The last words burst on me like a gleam of light! I had read them in the Report of the Trial--in the evidence of the sheriff's officer. Miserrimus Dexter had spoken in those very terms when he had tried vainly to prevent the men from seizing my husband's papers, and when the men had pushed his chair out of the room. There was no doubt now of what his memory was busy with. The mystery at Gleninch! His last backward flight of thought circled feebly and more feebly nearer and nearer to the mystery at Gleninch!
Ariel aroused him again. She had no mercy on him; she insisted on hearing the whole story.
"Why do you stop, Master? Get along with it! get along with it! Tell us quick--what did the Missus say to the Maid?"
He laughed feebly, and tried to imitate her.
"'What did the Missus say to the Maid?'" he repeated. His laugh died away. He went on speaking, more and more vacantly, more and more rapidly. "The Mistress said to the Maid. We've got him off. What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grate. No matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone. Tear it up. Shake it up in the basket. Along with the rest. Shake it up. Waste paper. Throw it away. Gone forever. Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara! Gone forever.'"
Ariel clapped her hands, and mimicked him in her turn.
"'Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara!'" she repeated. "'Gone forever.' That's prime, Master! Tell us--who was Sara?"
His lips moved, but his voice sank so low that I could barely hear him. He began again, with the old melancholy refrain: "The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the Maid--" He stopped abruptly, and raised himself erect in the chair; he threw up both his hands above his head, and burst into a frightful screaming laugh. "Aha-ha-ha-ha! How funny! Why don't you laugh? Funny, funny, funny, funny. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha--"
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!"