the room. Miserrimus Dexter moved his chair a little closer to mine. “I know what will rouse me,” he said, confidentially. “Exercise will do it. I have had no exercise lately. Wait a little, and you will see.”

He put his hands on the machinery of the chair, and started on his customary course down the room. Here again the ominous change in him showed itself under a new form. The pace at which he traveled was not the furious pace that I remembered; the chair no longer rushed under him on rumbling and whistling wheels. It went, but it went slowly. Up the room and down the room he painfully urged it — and then he stopped for want of breath.

We followed him. Ariel was first, and Benjamin was by my side. He motioned impatiently to both of them to stand back, and to let me approach him alone.

“I’m out of practice,” he said, faintly. “I hadn’t the heart to make the wheels roar and the floor tremble while you were away.”

Who would not have pitied him? Who would have remembered his misdeeds at that moment? Even Ariel felt it. I heard her beginning to whine and whimper behind me. The magician who alone could rouse the dormant sensibilities in her nature had awakened them now by his neglect. Her fatal cry was heard again, in mournful, moaning tones —

“What’s come to you, Master? Where’s the story?”

“Never mind her,” I whispered to him. “You want the fresh air. Send for the gardener. Let us take a drive in your pony-chaise.”

It was useless. Ariel would be noticed. The mournful cry came once more —

“Where’s the story? where’s the story?”

The sinking spirit leaped up in Dexter again.

“You wretch! you fiend!” he cried, whirling his chair around, and facing her. “The story is coming. I
can
tell it! I
will
tell it! Wine! You whimpering idiot, get me the wine. Why didn’t I think of it before? The kingly Burgundy! that’s what I want, Valeria, to set my invention alight and flaming in my head. Glasses for everybody! Honour to the King of the Vintages — the Royal Clos Vougeot!”

Ariel opened the cupboard in the alcove, and produced the wine and the high Venetian glasses. Dexter drained his gobletful of Burgundy at a draught; he forced us to drink (or at least to pretend to drink) with him. Even Ariel had her share this time, and emptied her glass in rivalry with her master. The powerful wine mounted almost instantly to her weak head. She began to sing hoarsely a song of her own devising, in imitation of Dexter. It was nothing but the repetition, the endless mechanical repetition, of her demand for the story — ”Tell us the story. Master! master! tell us the story!” Absorbed over his wine, the Master silently filled his goblet for the second time. Benjamin whispered to me while his eye was off us, “Take my advice, Valeria, for once; let us go.”

“One last effort,” I whispered back. “Only one!”

Ariel went drowsily on with her song —

“Tell us the story. Master! master! tell us the story.”

Miserrimus Dexter looked up from his glass. The generous stimulant was beginning to do its work. I saw the colour rising in his face. I saw the bright intelligence flashing again in his eyes. The Burgundy
had
roused him! The good wine stood my friend, and offered me a last chance!

“No story,” I said. “I want to talk to you, Mr. Dexter. I am not in the humour for a story.”

“Not in the humor?” he repeated, with a gleam of the old impish irony showing itself again in his face. “That’s an excuse. I see what it is! You think my invention is gone — and you are not frank enough to confess it. I’ll show you you’re wrong. I’ll show you that Dexter is himself again. Silence, you Ariel, or you shall leave the room! I have got it, Mrs. Valeria, all laid out here, with scenes and characters complete.” He touched his forehead, and looked at me with a furtive and smiling cunning before he added his next words. “It’s the very thing to interest you, my fair friend. It’s the story of a Mistress and a Maid. Come back to the fire and hear it.”

The Story of a Mistress and a Maid? If that meant anything, it meant the story of Mrs. Beauly and her maid, told in disguise.

The title, and the look which had escaped him when he announced it, revived the hope that was well-nigh dead in me. He had rallied at last. He was again in possession of his natural foresight and his natural cunning. Under pretense of telling Ariel her story, he was evidently about to make the attempt to mislead me for the second time. The conclusion was irresistible. To use his own words — Dexter was himself again.

I took Benjamin’s arm as we followed him back to the fire-place in the middle of the room.

“There is a chance for me yet,” I whispered. “Don’t forget the signals.”

We returned to the places which we had already occupied. Ariel cast another threatening look at me. She had just sense enough left, after emptying her goblet of wine, to be on the watch for a new interruption on my part. I took care, of course, that nothing of the sort should happen. I was now as eager as Ariel to hear the story. The subject was full of snares for the narrator. At any moment, in the excitement of speaking, Dexter’s memory of the true events might show itself reflected in the circumstances of the fiction. At any moment he might betray himself.

He looked around him, and began.

“My public, are you seated? My public, are you ready?” he asked, gayly. “Your face a little more this way,” he added, in his softest and tenderest tones, motioning to me to turn my full face toward him. “Surely I am not asking too much? You look at the meanest creature that crawls — look at Me. Let me find my inspiration in your eyes. Let me feed my hungry admiration on your form. Come, have one little pitying smile left for the man whose happiness you have wrecked. Thank you, Light of my Life, thank you!” He kissed his hand to me, and threw himself back luxuriously in his chair. “The story,” he resumed. “The story at last! In what form shall I cast it? In the dramatic form — the oldest way, the truest way, the shortest way of telling a story! Title first. A short title, a taking title: ‘Mistress and Maid.’ Scene, the land of romance — Italy. Time, the age of romance — the fifteenth century. Ha! look at Ariel. She knows no more about the fifteenth century than the cat in the kitchen, and yet she is interested already. Happy Ariel!”

Ariel looked at me again, in the double intoxication of the wine and the triumph.

“I know no more than the cat in the kitchen,” she repeated, with a broad grin of gratified vanity. “I am ‘happy Ariel!’ What are you?”

Miserrimus Dexter laughed uproariously.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “Isn’t she fun? — Persons of the Drama,” he resumed: “three in number. Women only. Angelica, a noble lady; noble alike in spirit and in birth. Cunegonda, a beautiful devil in woman’s form. Damoride, her unfortunate maid. First scene: a dark vaulted chamber in a castle. Time, evening. The owls are hooting in the wood; the frogs are croaking in the marsh. — Look at Ariel! Her flesh creeps; she shudders audibly. Admirable Ariel!”

My rival in the Master’s favor eyed me defiantly. “Admirable Ariel!” she repeated, in drowsy accents. Miserrimus Dexter paused to take up his goblet of Burgundy — placed close at hand on a little sliding table attached to his chair. I watched him narrowly as he sipped the wine. The flush was still mounting in his face; the light was still brightening in his eyes. He set down his glass again, with a jovial smack of his lips — and went on:

“Persons present in the vaulted chamber: Cunegonda and Damoride. Cunegonda speaks. ‘Damoride!’ ‘Madam?’ ‘Who lies ill in the chamber above us?’ ‘Madam, the noble lady Angelica.’ (A pause. Cunegonda speaks again.) ‘Damoride!’ ‘Madam?’ ‘How does Angelica like you?’ ‘Madam, the noble lady, sweet and good to all who approach her, is sweet and good to me.’ ‘Have you attended on her, Damoride?’ ‘Sometimes, madam, when the nurse was weary.’ ‘Has she taken her healing medicine from your hand.’ ‘Once or twice, madam, when I happened to be by.’ ‘Damoride, take this key and open the casket on the table there.’ (Damoride obeys.) ‘Do you see a green vial in the casket?’ ‘I see it, madam.’ ‘Take it out.’ (Damoride obeys.) ‘Do you see a liquid in the green vial? can you guess what it is?’ ‘No, madam.’ ‘Shall I tell you?’ (Damoride bows respectfully ) ‘Poison is in the vial.’ (Damoride starts; she shrinks from the poison; she would fain put it aside. Her mistress signs to her to keep it in her hand; her mistress speaks.) ‘Damoride, I have told you one of my secrets; shall I tell you another?’ (Damoride waits, fearing what is to come. Her mistress speaks.) ‘I hate the Lady Angelica. Her life stands between me and the joy of my heart. You hold her life in your hand.’ (Damoride drops on her knees; she is a devout person; she crosses herself, and then she speaks.) ‘Mistress, you terrify me. Mistress, what do I hear?’ (Cunegonda advances, stands over her, looks down on her with terrible eyes, whispers the next words.) ‘Damoride! the Lady Angelica must die — and I must not be suspected. The Lady Angelica must die — and by your hand.’“