THOROUGHLY disheartened and disgusted, and (if I must honestly confess it) thoroughly frightened too, I whispered to Mrs.
Macallan, "I was wrong, and you were right. Let us go."The ears of Miserrimus Dexter must have been as sensitive as the ears of a dog. He heard me say, "Let us go.""No!" he called out. "Bring Eustace Macallan's second wife in here. I am a gentleman--I must apologize to her. I am a student of human character--I wish to see her."The whole man appeared to have undergone a complete transformation. He spoke in the gentlest of voices, and he sighed hysterically when he had done, like a woman recovering from a burst of tears. Was it reviving courage or reviving curiosity?
When Mrs. Macallan said to me, "The fit is over now; do you still wish to go away?" I answered, "No; I am ready to go in.""Have you recovered your belief in him already?" asked my mother-in-law, in her mercilessly satirical way.
"I have recovered from my terror of him," I replied.
"I am sorry I terrified you," said the soft voice at the fire-place. "Some people think I am a little mad at times. You came, I suppose, at one of the times--if some people are right. Iadmit that I am a visionary. My imagination runs away with me, and I say and do strange things. On those occasions, anybody who reminds me of that horrible Trial throws me back again into the past, and causes me unutterable nervous suffering. I am a very tender-hearted man. As the necessary consequence (in such a world as this), I am a miserable wretch. Accept my excuses. Come in, both of you. Come in and pity me."A child would not have been frightened of him now. A child would have gone in and pitied him.
The room was getting darker and darker. We could just see the crouching figure of Miserrimus Dexter at the expiring fire--and that was all.
"Are we to have no light?" asked Mrs. Macallan. "And is this lady to see you, when the light comes, out of your chair?"He lifted something bright and metallic, hanging round his neck, and blew on it a series of shrill, trilling, bird-like notes.
After an interval he was answered by a similar series of notes sounding faintly in some distant region of the house.
"Ariel is coming," he said. "Compose yourself, Mamma Macallan;Ariel with make me presentable to a lady's eyes."He hopped away on his hands into the darkness at the end of the room. "Wait a little, said Mrs. Macallan, "and you will have another surprise--you will see the 'delicate Ariel.'"We heard heavy footsteps in the circular room.
"Ariel!" sighed Miserrimus Dexter out of the darkness, in his softest notes.
To my astonishment the coarse, masculine voice of the cousin in the man's hat--the Caliban's, rather than the Ariel's voice--answered, "Here!""My chair, Ariel!"
The person thus strangely misnamed drew aside the tapestry, so as to let in more light; then entered the room, pushing the wheeled chair before her. She stooped and lifted Miserrimus Dexter from the floor, like a child. Before she could put him into the chair, he sprang out of her arms with a little gleeful cry, and alighted on his seat, like a bird alighting on its perch!
"The lamp," said Miserrimus Dexter, "and the looking-glass.--Pardon me," he added, addressing us, "for turning my back on you. You mustn't see me until my hair is set to rights.--Ariel! the brush, the comb, and the perfumes!"Carrying the lamp in one hand, the looking-glass in the other, and the brush (with the comb stuck in it) between her teeth, Ariel the Second, otherwise Dexter's cousin, presented herself plainly before me for the first time. I could now see the girl's round, fleshy, inexpressive face, her rayless and colorless eyes, her coarse nose and heavy chin. A creature half alive; an imperfectly developed animal in shapeless form clad in a man's pilot jacket, and treading in a man's heavy laced boots, with nothing but an old red-flannel petticoat, and a broken comb in her frowzy flaxen hair, to tell us that she was a woman--such was the inhospitable person who had received us in the darkness when we first entered the house.
This wonderful valet, collecting her materials for dressing her still more wonderful master's hair, gave him the looking-glass (a hand -mirror), and addressed herself to her work.
She combed, she brushed, she oiled, she perfumed the flowing locks and the long silky beard of Miserrimus Dexter with the strangest mixture of dullness and dexterity that I ever saw. Done in brute silence, with a lumpish look and a clumsy gait, the work was perfectly well done nevertheless. The imp in the chair superintended the whole proceeding critically by means of his hand-mirror. He was too deeply interested in this occupation to speak until some of the concluding touches to his beard brought the misnamed Ariel in front of him, and so turned her full face toward the part of the room in which Mrs. Macallan and I were standing. Then he addressed us, taking especial care, however, not to turn his head our way while his toilet was still incomplete.
"Mamma Macallan," he said, "what is the Christian name of your son's second wife?""Why do you want to know?" asked my mother-in-law.
"I want to know because I can't address her as 'Mrs. Eustace Macallan.'""Why not?"
"It recalls _the other_ Mrs. Eustace Macallan. If I am reminded of those horrible days at Gleninch my fortitude will give way--Ishall burst out screaming again."
Hearing this, I hastened to interpose.
"My name is Valeria," I said.
"A Roman name," remarked Miserrimus Dexter. "I like it. My mind is cast in the Roman mold. My bodily build would have been Roman if I had been born with legs. I shall call you Mrs. Valeria, unless you disapprove of it."I hastened to say that I was far from disapproving of it.
