“Yes, that’s how I know so much about his black secret. And my knowing the secret is the reason why I stop on with him, for he is not very easy to put up with nowadays. But, you see, I have lived all my life in the family, and so did my father and mother before me. So I feel as if the family’s trouble and disgrace were mine, too, and I would rather keep on as I am than let another man step into my shoes. For he would soon be at the bottom of the family mystery, and then what would become of us all?”
What, indeed? The result was too dreadful to contemplate, and I no longer questioned either Marvel’s veracity, or the purity of his motives.
“The present earl,” he went on, “was always inclined to drink a bit. But since his father’s death he has really gone on awful. Every week it has got worse, and I have had to put him to bed drunk every night for this last month. This couldn’t help having a serious effect on him, and last week he had a very bad attack of delirium tremens, in which his own ravings showed the whole business up as plain as daylight. I was glad he was pretty quiet when the doctor was there, as he would have been one too many in the secret. The papers said that he was laid up with an attack of pleurisy. But I knew better, and it does not pay a fashionable doctor to split about his patients. Toward the end of the week the earl got over his attack of the blues and then I had a serious talk with him.
“‘My lord,’ said I, ‘you must drink no more.’
“‘And why not?’ he asked, looking at me as if he thought I had left my senses somewhere else.
“‘Because,’ I said, looking him straight in the face, ‘dead men tell no tales, but drink makes people tell things that it’s safer nobody else should know. I’ll tell you what the drink has made you do and say, and then you can judge whether it’s safe for you to drink any more or not.’
“Then I described how he had gone on when unconscious of what he was doing. He had fancied every now and then that his father’s ghost was standing before him with outstretched finger and threatening visage. ‘For God’s sake!’ he would scream, ‘take it away! It is drawing me down to hell! Let me go—take her! She prompted me to it! It was her crime. I would not have thought of it, but for her. I gave him the poison, but it was Belle who bought it. She swore that she would use it on her sister, if I failed with the poor old man, who deserved nothing but good at my hands. Why didn’t I let her poison the girl? I shouldn’t have had this to face then. Begone!’
“At this he jumped out of bed as if he meant to attack somebody. But he just fell all of a heap on the floor, and was pretty easily managed till the next paroxysm came on, which was in another hour or two.
“Now you can guess what sort of an effect my talk had upon my master. He went almost beside himself with terror, and was for offering me no end of things to bribe me to keep his secret. But I am not one of those human vultures who grow fat on the crimes and miseries of others, and I wouldn’t touch a farthing from the earl except in the way of my earnings, as usual. It would burn my fingers, if I did. ‘No,’ I said, ‘Dennis Marvel knows his duty to the family too well to betray it. Your lordship has the matter in your own hands. Keep off the drink. Keep your mouth shut, and all’s safe.’
“Since then he hasn’t tasted a drop of anything that could make him drunk. But he has awful nights, all the same. He wasn’t really meant for a villain, and, saving your presence, Miss Dora, if that she-devil, your sister, hadn’t got hold of him, things would have been all right, and we should all have been as happy as we used to be before we knew her. And now, Miss Dora, what would you advise me to do? Do you blame me for what I have done? It would kill Lady Elizabeth, and disgrace the family forever, if we didn’t keep the secret. So it cannot be wicked to shield the guilty.”