THE CLARET JUG
I perceived but one change in the Lodger's miserable room, since I had
seen it last.
A second table was set against one of the walls. Our boiling water for
the tea was kept there, in a silver kettle heated by a spirit-lamp. I
next observed a delicate little china vase which held the tea, and a
finely-designed glass claret jug, with a silver cover. Other men,
possessing that beautiful object, would have thought it worthy of the
purest Bordeaux wine which the arts of modern adulteration permit us to
drink. This man had filled the claret jug with water.
"All my valuable property, ostentatiously exposed to view," he said, in
his bitterly facetious manner. "My landlord's property matches it on the
big table."
The big table presented a coarse earthenware teapot; cups and saucers
with pieces chipped out of them; a cracked milk jug; a tumbler which
served as a sugar basin; and an old vegetable dish, honored by holding
delicate French sweet-meats for the first time since it had left the
shop.
My deaf friend, in boisterously good spirits, pointed backwards and
forwards between the precious and the worthless objects on the two
tables, as if he saw a prospect that delighted him.
"I don't believe the man lives," he said, "who enjoys Contrast as I
do.--What do you want now?"
This question was addressed to Gloody, who had just entered the room. He
touched the earthenware teapot. His master answered: "Let it alone."
"I make the tea at other times," the man persisted, looking at me.
"What does he say? Write it down for me, Mr. Roylake. I beg you will
write it down."
There was anger in his eyes as he made that request. I took his book, and
wrote the words--harmless words, surely? He read them, and turned
savagely to his unfortunate servant.
"In the days when you were a ruffian in the prize-ring, did the other
men's fists beat all the brains out of your head? Do you think you can
make tea that is fit for Mr. Roylake to drink?"
He pointed to an open door, communicating with another bedroom. Gloody's
eyes rested steadily on Cristel: she failed to notice him, being occupied
at the moment in replacing the pin of a brooch which had slipped out of
her dress. The man withdrew into the second bedroom, and softly closed
the door.
Our host recovered his good humor. He took a wooden stool, and seated
himself by Cristel.
"Borrowed furniture," he said, "as well as borrowed tea-things. What a
debt of obligation I owe to your excellent father. How quiet you are,
dear girl. Do you regret having followed the impulse which made you
kindly offer to drink tea with us?" He suddenly turned to me. "Another
proof, Mr. Roylake, of the sisterly interest that she feels in you; she
can't hear of your coming to my room, without wanting to be with you. Ah,
you possess the mysterious attractions which fascinate the sex. One of
these days, _some_ woman will love you as never man was loved yet." He
addressed himself again to Cristel. "Still out of spirits? I dare say you
are tired of waiting for your tea. No? You have had tea already? It's
Gloody's fault; he ought to have told me that seven o'clock was too late
for you. The poor devil deserved that you should take no notice of him
when he looked at you just now. Are you one of the few women who dislike
an ugly man? Women in general, I can tell you, prefer ugly men. A
handsome man matches them on their own ground, and they don't like that.
'We are so fond of our ugly husbands; they set us off to such advantage.'
Oh, I don't report what they say; I speak the language in which they
think.--Mr. Roylake, does it strike you that the Cur is a sad cynic?
By-the-by, do you call me 'the Cur' (as I suggested) when you speak of me
to other people--to Miss Cristel, for instance? My charming young
friends, you both look shocked; you both shake your heads. Perhaps I am
in one of my tolerant humors to-day; I see nothing disgraceful in being a
Cur. He is a dog who represents different breeds. Very well, the English
are a people who represent different breeds: Saxons, Normans, Danes. The
consequence, in one case, is a great nation. The consequence, in the
other case, is the cleverest member of the whole dog family--as you may
find out for yourself if you will only teach him. Ha--how I am running
on. My guests try to slip in a word or two, and can't find their
opportunity. Enjoyment, Miss Cristel. Excitement, Mr. Roylake. For more
than a year past, I have not luxuriated in the pleasures of society. I
feel the social glow; I love the human family; I never, never, never was
such a good man as I am now. Let vile slang express my emotions: isn't it
jolly?"
Cristel and I stopped him, at the same moment. We instinctively lifted
our hands to our ears.
In his delirium of high spirits, he had burst through the invariable
monotony of his articulation. Without the slightest gradation of sound,
his voice broke suddenly into a screech, prolonged in its own discord
until it became perfectly unendurable to hear. The effect that he had
produced upon us was not lost on him. His head sank on his breast; horrid
shudderings shook him without mercy; he said to himself not to us:
"I had forgotten I was deaf."
There was a whole world of misery in those simple words. Cristel kept her
place, unmoved. I rose, and put my hand kindly on his shoulder. It was
the best way I could devise of assuring him of my sympathy.
He looked up at me, in silence.
His book of leaves was on the table; he did once more, what he had
already done at the spring. Instead of using the book as usual, he wrote
in it himself, and then handed it to me.
"Let me spare your nerves a repetition of my deaf discord. Sight, smell,
touch, taste--I would give them all to be able to hear. In reminding me
of that vain aspiration, my infirmity revenges itself: my deafness is not
accustomed to be forgotten. Well! I can be silently useful; I can make
the tea."
He rose, and, taking the teapot with him, went to the table that had been
placed against the wall. In that position, his back was turned towards
us.
At the same time, I felt his book gently taken out of my hand. Cristel
had been reading, while I read, over my shoulder. She wrote on the next
blank leaf: "Shall I make the tea?"
"Now," she said to me, "notice what happens."
Following him, she touched his arm, and presented her request. He shook
his head in token of refusal. She came back to her place by me.
"You expected that?" I said.
"Yes."
"Why did you ask me to notice his refusal?"
"Because I may want to remind you that he wouldn't let me make the tea."
"Mysteries, my dear?"
"Yes: mysteries."
"Not to be mentioned more particularly?"
"I will mention one of them more particularly. After the tea has been
made, you may possibly feel me touch your knee under the table."
I was fool enough to smile at this, and wise enough afterwards to see in
her face that I had made a mistake.
"What is your touch intended to mean?" I asked.
"It means, 'Wait,' she said."
My sense of humor was, by this time, completely held in check. That some
surprise was in store for me, and that Cristel was resolved not to take
me into her confidence, were conclusions at which I naturally arrived. I
felt, and surely not without good cause, a little annoyed. The Lodger
came back to us with the tea made. As he put the teapot on the table, he
apologized to Cristel.
"Don't think me rude, in refusing your kind offer. If there is one thing
I know I can do better than anybody else, that thing is making tea. Do
you take sugar and milk, Mr. Roylake?"
I made the affirmative sign. He poured out the tea. When he had filled
two cups, the supply was exhausted. Cristel and I noticed this. He saw
it, and at once gratified our curiosity.
"It is a rule," he said, "with masters in the art of making tea, that one
infusion ought never to be used twice. If we want any more, we will make
more; and if you feel inclined to join us, Miss Cristel, we will fill the
third cup."
What was there in this (I wondered) to make her turn pale? And why, after
what he had just said, did I see her eyes willingly rest on him, for the
first time in my experience? Entirely at a loss to understand her, I
resignedly stirred my tea. On the point of tasting it next, felt her hand
on my knee, under the table.
Bewildered as I was, I obeyed my instructions, and went on stirring my
tea. Our host smiled.
"Your sugar takes a long time to melt," he said--and drank his tea. As he
emptied the cup, the touch was taken off me. I followed his example.
In spite of his boasting, the tea was the worst I ever tasted. I should
have thrown it out of the window, if they had offered us such nasty stuff
at Trimley Deen. When I set down my cup, he asked facetiously if I wished
him to brew any more. My negative answer was a masterpiece of strong
expression, in the language of signs.
Instead of sending for Gloody to clear the table, he moved away the
objects near him, so as to leave an empty space at his disposal.
"I ought perhaps to have hesitated, before I asked you to spend the
evening with me," he said, speaking with a gentleness and amiability of
manner, strongly in contrast with his behavior up to this time. "It is my
misfortune, as you both well know, to be a check on conversation. I dare
say you have asked yourselves: How is he going to amuse us, after tea? If
you will allow me, I propose to amuse you by exhibiting the dexterity of
my fingers and thumbs. Before I was deaf, I should have preferred the
piano for this purpose. As it is, an inferior accomplishment must serve
my turn."
He opened a cupboard in the wall, close by the second table, and returned
with a pack of cards.
Cristel imitated the action of dealing cards for a game. "No," he said,
"that is not the amusement which I have in view. Allow me to present
myself in a new character. I am no longer the Lodger, and no longer the
Cur. My new name is more honorable still--I am the Conjurer."
He shuffled the pack by pouring it backwards and forwards from one hand
to the other, in a cascade of cards. The wonderful ease with which he did
it prepared me for something worth seeing. Cristel's admiration of his
dexterity expressed itself by a prolonged clapping of hands, and a
strange uneasy laugh. As his excitement subsided, her agitation broke
out. I saw the flush again on her face, and the fiery brightness in her
eyes. Once, when his attention was engaged, she stole a look at the door
by which Gloody had left the room. Did this indicate another of the
mysteries which, by her own confession, she had in preparation for me? My
late experience had not inclined me favorably towards mysteries. I
devoted my whole attention to the Conjurer.
Whether he chose the easiest examples of skill in sleight of hand is more
than I know. I can only say that I never was more completely mystified by
any professor of legerdemain on the public platform. After the
performance of each trick, he asked leave to time himself by looking at
his watch; being anxious to discover if he had lost his customary
quickness of execution through recent neglect of the necessary practice.
Of Cristel's conduct, while he was amusing us, I can only say that it
justified Mrs. Roylake's spiteful description of her as a bold girl. The
more cleverly the tricks were performed, the more they seemed to annoy
and provoke her.
"I hate being puzzled!" she said, addressing herself of course to me.
"Yes, yes; his fingers are quicker than my eyes--I have heard that
explanation before. When he has done one of his tricks, I want to know
how he does it. Conjurers are people who ask riddles, and, when one can't
guess them, refuse to say what the answer is. It's as bad as calling me a
fool, to suppose that I like being deceived. Ah," she cried, with a
shocking insolence of look and manner, "if our friend could only hear
what I am saying!"
He had paused while she was speaking, observing her attentively. "Your
face doesn't encourage me," he said, with a patience and courtesy of
manner which it was impossible not to admire. "I am coming gradually to
my greatest triumph; and I think I can surprise and please you."
He timed his last trick, and returned to the table placed against the
wall.
"Excuse me for a moment," he resumed; "I am suffering as usual, after
drinking tea. I so delight in it that the temptation to-night was more
than I could resist. Tea disagrees with my weak stomach. It always
produces thirst."
"What nonsense he talks!" Cristel exclaimed. "All mere fancy! He reminds
me of the old song called 'The Nervous Man.' Do you know it, Mr.
Roylake?"
In spite of my efforts to prevent her, she burst out with the first verse
of a stupid comic song. Spared by his deafness from this infliction of
vulgarity, our host filled a tumbler from the water in the claret jug,
and drank it.
As he set the tumbler down, we were startled by an accident in the next
room. The floor was suddenly shaken by the sound of a heavy fall. The
fall was followed by a groan which instantly brought me to my feet.
Although his infirmity made him unconscious of the groan, my friend felt
the vibration of the floor, and saw me start up from my chair. He looked
even more alarmed than I was, judging by the ghastly change that I saw in
his color; and he reached the door of the second room as soon as I did.
It is needless to say that I allowed him to enter first.
On the point of following him, I felt myself roughly pulled back. When I
turned round, and saw Cristel, I did really and truly believe that she
was mad. The furious impatience in her eyes, the frenzied strength of her
grasp on my arm, would have led most other men to form the same
conclusion.
"Come!" she cried. "No! not a word. There isn't a moment to lose." She
dragged me across the room to the table on which the claret jug stood.
She filled the tumbler from it, as _he_ had filled the tumbler. The
material of which the jug had been made was so solid (crystal, not glass
as I had supposed) that the filling of the two tumblers emptied it.
Cristel held the water out to me, gasping for breath, trembling as if she
saw some frightful reptile before her instead of myself.
"Drink it," she said, "if you value your life!"
I should of course have found it perfectly easy to obey her, strange as
her language was, if I had been in full possession of myself. Between
distress and alarm, my mind (I suppose) had lost its balance. With or
without a cause, I hesitated.
She crossed the room, and threw open the window which looked out on the
river.
"You shan't die alone," she said. "If you don't drink it, I'll throw
myself out!"
I drank from the tumbler to the last drop.
It was not water.
It had a taste which I can compare to no drink, and to no medicine, known
to me. I thought of the other strange taste peculiar to the tea. At last,
the tremendous truth forced itself on my mind. The man in whom my boyish
generosity had so faithfully believed had attempted my life.
Cristel took the tumbler from me. My poor angel clasped her free arm
round my neck, and pressed her lips, in an ecstasy of joy, on my cheek.
The next instant, she seized the claret jug, and dashed it into pieces on
the floor. "Get the jug from his washhand-stand," she said. When I gave
it to her, she poured some of the water upon the broken fragments of
crystal scattered on the floor. I had put the jug back in its place, and
was returning to Cristel, when the poisoner showed himself, entering from
the servant's room.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "Gloody's name ought to be Glutton. An
attack of giddiness, thoroughly well deserved. I have relieved him. You
remember, Mr. Roylake, that I was once a surgeon--"
The broken claret jug caught his eye.
We have all read of men who were petrified by terror. Of the few persons
who have really witnessed that spectacle, I am one. The utter stillness
of him was really terrible to see. Cristel wrote in his book an excuse,
no doubt prepared beforehand: "That fall in the next room frightened me,
and I felt faint. I went to get some water from the jug you drank out of,
and it slipped from my hand."
She placed those words under his eyes--she might just as well have shown
them to the dog. A dead man, erect on his feet--so he looked to our eyes.
So he still looked, when I took Cristel's arm, and led her out of that
dreadful presence.
"Take me into the air!" she whispered.
A burst of tears relieved her, after the unutterable suspense that she
had so bravely endured. When she was in some degree composed again, we
walked gently up and down for a minute or two in the cool night air.
"Don't speak to me," she said, as we stopped before her father's door. "I
am not fit for it yet; I know what you feel." I pressed her to my heart,
and let the embrace speak for me. She yielded to it, faintly sighing.
"To-morrow?" I whispered. She bent her head, and left me.
Walking home through the wood, I became aware, little by little, that my
thoughts were not under the customary control. Over and over again, I
tried to review the events of that terrible evening, and failed.
Fragments of other memories presented themselves--and then deserted me.
Nonsense, absolute nonsense, found its way into my mind next, and rose in
idiotic words to my lips. I grew too lazy even to talk to myself. I
strayed from the path. The mossy earth began to rise and sink under my
feet, like the waters in a ground-swell at sea. I stood still, in a state
of idiot-wonder. The ground suddenly rose right up to my face. I remember
no more.
My first conscious exercise of my senses, when I revived, came to me by
way of my ears. Leaden weights seemed to close my eyes, to fetter my
movements, to silence my tongue, to paralyze my touch. But I heard a
wailing voice, speaking close to me, so close that it might have been my
own voice: I distinguished the words; I knew the tones.
"Oh, my master, my lord, who am I that I should live--and you die! and
you die!"
Was it her warm young breath that quickened me with its vigorous life? I
only know that the revival of my sense of touch did certainly spring from
the contact of her lips, pressed to mine in the reckless abandonment of
grief without hope. Her cry of joy, when my first sigh told her that I
was still a living creature, ran through me like an electric shock. I
opened my eyes; I held out my hand; I tried to help her when she raised
my head, and set me against the tree under which I had been stretched
helpless. With an effort I could call her by her name. Even that
exhausted me. My mind was so weak that I should have believed her, if she
had declared herself to be a spirit seen in a dream, keeping watch over
me in the wood.
Wiser than I was, she snatched up my hat, ran on before me, and was lost
in the darkness.
An interval, an unendurable interval, passed. She returned, having filled
my hat from the spring. But for the exquisite coolness of the water
falling on my face, trickling down my throat, I should have lost my
senses again. In a few minutes more, I could take that dear hand, and
hold it to me as if I was holding to my life. We could only see each
other obscurely, and in that very circumstance (as we confessed to each
other afterwards) we found the needful composure before we could speak.
"Cristel! what does it mean?"
"Poison," she answered. "And _he_ has suffered too."
To my astonishment, there was no anger in her tone: she spoke of him as
quietly as if she had been alluding to an innocent man.
"Do you mean that he has been at death's door, like me?"
"Yes, thank God--or I should never have found you here. Poor old Gloody
came to us, in search of help. 'My master's in a swoon, and I can't bring
him to.' Directly I heard that, I remembered that you had drunk what he
had drunk. What had happened to him, must have happened to you. Don't ask
me how long it was before I found you, and what I felt when I did find
you. I do so want to enjoy my happiness! Only let me see you safely home,
and I ask no more."
She helped me to rise, with the encouraging words which she might have
used to a child. She put my arm in hers, and led me carefully along
through the wood, as if I had been an old man.
Cristel had saved my life--but she would hear of no allusion to it. She
knew how the poisoner had plotted to get rid of me--but nothing that I
could say induced her to tell me how she had made the discovery. In view
of Trimley Deen, my guardian angel dropped my arm.
"Go on," she said, "and let me see the servant let you in, before I run
home."
If she had not been once more wiser than I was, I should have taken her
with me to the house; I should have positively refused to let her go back
by herself. Nothing that I could say or do had the slightest effect on
her resolution. Does the man live who could have taken leave of her
calmly, in my place? She tore herself away from me, with a sigh of
bitterness that was dreadful to hear.
"Oh, my darling," I said, "do I distress you?"
"Horribly," she answered; "but you are not to blame."
Those were her farewell words. I called after her. I tried to follow her.
She was lost to me in the darkness.