With that cheering reply he went up to the Minister's room.
All that I had found perplexing in Eunice was now made clear. I understood how her agony at the loss of her lover, and her keen sense of the wrong that she had suffered, had been strengthened in their disastrous influence by her experiment on the sleeping draught intended for her father. In mind and body, both, the poor girl was in the condition which offered its opportunity to the lurking hereditary taint. It was terrible to think of what might have happened, if the all-powerful counter-influence had not been present to save her.
Before I had been long alone the servant-maid came in, and said the doctor wanted to see me.
Mr. Wellwood was waiting in the passage, outside the Minister's bedchamber. He asked if he could speak to me without interruption, and without the fear of being overheard. I led him at once to the room which I occupied as a guest.
"At the very time when it is most important to keep Mr. Gracedieu quiet," he said, "something has happened to excite—I might almost say to infuriate him. He has left his bed, and is walking up and down the room; and, I don't scruple to say, he is on the verge of madness. He insists on seeing you. Being wholly unable to control him in any other way, I have consented to this. But I must not allow you to place yourself in what may be a disagreeable position, without a word of warning. Judging by his tones and his looks, he seems to have no very friendly motive for wishing to see you."
Knowing perfectly well what had happened, and being one of those impatient people who can never endure suspense—I offered to go at once to Mr. Gracedieu's room. The doctor asked leave to say one word more.
"Pray be careful that you neither say nor do anything to thwart him," Mr. Wellwood resumed. "If he expresses an opinion, agree with him. If he is insolent and overbearing, don't answer him. In the state of his brain, the one hopeful course to take is to let him have his own way. Pray remember that. I will be within call, in case of your wanting me."
CHAPTER XLV. THE FATAL PORTRAIT.
I knocked at the bedroom door.
"Who's there?"
Only two words—but the voice that uttered them, hoarse and peremptory, was altered almost beyond recognition. If I had not known whose room it was, I might have doubted whether the Minister had really spoken to me.
At the instant when I answered him, I was allowed to pass in. Having admitted me, he closed the door, and placed himself with his back against it. The customary pallor of his face had darkened to a deep red; there was an expression of ferocious mockery in his eyes. Helena's vengeance had hurt her unhappy father far more severely than it seemed likely to hurt me. The doctor had said he was on the verge of madness. To my thinking, he had already passed the boundary line.
He received me with a boisterous affectation of cordiality.
"My excellent friend! My admirable, honorable, welcome guest, you don't know how glad I am to see you. Stand a little nearer to the light; I want to admire you."
Remembering the doctor's advice, I obeyed him in silence.
"Ah, you were a handsome fellow when I first knew you," he said, "and you have some remains of it still left. Do you remember the time when you were a favorite with the ladies? Oh, don't pretend to be modest; don't turn your back, now you are old, on what you were in the prime of your life. Do you own that I am right?"
What his object might be in saying this—if, indeed, he had an object—it was impossible to guess. The doctor's advice left me no alternative; I hastened to own that he was right. As I made that answer, I observed that he held something in his hand which was half hidden up the sleeve of his dressing-gown. What the nature of the object was I failed to discover.
"And when I happened to speak of you somewhere," he went on, "I forget where—a member of my congregation—I don't recollect who it was—told me you were connected with the aristocracy. How were you connected?"
He surprised me; but, however he had got his information, he had not been deceived. I told him that I was connected, through my mother, with the family to which he had alluded.
"The aristocracy!" he repeated. "A race of people who are rich without earning their money, and noble because their great-grandfathers were noble before them. They live in idleness and luxury—profligates who gratify their passions without shame and without remorse. Deny, if you dare, that this is a true description of them."
It was really pitiable. Heartily sorry for him, I pacified him again.
"And don't suppose I forget that you are one of them. Do you hear me, my noble friend?"
There was no help for it—I made another conciliatory reply.
"So far," he resumed, "I don't complain of you. You have not attempted to deceive me—yet. Absolute silence is what I require next. Though you may not suspect it, my mind is in a ferment; I must try to think."
To some extent at least, his thoughts betrayed themselves in his actions. He put the object that I had half seen in his hand into the pocket of his dressing-gown, and moved to the toilet-table. Opening one of the drawers, he took from it a folded sheet of paper, and came back to me.
"A minister of the Gospel," he said, "is a sacred man, and has a horror of crime. You are safe, so far—provided you obey me. I have a solemn and terrible duty to perform. This is not the right place for it. Follow me downstairs."
He led the way out. The doctor, waiting in the passage, was not near the stairs, and so escaped notice. "What is it?" Mr. Wellwood whispered. In the same guarded way, I said: "He has not told me yet; I have been careful not to irritate him." When we descended the stairs, the doctor followed us at a safe distance. He mended his pace when the Minister opened the door of the study, and when he saw us both pass in. Before he could follow, the door was closed and locked in his face. Mr. Gracedieu took out the key and threw it through the open window, into the garden below.
Turning back into the room, he laid the folded sheet of paper on the table. That done, he spoke to me.
"I distrust my own weakness," he said. "A dreadful necessity confronts me—I might shrink from the horrid idea, and, if I could open the door, might try to get away. Escape is impossible now. We are prisoners together. But don't suppose that we are alone. There is a third person present, who will judge between you and me. Look there!"
He pointed solemnly to the portrait of his wife. It was a small picture, very simply framed; representing the face in a "three-quarter" view, and part of the figure only. As a work of art it was contemptible; but, as a likeness, it answered its purpose. My unhappy friend stood before it, in an attitude of dejection, covering his face with his hands.
In the interval of silence that followed, I was reminded that an unseen friend was keeping watch outside.
Alarmed by having heard the key turned in the lock, and realizing the embarrassment of the position in which I was placed, the doctor had discovered a discreet way of communicating with me. He slipped one of his visiting-cards under the door, with these words written on it: "How can I help you?"
I took the pencil from my pocketbook, and wrote on the blank side of the card: "He has thrown the key into the garden; look for it under the window." A glance at the Minister, before I returned my reply, showed that his attitude was unchanged. Without being seen or suspected, I, in my turn, slipped the card under the door.
The slow minutes followed each other—and still nothing happened.
My anxiety to see how the doctor's search for the key was succeeding, tempted me to approach the window. On my way to it, the tail of my coat threw down a little tray containing pens and pencils, which had been left close to the edge of the table. Slight as the noise of the fall was, it disturbed Mr. Gracedieu. He looked round vacantly.