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
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 color rising in his face. I saw the bright intelligence flashing again in his eyes. The Burgundy
'No story,' I said. 'I want to talk to you, Mr. Dexter. I am not in the humor 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
