The Law and the Lady

nodded her head at me defiantly.

'Ariel has got no nerves,' she repeated, proudly. 'He doesn't hurt me.'

'You see,' said Miserrimus Dexter, 'there is no harm done—and I dropped the strings when you told me. Don't begin by being hard on me, Mrs. Valeria, after your long absence.' He paused. Benjamin, standing silent in the doorway, attracted his attention for the first time. 'Who is this?' he asked, and wheeled his chair suspiciously nearer to the door. 'I know!' he cried, before I could answer. 'This is the benevolent gentleman who looked like the refuge of the afflicted when I saw him last.—You have altered for the worse since then, sir. You have stepped into quite a new character—you personify Retributive Justice now.—Your new protector, Mrs. Valeria—I understand!' He bowed low to Benjamin, with ferocious irony. 'Your humble servant, Mr. Retributive Justice! I have deserved you—and I submit to you. Walk in, sir! I will take care that your new office shall be a sinecure. This lady is the Light of my Life. Catch me failing in respect to her if you can!' He backed his chair before Benjamin (who listened to him in contemptuous silence) until he reached the part of the room in which I was standing. 'Your hand, Light of my Life!' he murmured in his gentlest tones. 'Your hand—only to show that you have forgiven me!' I gave him my hand. 'One?' he whispered, entreatingly. 'Only one?' He kissed my hand once, respectfully—and dropped it with a heavy sigh. 'Ah, poor Dexter!' he said, pitying himself with the whole sincerity of his egotism. 'A warm heart—wasted in solitude, mocked by deformity. Sad! sad! Ah, poor Dexter!' He looked round again at Benjamin, with another flash of his ferocious irony. 'A beauteous day, sir,' he said, with mock-conventional courtesy. 'Seasonable weather indeed after the late long-continued rains. Can I offer you any refreshment? Won't you sit down? Retributive Justice, when it is no taller than you are, looks best in a chair.'

'And a monkey looks best in a cage,' rejoined Benjamin, enraged at the satirical reference to his shortness of stature. 'I was waiting, sir, to see you get into your swing.'

The retort produced no effect on Miserrimus Dexter: it appeared to have passed by him unheard. He had changed again; he was thoughtful, he was subdued; his eyes were fixed on me with a sad and rapt attention. I took the nearest arm-chair, first casting a glance at Benjamin, which he immediately understood. He placed himself behind Dexter, at an angle which commanded a view of my chair. Ariel, silently devouring her cakes, crouched on a stool at 'the Master's' feet, and looked up at him like a faithful dog. There was an interval of quiet and repose. I was able to observe Miserrimus Dexter uninterruptedly for the first time since I had entered the room.

I was not surprised—I was nothing less than alarmed by the change for the worse in him since we had last met. Mr. Playmore's letter had not prepared me for the serious deterioration in him which I could now discern.

His features were pinched and worn; the whole face seemed to have wasted strangely in substance and size since I had last seen it. The softness in his eyes was gone. Blood-red veins were intertwined all over them now: they were set in a piteous and vacant stare. His once firm hands looked withered; they trembled as they lay on the coverlet. The paleness of his face (exaggerated, perhaps, by the black velvet jacket that he wore) had a sodden and sickly look—the fine outline was gone. The multitudinous little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened. His head sank into his shoulders when he leaned forward in his chair. Years appeared to have passed over him, instead of months, while I had been absent from England. Remembering the medical report which Mr. Playmore had given me to read—recalling the doctor's positively declared opinion that the preservation of Dexter's sanity depended on the healthy condition of his nerves—I could not but feel that I had done wisely (if I might still hope for success) in hastening my return from Spain. Knowing what I knew, fearing what I feared, I believed that his time was near. I felt, when our eyes met by accident, that I was looking at a doomed man.

I pitied him.

Yes, yes! I know that compassion for him was utterly inconsistent with the motive which had taken me to his house—utterly inconsistent with the doubt, still present to my mind, whether Mr. Playmore had really wronged him in believing that his was the guilt which had compassed the first Mrs. Eustace's death. I felt this: I knew him to be cruel; I believed him to be false. And yet I pitied him! Is there a common fund of wickedness in us all? Is the suppression or the development of that wickedness a mere question of training and temptation? And is there something in our deeper sympathies which mutely acknowledges this when we feel for the wicked; when we crowd to a criminal trial; when we shake hands at parting (if we happen to be present officially) with the vilest monster that ever swung on a gallows? It is not for me to decide. I can only say that I pitied Miserrimus Dexter—and that he found it out.

'Thank you,' he said, suddenly. 'You see I am ill, and you feel for me. Dear and good Valeria!'

'This lady's name, sir, is Mrs. Eustace Macallan,' interposed Benjamin, speaking sternly behind him. 'The next time you address her, remember, if you please, that you have no business with her Christian name.'

Benjamin's rebuke passed, like Benjamin's retort, unheeded and unheard. To all appearance, Miserrimus Dexter had completely forgotten that there was such a person in the room.

'You have delighted me with the sight of you,' he went on. 'Add to the pleasure by letting me hear your voice. Talk to me of yourself. Tell me what you have been doing since you left England.'

It was necessary to my object to set the conversation afloat; and this was as good a way of doing it as any other. I told him plainly how I had been employed during my absence.

'So you are still fond of Eustace?' he said, bitterly.

'I love him more dearly than ever.'

He lifted his hands, and hid his face. After waiting a while, he went on, speaking in an odd, muffled manner, still under cover of his hands.

'And you leave Eustace in Spain,' he said; 'and you return to England by yourself! What made you do that?'

'What made me first come here and ask you to help me, Mr. Dexter?'

He dropped his hands, and looked at me. I saw in his eyes, not amazement only, but alarm.

'Is it possible,' he exclaimed, 'that you won't let that miserable matter rest even yet? Are you still determined to penetrate the mystery at Gleninch?'

'I am still determined, Mr. Dexter; and I still hope that you may be able to help me.'

The old distrust that I remembered so well darkened again over his face the moment I said those words.

'How can I help you?' he asked. 'Can I alter facts?' He stopped. His face brightened again, as if some sudden sense of relief had come to him. 'I did try to help you,' he went on. 'I told you that Mrs. Beauly's absence was a device to screen herself from suspicion; I told you that the poison might have been given by Mrs. Beauly's maid. Has reflection convinced you? Do you see something in the idea?'