The Law and the Lady Part 53

There he sat, silent, with his hand to his head, still struggling to marshal his wandering thoughts, still trying to see light through the darkness that was closing round him.

"Master!" cried Ariel, piteously. "What's become of the story?"

He started as if she had awakened him out of a sleep; he shook his head impatiently, as though he wanted to throw off some oppression that weighed upon it.

"Patience, patience," he said. "The story is going on again."

He dashed at it desperately; he picked up the first lost thread that fell in his way, reckless whether it were the right thread or the wrong one:

"Damoride fell on her knees. She burst into tears. She said--"

He stopped, and looked about him with vacant eyes.

"What name did I give the other woman?" he asked, not putting the question to me, or to either of my companions: asking it of himself, or asking it of the empty air.

"You called the other woman Cunegonda," I said.

At the sound of my voice his eyes turned slowly--turned on me, and yet failed to look at me. Dull and absent, still and changeless, they were eyes that seemed to be fixed on something far away. Even his voice was altered when he spoke next. It had dropped to a quiet, vacant, monotonous tone. I had heard something like it while I was watching by my husband's bedside, at the time of his delirium--when Eustace's mind appeared to be too weary to follow his speech. Was the end so near as this?

"I called her Cunegonda," he repeated. "And I called the other--"

He stopped once more.

"And you called the other Damoride," I said.

Ariel looked up at him with a broad stare of bewilderment. She pulled impatiently at the sleeve of his jacket to attract his notice.

"Is this the story, Master?" she asked.

He answered without looking at her, his changeless eyes still fixed, as it seemed, on something far away.

"This is the story," he said, absently. "But why Cunegonda? why Damoride? Why not Mistress and Maid? It's easier to remember Mistress and Maid--"

He hesitated; he s.h.i.+vered as he tried to raise himself in his chair.

Then he seemed to rally "What did the Maid say to the Mistress?" he muttered. "What? what? what?" He hesitated again. Then something seemed to dawn upon him unexpectedly. Was it some new thought that had struck him? or some lost thought that he had recovered? Impossible to say.

He went on, suddenly and rapidly went on, in these strange words:

"'The letter,' the Maid said; 'the letter. Oh my heart. Every word a dagger. A dagger in my heart. Oh, you letter. Horrible, horrible, horrible letter.'"

What, in G.o.d's name, was he talking about? What did those words mean?

Was he unconsciously pursuing his faint and fragmentary recollections of a past time at Gleninch, under the delusion that he was going on with the story? In the wreck of the other faculties, was memory the last to sink? Was the truth, the dreadful truth, glimmering on me dimly through the awful shadow cast before it by the advancing, eclipse of the brain?

My breath failed me; a nameless horror crept through my whole being.

Benjamin, with his pencil in his hand, cast one warning look at me.

Ariel was quiet and satisfied. "Go on, Master," was all she said. "I like it! I like it! Go on with the story."

He went on--like a man sleeping with his eyes open, and talking in his sleep.

"The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the Maid. The Mistress said, 'Show him the letter. Must, must, must do it.' The Maid said, 'No. Mustn't do it. Shan't show it. Stuff. Nonsense. Let him suffer. We can get him off. Show it? No. Let the worst come to the worst. Show it, then.' The Mistress said--" He paused, and waved his hand rapidly to and fro before his eyes, as if he were brus.h.i.+ng away some visionary confusion or entanglement. "Which was it last?" he said--"Mistress or Maid? Mistress? No. Maid speaks, of course. Loud.

Positive. 'You scoundrels. Keep away from that table. The Diary's there.

Number Nine, Caldershaws. Ask for Dandie. You shan't have the Diary. A secret in your ear. The Diary will hang, him. I won't have him hanged.

How dare you touch my chair? My chair is Me! How dare you touch Me?'"

The last words burst on me like a gleam of light! I had read them in the Report of the Trial--in the evidence of the sheriff's officer.

Miserrimus Dexter had spoken in those very terms when he had tried vainly to prevent the men from seizing my husband's papers, and when the men had pushed his chair out of the room. There was no doubt now of what his memory was busy with. The mystery at Gleninch! His last backward flight of thought circled feebly and more feebly nearer and nearer to the mystery at Gleninch!

Ariel aroused him again. She had no mercy on him; she insisted on hearing the whole story.

"Why do you stop, Master? Get along with it! get along with it! Tell us quick--what did the Missus say to the Maid?"

He laughed feebly, and tried to imitate her.

"'What did the Missus say to the Maid?'" he repeated. His laugh died away. He went on speaking, more and more vacantly, more and more rapidly. "The Mistress said to the Maid. We've got him off. What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grate. No matches in the box.

House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone. Tear it up. Shake it up in the basket. Along with the rest. Shake it up. Waste paper. Throw it away.

Gone forever. Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara! Gone forever.'"

Ariel clapped her hands, and mimicked him in her turn.

"'Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara!'" she repeated. "'Gone forever.' That's prime, Master! Tell us--who was Sara?"

His lips moved, but his voice sank so low that I could barely hear him.

He began again, with the old melancholy refrain:

"The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the Maid--"

He stopped abruptly, and raised himself erect in the chair; he threw up both his hands above his head, and burst into a frightful screaming laugh. "Aha-ha-ha-ha! How funny! Why don't you laugh? Funny, funny, funny, funny. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha--"

He fell back in the chair. The shrill and dreadful laugh died away into a low sob. Then there was one long, deep, wearily drawn breath. Then nothing but a mute, vacant face turned up to the ceiling, with eyes that looked blindly, with lips parted in a senseless, changeless grin.

Nemesis at last! The foretold doom had fallen on him. The night had come.

But one feeling animated me when the first shock was over. Even the horror of that fearful sight seemed only to increase the pity that I felt for the stricken wretch. I started impulsively to my feet. Seeing nothing, thinking of nothing but the helpless figure in the chair, I sprang forward to raise him, to revive him, to recall him (if such a thing might still be possible) to himself. At the first step that I took, I felt hands on me--I was violently drawn back. "Are you blind?"

cried Benjamin, dragging me nearer and nearer to the door. "Look there!"

He pointed; and I looked.

Ariel had been beforehand with me. She had raised her master in the chair; she had got one arm around him. In her free hand she brandished an Indian club, torn from a "trophy" of Oriental weapons that ornamented the wall over the fire-place. The creature was transfigured! Her dull eyes glared like the eyes of a wild animal. She gnashed her teeth in the frenzy that possessed her. "You have done this!" she shouted to me, waving the club furiously around and around over her head. "Come near him, and I'll dash your brains out! I'll mash you till there's not a whole bone left in your skin!" Benjamin, still holding me with one hand opened the door with the other. I let him do with me as he would; Ariel fascinated me; I could look at nothing but Ariel. Her frenzy vanished as she saw us retreating. She dropped the club; she threw both arms around him, and nestled her head on his bosom, and sobbed and wept over him.

"Master! master! They shan't vex you any more. Look up again. Laugh at me as you used to do. Say, 'Ariel, you're a fool.' Be like yourself again!" I was forced into the next room. I heard a long, low, wailing cry of misery from the poor creature who loved him with a dog's fidelity and a woman's devotion. The heavy door was closed between us. I was in the quiet antechamber, crying over that piteous sight; clinging to my kind old friend as helpless and as useless as a child.

Benjamin turned the key in the lock.

"There's no use in crying about it," he said, quietly. "It would be more to the purpose, Valeria, if you thanked G.o.d that you have got out of that room safe and sound. Come with me."

He took the key out of the lock, and led me downstairs into the hall.

After a little consideration, he opened the front door of the house. The gardener was still quietly at work in the grounds.

"Your master is taken ill," Benjamin said; "and the woman who attends upon him has lost her head--if she ever had a head to lose. Where does the nearest doctor live?"