Thoroughly disheartened and disgusted, and (if I must honestly confess it) thoroughly frightened too, I whispered to Mrs. Macallan, "I was wrong, and you were right. Let us go."
The ears of Miserrimus Dexter must have been as sensitive as the ears of a dog. He heard me say, "Let us go."
"No!" he called out. "Bring Eustace Macallan's second wife in here. I am a gentleman--I must apologize to her. I am a student of human character--I wish to see her."
The whole man appeared to have undergone a complete transformation. He spoke in the gentlest of voices, and he sighed hysterically when he had done, like a woman recovering from a burst of tears. Was it reviving courage or reviving curiosity? When Mrs. Macallan said to me, "The fit is over now; do you still wish to go away?" I answered, "No; I am ready to go in."
"Have you recovered your belief in him already?" asked my mother-in-law, in her mercilessly satirical way.
"I have recovered from my terror of him," I replied.
"I am sorry I terrified you," said the soft voice at the fire-place. "Some people think I am a little mad at times. You came, I suppose, at one of the times--if some people are right. I admit that I am a visionary. My imagination runs away with me, and I say and do strange things. On those occasions, anybody who reminds me of that horrible Trial throws me back again into the past, and causes me unutterable nervous suffering. I am a very tender-hearted man. As the necessary consequence (in such a world as this), I am a miserable wretch. Accept my excuses. Come in, both of you. Come in and pity me."
A child would not have been frightened of him now. A child would have gone in and pitied him.
The room was getting darker and darker. We could just see the crouching figure of Miserrimus Dexter at the expiring fire--and that was all.
"Are we to have no light?" asked Mrs. Macallan. "And is this lady to see you, when the light comes, out of your chair?"
He lifted something bright and metallic, hanging round his neck, and blew on it a series of shrill, trilling, bird-like notes. After an interval he was answered by a similar series of notes sounding faintly in some distant region of the house.
"Ariel is coming," he said. "Compose yourself, Mamma Macallan; Ariel with make me presentable to a lady's eyes."