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 fire-place. 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 to stop him.
"May I stay in the hall, sir?" I said. "I am very anxious to hear how it ends."
He looked at me for a moment before he replied.
"You had better go home, madam," he said. "Is the gardener acquainted with your address?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. I will let you know how it ends by means of the gardener. Take my advice. Go home."
Benjamin placed my arm in his. I looked back, and saw the doctor and the gardener ascending the stairs together on their way to the locked-up room.
"Never mind the doctor," I whispered. "Let's wait in the garden."
Benjamin would not hear of deceiving the doctor. "I mean to take you home," he said. I looked at him in amazement. My old friend, who was all meekness and submission so long as there was no emergency to try him, now showed the dormant reserve of manly spirit and decision in his nature as he had never (in my experience) shown it yet. He led me into the garden. We had kept our cab: it was waiting for us at the gate.
On our way home Benjamin produced his note-book.
"What's to be done, my dear, with the gibberish that I have written here?" he said.
"Have you written it all down?" I asked, in surprise.
"When I undertake a duty, I do it," he answered. "You never gave me the signal to leave off—you never moved your chair. I have written every word of it. What shall I do? Throw it out of the cab window?"
"Give it to me."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I don't know yet. I will ask Mr. Playmore."
CHAPTER XLI. MR. PLAYMORE IN A NEW CHARACTER.
BY that night's post—although I was far from being fit to make the exertion—I wrote to Mr. Playmore, to tell him what had taken place, and to beg for his earliest assistance and advice.
The notes in Benjamin's book were partly written in shorthand, and were, on that account, of no use to me in their existing condition. At my request, he made two fair copies. One of the copies I inclosed in my letter to Mr. Playmore. The other I laid by me, on my bedside table, when I went to rest.
Over and over again, through the long hours of the wakeful night, I read and re-read the last words which had dropped from Miserrimus Dexter's lips. Was it possible to interpret them to any useful purpose? At the very outset they seemed to set interpretation at defiance. After trying vainly to solve the hopeless problem, I did at last what I might as well have done at first—I threw down the paper in despair. Where were my bright visions of discovery and success now? Scattered to the winds! Was there the faintest chance of the stricken man's return to reason? I remembered too well what I had seen to hope for it. The closing lines of the medical report which I had read in Mr. Playmore's office recurred to my memory in the stillness of the night—"When the catastrophe has happened, his friends can entertain no hope of his cure: the balance once lost, will be lost for life."
The confirmation of that terrible sentence was not long in reaching me. On the next morning the gardener brought a note containing the information which the doctor had promised to give me on the previous day.
Miserrimus Dexter and Ariel were still where Benjamin and I had left them together—in the long room. They were watched by skilled attendants, waiting the decision of Dexter's nearest relative (a younger brother, who lived in the country, and who had been communicated with by telegraph). It had been found impossible to part the faithful Ariel from her master without using the bodily restraints adopted in cases of raging insanity. The doctor and the gardener (both unusually strong men) had failed to hold the poor creature when they first attempted to remove her on entering the room. Directly they permitted her to return to her master the frenzy vanished: she was perfectly quiet and contented so long as they let her sit at his feet and look at him.