CHAPTER XXIV. MISERRIMUS DEXTER--FIRST VIEW.
WE had dawdled over our luncheon before Mrs. Macallan arrived atBenjamin's cottage. The ensuing conversation between the old lady andmyself (of which I have only presented a brief abstract) lasted untilquite late in the afternoon. The sun was setting in heavy clouds when wegot into the carriage, and the autumn twilight began to fall around uswhile we were still on the road.
The direction in which we drove took us (as well as I could judge)toward the great northern suburb of London.
For more than an hour the carriage threaded its way through a dingybrick labyrinth of streets, growing smaller and smaller and dirtier anddirtier the further we went. Emerging from the labyrinth, I noticed inthe gathering darkness dreary patches of waste ground which seemed tobe neither town nor country. Crossing these, we passed some forlornoutlying groups of houses with dim little scattered shops among them,looking like lost country villages wandering on the way to London,disfigured and smoke-dried already by their journey. Darker and darkerand drearier and drearier the prospect drew, until the carriage stoppedat last, and Mrs. Macallan announced, in her sharply satirical way,that we had reached the end of our journey. "Prince Dexter's Palace, mydear," she said. "What do you think of it?"
I looked around me, not knowing what to think of it, if the truth mustbe told.
We had got out of the carriage, and we were standing on a roughhalf-made gravel-path. Right and left of me, in the dim light, I sawthe half-completed foundations of new houses in their first stage ofexistence. Boards and bricks were scattered about us. At places gauntscaffolding poles rose like the branchless trees of the brick desert.Behind us, on the other side of the high-road, stretched another plotof waste ground, as yet not built on. Over the surface of this seconddesert the ghostly white figures of vagrant ducks gleamed at intervalsin the mystic light. In front of us, at a distance of two hundred yardsor so as well as I could calculate, rose a black mass, which graduallyresolved itself, as my eyes became accustomed to the twilight, intoa long, low, and ancient house, with a hedge of evergreens and apitch-black paling in front of it. The footman led the way toward thepaling through the boards and the bricks, the oyster shells and thebroken crockery, that strewed the ground. And this was "Prince Dexter'sPalace!"
There was a gate in the pitch-black paling, and abell-handle--discovered with great difficulty. Pulling at the handle,the footman set in motion, to judge by the sound produced, a bell ofprodigious size, fitter for a church than a house.
While we were waiting for admission, Mrs. Macallan pointed to the low,dark line of the old building.
"There is one of his madnesses," she said. "The speculators in this newneighborhood have offered him I don't know how many thousand pounds forthe ground that house stands on. It was originally the manor-house ofthe district. Dexter purchased it many years since in one of his freaksof fancy. He has no old family associations with the place; the wallsare all but tumbling about his ears; and the money offered would reallybe of use to him. But no! He refused the proposal of the enterprisingspeculators by letter in these words: 'My house is a standing monumentof the picturesque and beautiful, amid the mean, dishonest, andgroveling constructions of a mean, dishonest, and groveling age. I keepmy house, gentlemen, as a useful lesson to you. Look at it while youare building around me, and blush, if you can, for your work.' Was thereever such an absurd letter written yet? Hush! I hear footsteps in thegarden. Here comes his cousin. His cousin is a woman. I may as well tellyou that, or you might mistake her for a man in the dark."
A rough, deep voice, which I should certainly never have supposed to bethe voice of a woman, hailed us from the inner side of the paling.
"Who's there?"
"Mrs. Macallan," answered my mother-in-law.
"What do you want?"
"We want to see Dexter."
"You can't see him."
"Why not?"
"What did you say your name was?"
"Macallan. Mrs. Macallan. Eustace Macallan's mother. _Now_ do youunderstand?"
The voice muttered and grunted behind the paling, and a key turned inthe lock of the gate.
Admitted to the garden, in the deep shadow of the shrubs, I could seenothing distinctly of the woman with the rough voice, except that shewore a man's hat. Closing the gate behind us, without a word of welcomeor explanation, she led the way to the house. Mrs. Macallan followed hereasily, knowing the place; and I walked in Mrs. Macallan's footsteps asclosely as I could. "This is a nice family," my mother-in-law whisperedto me. "Dexter's cousin is the only woman in the house--and Dexter'scousin is an idiot."
We entered a spacious hall with a low ceiling, dimly lighted at itsfurther end by one small oil-lamp. I could see that there were pictureson the grim, brown walls, but the subjects represented were invisible inthe obscure and shadowy light.
Mrs. Macallan addressed herself to the speechless cousin with the man'shat.
"Now tell me," she said. "Why can't we see Dexter?"
The cousin took a sheet of paper off the table, and handed it to Mrs.Macallan.
"The Master's writing," said this strange creature, in a hoarse whisper,as if the bare idea of "the Master" terrified her. "Read it. And stay orgo, which you please."
She opened an invisible side door in the wall, masked by one of thepictures--disappeared through it like a ghost--and left us togetheralone in the hall.
Mrs. Macallan approached the oil-lamp, and looked by its light at thesheet of paper which the woman had given to her. I followed andpeeped over her shoulder without ceremony. The paper exhibited writtencharacters, traced in a wonderfully large and firm handwriting. Had Icaught the infection of madness in the air of the house? Or did I reallysee before me these words?
"NOTICE.--My immense imagination is at work. Visions of heroes unrollthemselves before me. I reanimate in myself the spirits of the departedgreat. My brains are boiling in my head. Any persons who disturbme, under existing circumstances, will do it at the peril of theirlives.--DEXTER."
Mrs. Macallan looked around at me quietly with her sardonic smile.
"Do you still persist in wanting to be introduced to him?" she asked.
The mockery in the tone of the question roused my pride. I determinedthat I would not be the first to give way.
"Not if I am putting you in peril of your life, ma'am," I answered,pertly enough, pointing to the paper in her hand.
My mother-in-law returned to the hall table, and put the paper back onit without condescending to reply. She then led the way to an archedrecess on our right hand, beyond which I dimly discerned a broad flightof oaken stairs.
"Follow me," said Mrs. Macallan, mounting the stairs in the dark. "Iknow where to find him."
We groped our way up the stairs to the first landing. The next flight ofsteps, turning in the reverse direction, was faintly illuminated, likethe hall below, by one oil-lamp, placed in some invisible position aboveus. Ascending the second flight of stairs and crossing a short corridor,we discovered the lamp, through the open door of a quaintly shapedcircular room, burning on the mantel-piece. Its light illuminated astrip of thick tapestry, hanging loose from the ceiling to the floor, onthe wall opposite to the door by which we had entered.
Mrs. Macallan drew aside the strip of tapestry, and, signing me tofollow her, passed behind it.
"Listen!" she whispered.
Standing on the inner side of the tapestry, I found myself in a darkrecess or passage, at the end of which a ray of light from the lampshowed me a closed door. I listened, and heard on the other side ofthe door a shouting voice, accompanied by an extraordinary rumblingand whistling sound, traveling backward and forward, as well as I couldjudge, over a great space. Now the rumbling and the whistling wouldreach their climax of loudness, and would overcome the resonant notes ofthe shouting voice. Then again those louder sounds gradually retreatedinto distance, and the shouting voice made itself heard as the moreaudible sound of the two. The door must have been of prodigioussolidity. Lis
ten as intently as I might, I failed to catch thearticulate words (if any) which the voice was pronouncing, and I wasequally at a loss to penetrate the cause which produced the rumbling andwhistling sounds.
"What can possibly be going on," I whispered to Mrs. Macallan, "on theother side of that door?"
"Step softly," my mother-in-law answered, "and come and see."
She arranged the tapestry behind us so as completely to shut out thelight in the circular room. Then noiselessly turning the handle, sheopened the heavy door.
We kept ourselves concealed in the shadow of the recess, and lookedthrough the open doorway.
I saw (or fancied I saw, in the obscurity) a long room with a lowceiling. The dying gleam of an ill-kept fire formed the only light bywhich I could judge of objects and distances. Redly illuminating thecentral portion of the room, opposite to which we were standing, thefire-light left the extremities shadowed in almost total darkness. Ihad barely time to notice this before I heard the rumbling and whistlingsounds approaching me. A high chair on wheels moved by, through thefield of red light, carrying a shadowy figure with floating hair, andarms furiously raised and lowered working the machinery that propelledthe chair at its utmost rate of speed. "I am Napoleon, at the sunriseof Austerlitz!" shouted the man in the chair as he swept past me on hisrumbling and whistling wheels, in the red glow of the fire-light. "Igive the word, and thrones rock, and kings fall, and nations tremble,and men by tens of thousands fight and bleed and die!" The chair rushedout of sight, and the shouting man in it became another hero. "Iam Nelson!" the ringing voice cried now. "I am leading the fleet atTrafalgar. I issue my commands, prophetically conscious of victory anddeath. I see my own apotheosis, my public funeral, my nation's tears, myburial in the glorious church. The ages remember me, and the poets singmy praise in immortal verse!" The strident wheels turned at the far endof the room and came back. The fantastic and frightful apparition,man and machinery blended in one--the new Centaur, half man, halfchair--flew by me again in the dying light. "I am Shakespeare!"cried the frantic creature now. "I am writing 'Lear,' the tragedy oftragedies. Ancients and moderns, I am the poet who towers over themall. Light! light! the lines flow out like lava from the eruption of myvolcanic mind. Light! light! for the poet of all time to write the wordsthat live forever!" He ground and tore his way back toward the middle ofthe room. As he approached the fire-place a last morsel of unburned coal(or wood) burst into momentary flame, and showed the open doorway. Inthat moment he saw us! The wheel-chair stopped with a shock that shookthe crazy old floor of the room, altered its course, and flew at uswith the rush of a wild animal. We drew back, just in time to escape it,against the wall of the recess. The chair passed on, and burst aside thehanging tapestry. The light of the lamp in the circular room poured inthrough the gap. The creature in the chair checked his furious wheels,and looked back over his shoulder with an impish curiosity horrible tosee.
"Have I run over them? Have I ground them to powder for presuming tointrude on me?" he said to himself. As the expression of this amiabledoubt passed his lips his eyes lighted on us. His mind instantly veeredback again to Shakespeare and King Lear. "Goneril and Regan!" he cried."My two unnatural daughters, my she-devil children come to mock at me!"
"Nothing of the sort," said my mother-in-law, as quietly as if she wereaddressing a perfectly reasonable being. "I am your old friend, Mrs.Macallan; and I have brought Eustace Macallan's second wife to see you."
The instant she pronounced those last words, "Eustace Macallan's secondwife," the man in the chair sprang out of it with a shrill cry ofhorror, as if she had shot him. For one moment we saw a head and body inthe air, absolutely deprived of the lower limbs. The moment after,the terrible creature touched the floor as lightly as a monkey, on hishands. The grotesque horror of the scene culminated in his hopping awayon his hands, at a prodigious speed, until he reached the fire-place inthe long room. There he crouched over the dying embers, shuddering andshivering, and muttering, "Oh, pity me, pity me!" dozens and dozens oftimes to himself.
This was the man whose advice I had come to ask--who assistance I hadconfidently counted on in my hour of need.