At the sound of my voice he burst out with a shrill cry of welcome. His eyes fastened on me with a fierce, devouring delight.
“Come in! come in!” he cried. “See what I am reduced to in the maddening suspense of waiting for you. See how I kill the time when the time parts us. Come in! come in! I am in one of my malicious humors this morning, caused entirely, Mrs. Valeria, by my anxiety to see you. When I am in my malicious humors I must tease something. I am teasing Ariel. Look at her! She has had nothing to eat all day, and she hasn’t been quick enough to snatch a morsel of cake yet. You needn’t pity her. Ariel has no nerves—I don’t hurt her.”
“Ariel has no nerves,” echoed the poor creature, frowning at me for interfering between her master and herself. “He doesn’t hurt me.”
I heard Benjamin beginning to swing his cane behind him.
“Drop the string!” I reiterated, more vehemently than ever. “Drop it, or I shall instantly leave you.”
Miserrimus Dexter’s delicate nerves shuddered at my violence. “What a glorious voice!” he exclaimed—and dropped the string. “Take the cakes,” he added, addressing Ariel in his most imperial manner.
She passed me, with the strings hanging from her swollen wrists, and the dish of cakes in her hand. She nodded her head at me defiantly.
“Ariel has got no nerves,” she repeated, proudly. “He doesn’t hurt me.”
“You see,” said Miserrimus Dexter, “there is no harm done—and I dropped the strings when you told me. Don’t begin by being hard on me, Mrs. Valeria, after your long absence.” He paused. Benjamin, standing silent in the doorway, attracted his attention for the first time. “Who is this?” he asked, and wheeled his chair suspiciously nearer to the door. “I know!” he cried, before I could answer. “This is the benevolent gentleman who looked like the refuge of the afflicted when I saw him last.—You have altered for the worse since then, sir. You have stepped into quite a new character—you personify Retributive Justice now.—Your new protector, Mrs. Valeria—I understand!” He bowed low to Benjamin, with ferocious irony. “Your humble servant, Mr. Retributive Justice! I have deserved you—and I submit to you. Walk in, sir! I will take care that your new office shall be a sinecure. This lady is the Light of my Life. Catch me failing in respect to her if you can!” He backed his chair before Benjamin (who listened to him in contemptuous silence) until he reached the part of the room in which I was standing. “Your hand, Light of my Life!” he murmured in his gentlest tones. “Your hand—only to show that you have forgiven me!” I gave him my hand. “One?” he whispered, entreatingly. “Only one?” He kissed my hand once, respectfully—and dropped it with a heavy sigh. “Ah, poor Dexter!” he said, pitying himself with the whole sincerity of his egotism. “A warm heart—wasted in solitude, mocked by deformity. Sad! sad! Ah, poor Dexter!” He looked round again at Benjamin, with another flash of his ferocious irony. “A beauteous day, sir,” he said, with mock-conventional courtesy. “Seasonable weather indeed after the late long-continued rains. Can I offer you any refreshment? Won’t you sit down? Retributive Justice, when it is no taller than you are, looks best in a chair.”
“And a monkey looks best in a cage,” rejoined Benjamin, enraged at the satirical reference to his shortness of stature. “I was waiting, sir, to see you get into your swing.”