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 passing 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 passing 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. "Nobody appreciated her at her true value," he said, "but me. Nobody but me! nobody 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."
"With anything that happened in her lifetime?"
"No."
"With her death?"
"Yes."
He suddenly clasped his hands with a wild gesture of despair, and then pressed them both on his head, as if he were struck by some sudden pain.
"I can't hear it to-night!" he said. "I would give worlds to hear it, but I daren't. I should lose all hold over myself in the state I am in now. I am not equal to raking up the horror and the mystery of the past; I have not courage enough to open the grave of the martyred dead. Did you hear me when you came here? I have an immense imagination. It runs riot at times. It makes an actor of me. I play the parts of all the heroes that ever lived. I feel their characters. I merge myself in their individualities. For the time I am the man I fancy myself to be. I can't help it. I am obliged to do it. If I restrained my imagination when the fit is on me, I should go mad. I let myself loose. It lasts for hours. It leaves me with my energies worn out, with my sensibilities frightfully acute. Rouse any melancholy or terrible associations in me at such times, and I am capable of hysterics, I am capable of screaming. You heard me scream. You shall not see me in hysterics. No, Mrs. Valeria—no, you innocent reflection of the dead and gone—I would not frighten you for the world. Will you come here to-morrow in the daytime? I have got a chaise and a pony. Ariel, my delicate Ariel, can drive. She shall call at Mamma Macallan's and fetch you. We will talk to-morrow, when I am fit for it. I am dying to hear you. I will be fit for you in the morning. I will be civil, intelligent, communicative, in the morning. No more of it now. Away with the subject—the too exciting, the too interesting subject! I must compose myself or my brains will explode in my head. Music is the true narcotic for excitable brains. My harp! my harp!"