Part 51 (2/2)

His fingers wandered feebly over the harpstrings, awakening no melody, suggesting no words. In a little while his hand dropped; his head sank forward gently, and rested on the frame of the harp. I started to my feet, and approached him. Was it a sleep? or was it a swoon?

I touched his arm, and called to him by his name.

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 _can_ tell it! I _will_ tell it! Wine! You whimpering idiot, get me the wine. Why didn't I think of it before? The kingly Burgundy! that's what I want, Valeria, to set my invention alight and flaming in my head. Gla.s.ses for everybody! Honor to the King of the Vintages--the Royal Clos Vougeot!”

Ariel opened the cupboard in the alcove, and produced the wine and the high Venetian gla.s.ses. 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 gla.s.s in rivalry with her master. The powerful wine mounted almost instantly to her weak head. She began to sing hoa.r.s.ely a song of her own devising, in imitation of Dexter. It was nothing but the repet.i.tion, the endless mechanical repet.i.tion, 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.”

<script>