"_I_ have got at that latent affection, pride, fidelity, and the rest of it," resumed Miserrimus Dexter. "_I_ hold the key to that dormant Intelligence. Grand thought! Now look at her when I speak. (I named her, poor wretch, in one of my ironical moments. She has got to like her name, just as a dog gets to like his collar.) Now, Mrs. Valeria, look and listen.--Ariel!"
The girl"s dull face began to brighten. The girl"s mechanically moving hand stopped, and held the comb in suspense.
"Ariel! you have learned to dress my hair and anoint my beard, haven"t you?"
Her face still brightened. "Yes! yes! yes!" she answered, eagerly. "And you say I have learned to do it well, don"t you?"
"I say that. Would you like to let anybody else do it for you?"
Her eyes melted softly into light and life. Her strange unwomanly voice sank to the gentlest tones that I had heard from her yet.
"n.o.body else shall do it for me," she said at once proudly and tenderly.
"n.o.body, as long as I live, shall touch you but me."
"Not even the lady there?" asked Miserrimus Dexter, pointing backward with his hand-mirror to the place at which I was standing.
Her eyes suddenly flashed, her hand suddenly shook the comb at me, in a burst of jealous rage.
"Let her try!" cried the poor creature, raising her voice again to its hoa.r.s.est notes. "Let her touch you if she dares!"
Dexter laughed at the childish outbreak. "That will do, my delicate Ariel," he said. "I dismiss your Intelligence for the present. Relapse into your former self. Finish my beard."
She pa.s.sively resumed her work. The new light in her eyes, the new expression in her face, faded little by little and died out. In another minute the face was as vacant and as lumpish as before; the hands did their work again with the lifeless dexterity which had so painfully impressed me when she first took up the brush. Miserrimus Dexter appeared to be perfectly satisfied with these results.
"I thought my little experiment might interest you," he said. "You see how it is? The dormant intelligence of my curious cousin is like the dormant sound in a musical instrument. I play upon it--and it answers to my touch. She likes being played upon. But her great delight is to hear me tell a story. I puzzle her to the verge of distraction; and the more I confuse her the better she likes the story. It is the greatest fun; you really must see it some day." He indulged himself in a last look at the mirror. "Ha!" he said, complacently; "now I shall do. Vanish, Ariel!"
She tramped out of the room in her heavy boots, with the mute obedience of a trained animal. I said "Good-night" as she pa.s.sed me. She neither returned the salutation nor looked at me: the words simply produced no effect on her dull senses. The one voice that could reach her was silent. She had relapsed once more into the vacant inanimate creature who had opened the gate to us, until it pleased Miserrimus Dexter to speak to her again.
"Valeria!" said my mother-in-law. "Our modest host is waiting to see what you think of him."
While my attention was fixed on his cousin he had wheeled his chair around so as to face me with the light of the lamp falling full on him.
In mentioning his appearance as a witness at the Trial, I find I have borrowed (without meaning to do so) from my experience of him at this later time. I saw plainly now the bright intelligent face and the large clear blue eyes, the l.u.s.trous waving hair of a light chestnut color, the long delicate white hands, and the magnificent throat and chest which I have elsewhere described. The deformity which degraded and destroyed the manly beauty of his head and breast was hidden from view by an Oriental robe of many colors, thrown over the chair like a coverlet. He was clothed in a jacket of black velvet, fastened loosely across his chest with large malachite b.u.t.tons; and he wore lace ruffles at the ends of his sleeves, in the fashion of the last century. It may well have been due to want of perception on my part--but I could see nothing mad in him, nothing in any way repelling, as he now looked at me. The one defect that I could discover in his face was at the outer corners of his eyes, just under the temple. Here when he laughed, and in a lesser degree when he smiled, the skin contracted into quaint little wrinkles and folds, which looked strangely out of harmony with the almost youthful appearance of the rest of his face. As to his other features, the mouth, so far as his beard and mustache permitted me to see it, was small and delicately formed; the nose--perfectly shaped on the straight Grecian model--was perhaps a little too thin, judged by comparison with the full cheeks and the high ma.s.sive forehead. Looking at him as a whole (and speaking of him, of course, from a woman"s, not a physiognomist"s point of view), I can only describe him as being an unusually handsome man. A painter would have reveled in him as a model for St. John. And a young girl, ignorant of what the Oriental robe hid from view, would have said to herself, the instant she looked at him, "Here is the hero of my dreams!"
His blue eyes--large as the eyes of a woman, clear as the eyes of a child--rested on me the moment I turned toward him, with a strangely varying play of expression, which at once interested and perplexed me.
Now there was doubt--uneasy, painful doubt--in the look; and now again it changed brightly to approval, so open and unrestrained that a vain woman might have fancied she had made a conquest of him at first sight.
Suddenly a new emotion seemed to take possession of him. His eyes sank, his head drooped; he lifted his hands with a gesture of regret. He muttered and murmured to himself; pursuing some secret and melancholy train of thought, which seemed to lead him further and further away from present objects of interest, and to plunge him deeper and deeper in troubled recollections of the past. Here and there I caught some of the words. Little by little I found myself trying to fathom what was darkly pa.s.sing in this strange man"s mind.
"A far more charming face," I heard him say. "But no--not a more beautiful figure. What figure was ever more beautiful than hers?
Something--but not all--of her enchanting grace. Where is the resemblance which has brought her back to me? In the pose of the figure, perhaps. In the movement of the figure, perhaps. Poor martyred angel!
What a life! And what a death! what a death!"
Was he comparing me with the victim of the poison--with my husband"s first wife? His words seemed to justify the conclusion. If I were right, the dead woman had evidently been a favorite with him. There was no misinterpreting the broken tones of his voice when he spoke of her: he had admired her, living; he mourned her, dead. Supposing that I could prevail upon myself to admit this extraordinary person into my confidence, what would be the result? Should I be the gainer or the loser by the resemblance which he fancied he had discovered? Would the sight of me console him or pain him? I waited eagerly to hear more on the subject of the first wife. Not a word more escaped his lips. A new change came over him. He lifted his head with a start, and looked about him as a weary man might look if he was suddenly disturbed in a deep sleep.
"What have I done?" he said. "Have I been letting my mind drift again?"
He shuddered and sighed. "Oh, that house of Gleninch!" he murmured, sadly, to himself. "Shall I never get away from it in my thoughts? Oh, that house of Gleninch!"
To my infinite disappointment, Mrs. Macallan checked the further revelation of what was pa.s.sing in his mind.
Something in the tone and manner of his allusion to her son"s country-house seemed to have offended her. She interposed sharply and decisively.
"Gently, my friend, gently!" she said. "I don"t think you quite know what you are talking about."
His great blue eyes flashed at her fiercely. With one turn of his hand he brought his chair close at her side. The next instant he caught her by the arm, and forced her to bend to him, until he could whisper in her ear. He was violently agitated. His whisper was loud enough to make itself heard where I was sitting at the time.
"I don"t know what I am talking about?" he repeated, with his eyes fixed attentively, not on my mother-in-law, but on me. "You shortsighted old woman! where are your spectacles? Look at her! Do you see no resemblance--the figure, not the face!--do you see no resemblance there to Eustace"s first wife?"
"Pure fancy!" rejoined Mrs. Macallan. "I see nothing of the sort."
He shook her impatiently.
"Not so loud!" he whispered. "She will hear you."
"I have heard you both," I said. "You need have no fear, Mr. Dexter, of speaking before me. I know that my husband had a first wife, and I know how miserably she died. I have read the Trial."
"You have read the life and death of a martyr!" cried Miserrimus Dexter.
He suddenly wheeled his chair my way; he bent over me; his eyes filled with tears. "n.o.body appreciated her at her true value," he said, "but me. n.o.body but me! n.o.body but me!"
Mrs. Macallan walked away impatiently to the end of the room.
"When you are ready, Valeria, I am," she said. "We cannot keep the servants and the horses waiting much longer in this bleak place."
I was too deeply interested in leading Miserrimus Dexter to pursue the subject on which he had touched to be willing to leave him at that moment. I pretended not to have heard Mrs. Macallan. I laid my hand, as if by accident, on the wheel-chair to keep him near me.
"You showed me how highly you esteemed that poor lady in your evidence at the Trial," I said. "I believe, Mr. Dexter, you have ideas of your own about the mystery of her death?"
He had been looking at my hand, resting on the arm of his chair, until I ventured on my question. At that he suddenly raised his eyes, and fixed them with a frowning and furtive suspicion on my face.
"How do you know I have ideas of my own?" he asked, sternly.
"I know it from reading the Trial," I answered. "The lawyer who cross-examined you spoke almost in the very words which I have just used. I had no intention of offending you, Mr. Dexter."
His face cleared as rapidly as it had clouded. He smiled, and laid his hand on mine. His touch struck me cold. I felt every nerve in me shivering under it; I drew my hand away quickly.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "if I have misunderstood you. I _have_ ideas of my own about that unhappy lady." He paused and looked at me in silence very earnestly. "Have _you_ any ideas?" he asked. "Ideas about her life? or about her death?"
I was deeply interested; I was burning to hear more. It might encourage him to speak if I were candid with him. I answered, "Yes."
"Ideas which you have mentioned to any one?" he went on.
"To no living creature," I replied--"as yet."
"This very strange!" he said, still earnestly reading my face. "What interest can _you_ have in a dead woman whom you never knew? Why did you ask me that question just now? Have you any motive in coming here to see me?"
I boldly acknowledged the truth. I said, "I have a motive."
"Is it connected with Eustace Macallan"s first wife?"
"It is."