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 fireplace. 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 God 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?”
The man’s devotion to Dexter showed itself as the woman’s devotion had shown itself—in the man’s rough way. He threw down his spade with an oath.
“The Master taken bad?” he said. “I’ll fetch the doctor. I shall find him sooner than you will.”
“Tell the doctor to bring a man with him,” Benjamin added. “He may want help.”
The gardener turned around sternly.
“I’m the man,” he said. “Nobody shall help but me.”
He left us. I sat down on one of the chairs in the hall, and did my best to compose myself. Benjamin walked to and fro, deep in thought. “Both of them fond of him,” I heard my old friend say to himself. “Half monkey, half man—and both of them fond of him. That beats me.”
The gardener returned with the doctor—a quiet, dark, resolute man. Benjamin advanced to meet them. “I have got the key,” he said. “Shall I go upstairs with you?”
Without answering, the doctor drew Benjamin aside into a corner of the hall. The two talked together in low voices. At the end of it the doctor said, “Give me the key. You can be of no use; you will only irritate her.”
With those words he beckoned to the gardener. He was about to lead the way up the stairs when I ventured
